"Whatever can go wrong, will go wrong."

I never thought that I'd take this worldly wisdom for granted, but July 15th disabused me. It was the day that I traveled home for my semester break.

After having lunch with my fellow student Sarah, my bf took me to the main station (he has to stay in Karlsruhe for another week). He didn't wait with me, since he had to write a test that afternoon, but that was OK. After all, the journey would only take 5 hours and I would be able to relax.
For your information, here's my scheduled (!) itinerary:

04:00 PM: departure from Karlsruhe with an ICE (Inter City Express)
05:08 PM: arrival in Frankfurt/Main, change for another ICE -> departure 05:16 PM
09:15 PM: arrival in Oldenburg

The platform slowly filled up with passengers, and soon agitated muttering could be heard. It was then that I noticed that the ICE would be 45 minutes late - and I remembered that the ICEs are checked due to an almost-catastrophe in Cologne and thus delays would be inevitable. I was angry, but for my consolation an additional train was announced, so that I wouldn't miss my connecting train in Frankfurt. Suddenly, the announcement disappeared and a completely different train was given notice of instead. I was confused and asked a porter, who told me quite casually that my train would depart from platform 14 in a few minutes. I was on platform 3, so I hurried to catch the train I was intended to take. Unfortunately, there was neither an elevator nor an escalator. I had to manhandle my heavy suitcase all alone (it was a case of dog eat dog). At least one single person helped me to jockey my suitcase into the train.

The additional train was an IC (Inter City), and all the first class coaches were free to all passengers, thus I could lounge in one of the comfortable seats. At least that was something. The train departed with a delay of a few minutes and we were supposed to reach Frankfurt at 05:20 PM.
4 minutes ... your ICE will surely wait, I thought. But when we pulled into Frankfurt main station, I watched my connecting train depart.
I made inquiries and noticed that the next ICE to Hannover would depart in about half an hour. I didn't mind the additional change. On the platform, I looked at the display panel: a delay of 30 minutes. I checked again and arrived at the conclusion that there was a difference of two minutes. I hoped to be lucky that time. But when I arrived in Hannover at almost 09:00 PM, my train was - of course - gone!

I was enervated and hungry when I looked up the next connection to Oldenburg: a local train at 09:21 PM. Thus, I still had time to stop by the nearby Burger King. I squashed in the elevator with an elderly couple and a young Asian. The doors closed - but we didn't move. The young woman panicked, but it left me cold. I wouldn't have been surprised if we had been stuck in there till midnight. Luckily, the elevator restarted on its own a few minutes later.

The ride on the local train was very calm - way too calm. We were close to the station Bremen-Sebaldsbrück when we noticed a nasty smell of burned rubber. We first thought of the brakes, but soon smoke shaped up. Luckily, we made it to the station and my seatmate (a student from Oldenburg with whom I have been talking during the ride) checked out what was happening. Two coaches ahead was the source and when the doors were opened, the smoke came out with a surge. Since it didn't smell like a fire, we joked that somebody had locked up in the restroom with some dope (the restroom had been occupied for the past 15 minutes). Suddenly, the engineer piped up and spoke about "technical difficulties of a smoky kind". I already doubted to be home before midnight. But in the end we drove on with a delay of only 10 minutes. At least nobody had panicked, on the contrary: we were tickled pink about the incident.

I once more wanna remind you of my scheduled arrival time: 09:15 PM.
It was 11:40 PM when I finally arrived in Oldenburg.
But in the end it was a quite entertaining journey (since nearly all of my fellow passengers could sympathize my bad mood) and therefore a reason to tell you this story. ; )



_________________
The clubs I'm in: