If you don't have the time to read this whole blog post, this sums it up: if you are on a train, and you see me, get off immediately.
First of all, I need to apologize for my lack of a posting in a long time. I don't want to sound so full of myself that I think people are waking up in the middle of the night and checking their Blogspot subscriptions for word from me, but I do think at least a few people enjoy hearing updates about my year in Germany. The longer I live here, the more accustomed I get, and the less I feel that I have blog-worthy material. I'll try to be better, though!
With that said, there are some newsworthy happenings (that some of you may have gotten a taste of via Facebook), namely, my continued problems with train travel and public transportation in general. If I had to sum up my first extended stay in Germany, I'd be remiss to exclude my constant challenges with trains: buying a wrong ticket on day three in Germany (leading to a 40 Euro fine) and missing my flight to Edinburgh after some train mishaps are my two most famous train disaster stories. I was hoping that train troubles would be so 2011, but I've quickly learned that, for me, at least, they're still very much in style.
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| "The Little Engine That Could" make traveling suck. |
Saga #1 Going to orientation and back
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| 700 km by train. What could go wrong?? |
Summary of our adventures with trains.
1. Train from Mainz to Cologne:
--Train car 10 (where we had our seat reservations) decided not to show up with the rest of the train, so we were forced to drag our huge suitcases down the train to find some empty seats. To make it even more annoying, over 20 people were doing the exact same thing because they, too, (stupidly) assumed car 10 would be there.
2. -Cologne to Oldenburg
--1 minute before our train was to show up, we were informed that the train had a 70-(not 7, or 17, but 70!!) minute delay. This would have caused us to miss our connecting train in Bremen, so we had to find another train. Of course there went our paid-for reservations again.
--Took another train that was like 20 minutes late. Deutsche Bahn (the German railway company) assured us we'd have plenty of time to catch our train in Bremen because we had 40 minutes of layover time.
--20 minutes quickly became 40 minutes by the time we reached Bremen. We arrived one minute too late. Had to wait another 40 minutes or so before we took the final train home.
3. Oldenburg to Kiel
-After fighting with the ticket machine for a good ten minutes, I finally got my ticket in the Bremen train station to get me to Kiel.But of course the platform I was supposed to go to was completely blocked off.
--After reading the electronic posting of where I needed to go instead, I was forced to carry two 50-lbs suitcases (by myself) up the stairs to the platform (apparently Tour de France took a detour through Bremen because there was a line of like 40 cyclists waiting to use the elevator).
--After waiting for 20 minutes and still no train, suddenly crowds of people started running down the stairs for some reason. That must have meant that the platform changed, and the only way to find out where to was to pick up my 100 lbs of luggage and walk down the stairs again. Good thing I did because it did change...to the other side of platform I was just standing on. So I hauled my stuff up that same exact staircase one more time. My arms were killing me.
--With no reservation in hand I boarded a train that was packed. I stood for an hour and half in the tiny compartment in front of the bathroom with seven other people. I was lucky enough to be able to stand in the hole created by the step into the train car.
Saga #2 Going Dutch
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| Speedy 3-hour trek...seems easy enough. |
~I thought maybe having Emily come to visit us would cancel out some of my bad train luck as we ventured to Amsterdam, Berlin and Prague in October. But I was wrong. While on our way back from Amsterdam, our train suddenly came to a screeching halt. We looked out the window to see the train personnel jumping out of the train and onto the tracks. We didn't hear anything for a couple minutes, but we soon got the report in Dutch, Dutch-German and Dutch-English: "Ladies and gentlemen...we...uh..heet a car." Apparently, there was a car on the tracks (still don't know why), but luckily no one was in the car. Or, as the Dutch train guy said, "Zee accident was nothing personal."
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| Emily's patient face on aforementioned stopped train. |
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| "Waarom was de auto hier?!?" |
--We then heard things from the loud speaker like, "Um, we don't know what we to do!" as we watched all the Dutch people flee the train. We were stuck with the Germans hoping we'd make it back home by the end of the night. They did give us a bunch of free Coke, juice and water, though.
--After nearly an hour of waiting, we slowly rolled into the next station where we were rerouted through two forms of local Dutch trains (they were so packed, of course, that I didn't have a seat). We got home over two hours later than we intended.
Saga #3 Orkan Christian
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| My commute from work to my apartment. Surely, this tiny local train route is safe from chaos! |
As I've mentioned before, I live in Kiel but work 45 minutes away in the town of Schleswig. Although I always ride with a teacher from my school to Schleswig in the morning, I take the train back to Kiel at least two time a week because the teacher I ride with usually stays quite late. Anyway, last Monday (October 28th) I remember hearing that an "Orkan" (European windstorm is the translation I've found) was coming, but I didn't think too much of it; I really should have. This was a big enough deal to warrant a Wikipedia article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St_Jude_storm
I finished class at 12:40, and since my ride said he would be at the school till five, I figured I could take my time getting home. Here's how that turned out:
--Walked to train station. It's a 40-minute walk, but I was in no hurry and the weather actually looked nice.
--By the time I was at the station, the wind was starting to pick up pretty badly. I had 30 minutes until my train came.
--Literally the minute the train was supposed be there, we are informed that the trains are no longer running because of the storm.
--Went to find a taxi and was nearly blown over and had to dodge tree branches. Had to take the taxi back to the school, but because the streets were already covered with fallen trees, we had to take an extremely long way to the school, costing me double the normal fare.
--Waited in the teachers' lounge for hours because parts of the autobahn were closed.
--Finally left the school at six, but the traffic was so bad that a 45-minute trip turned into a two-hour journey.
--After getting off at 12:40, I walked into my apartment at 8:00.
The trains continued to be out of commission for an entire week, causing many more days of complicated commuting. At one point, every train line in ALL of Germany was back up and running EXCEPT mine.
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The good news is that I stayed home this past weekend and did not step on a single train, and I had a marvelously relaxing weekend. The bad news is I have more train travel planned this month.
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| Next time, I'm pulling a Harry and Ron. |
