Monday, April 28, 2008

A more positive story about buses – thank you CIE!

Having had a go at Translink this morning – and omitted to congratulate the driver who let me get off two stops early when I’d naively asked him where the closest stop to Belmont Church Road was – here’s a more positive post to balance what could quickly turn into a ranty week.

We had two houseguests staying for the last ten days. They spent a night in Dublin, and one accidentally left her sleeping bag on the bus. Realising what was missing, they nipped back to the bus station a couple of minutes later, but the bus had already turned around and departed.

They checked the Lost Property office in Dublin on Saturday on the way home. And they found the Belfast Lost Property closed when they finally got home.

Tip: The Lost Property for Translink buses is the Parcel Office – on the forecourt, opposite the bus departure gates. It’s not (well) signposted, but that’s where it is.

The visitors flew back to Paris and their work at Taize this morning, but I finally tracked down the turquoise and purple sleeping bag to CIE’s Dublin Lost Property after lunch, and the kind man offered to throw it on the 16:00 bus heading north.

Only problem was that I had to beetle down to the station to meet the bus, as the parcel office is closed after 17:30, and lost property disappears into an unstable wormhole.

The bus pulled in to Europa right on time at 18:30, and once everybody got off, I poked my head in the door and asked the driver if he’d been given a sleeping bag. And voila. There it was in the locker beside the door.

So thank you CIE for an efficient way to smuggle a sleeping bag back to Belfast. Now to give it to someone heading out to Taize!

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