Planes, trains, and automobiles… except this time only trains.
My first long-distance train experience. Aboard the weltberühmt (world-known) ICE-train. Inter-City-Express trains, which are these
bullet trains which travel very fast, and stop only in the big cities. I sat on this train for 7 hours!! Luckily,
they are VERY comfortable, with awesome seats, nice headrests, and plenty of
space, not to mention the huge windows for the great scenery, even though I
traveled when it was dark! With stops in Stuttgart, Düsseldorf, Köln/Bonn,
Bochum etc, I arrived about 20-30 minutes late in Dortmund, because we got
stuck on the tracks because a car ran into a bridge, and they had to clear the
scene, and fix the bridge!!
What I did in Dortmund was quite a story… sarcastically, of course… I didn’t leave until 5-something, almost 6 o’clock, so I had PLENTY of time to kill. I walked around, like I seemingly always do, and I found a McDonalds open 24/7, so I went in and asked for a Hamburger, ‘nur Fleisch’ (only meat), which was the highlight of my entire night… because apparently this is unheard of in Germany… so that was quite the scene.
Shortly thereafter, well, basically said, I walked around. Went a little bit into the city, even though it was already past 2 o’clock AM, walked around the train station, watched a few trains go by, look around in the book store there, listened to some music, got harassed along with every other passenger waiting for their train, by all the homeless people who sleep there in the station. Finally, as the sun was just beginning to rise, the bakeries started to open, and the station began to become a bustle… What was annoying was all the Turks, which are like the Mexican immigrants to us in the States, they were all over, they are the ones who own these bakeries and shoppes in train stations, and all they do is talk in Turkish. Anyway, I bought myself a very pleasant Berliner for a few cents, and waited for my train…
While I waited for my train to Bielefeld, an announcement came on saying that due to construction on the track that it was scheduled to arrive on, they moved us to another platform. And the platform we were on was the only one to NOT have an escalator OR a baggage conveyor belt thingermajig. So I had to carry my 23kg luggage with laptop bag and rucksack all the way down the steps, a few platforms on down. And because of this construction, we were delayed 3 minutes, and at my next station I had originally only 5 minutes to catch my next train. So with 3 minutes late, I thought I’d be ok, because I was scheduled to arrive on the same platform I was scheduled to depart onwards on. But to my luck, since we started out on a different platform than scheduled, we arrived on a different. So I had to take the escaltor down under, and walk down the hall and take the escalator back up to the next platform, and by then, I missed my train. So I waited and became a Schwarzfahrer, meaning, an illegal passenger, because I was riding on a train without a proper ticket. Pech on them. I checked the departure list they have posted there in the station, and called Tine and said that they should come to the station a bit later, to catch me for the next train.
And so they did. I arrived well-traveled in my final first destination, Lage.
