By bizn_fun 
‘It was absolute chaos,’ says student on Eurostar after 10-hour ordealpublished at 16:54 GMT
Ian Aikman
Live reporter
Dina Motashaw is currently travelling on the 15:04 Eurostar to Brussels, the first service to resume since the Channel Tunnel was partially reopened. But it took her more than 10 hours to reach this point.
The 21-year-old student, from Croydon, arrived at St Pancras at 06:00 GMT this morning to catch the 07:04 service to Lille, northern France, where she plans to visit her boyfriend for New Year’s Eve.
Dina boarded that train, but it was sent back to London after it got stuck for four hours.
She then had to wait in “massive” queues to return to the St Pancras waiting area. “It was absolute chaos,” she says.
When the 15:04 was announced, passengers with tickets for that train were let on first, followed by people who were on the earliest trains of the day.
“I had to shout at people saying I was on that first train,” she says. “I fought so hard for that and I am really emotional right now. Honestly, it was really hard, there were so many people.”
Despite the station staff urging her to hurry, the carriage was mostly empty when the service started moving around 16:00 – almost nine hours after Dina was meant to depart.
“Hopefully there’s no more delays and there’s no more problems, because I just want to get to Lille,” she tells me from the train.