Well, it was nice while it lasted. So far, I've felt like one of the “elite” travelers going across Europe. With the ticket I bought, I get to get on any train in France, Germany or Switzerland any 5 days in a 2 month window. That means that I've taken nothing but the fastest, nicest, and newest trains. And I've loved it.
Alas, all good things must come to an end.
I showed up at the Train station in Basel last night expecting to catch a train to France and then down to the French Riviera to spend a couple of days in Nice. It was going to be a glorious trip to the beach...
Until I found out that all of the seats allotted for my kind of pass had been reserved, and that the only way I was going to get to Nice would be to buy a ticket, like $200. That's not a happy way to come back to reality. I'd much rather have kept on pretending that I was able to jet-set around Europe as I pleased.
No worries though- necessity is the mother of all invention. I just needed some inspiration for what I should do to get that attitude back. I hopped on a night train headed for Berlin, and I decided I would figure out just what it was that I'd do on the way up there. I slept a little bit. A very little bit. Good thing is that gave me plenty of time to think.
I pulled out my map of all the “fast” rail lines in Europe, and saw a connecting line Kiel-Hamburg-Berlin. When we pulled in to the station at Mannheim, I got on the internet for about 5 minutes. It was just long enough to find out that there was a train at 12:55 in the morning from Frankfurt (my next stop!) directly to Kiel. I checked on Facebook, and Yasmin had sent me a message saying it'd work better for her to meet me in Berlin on Tuesday than it would Monday, so it was decided. I was going to Kiel.
The best laid plans of mice and men...
I gathered all of my things together as we were coming in to Frankfurt, and then all of a sudden we were stopped. I looked outside, and we definitely weren't in the central station. I'd already made up my mind though, so I got off the train. I ran to catch an S-Bahn to the central station, and got there about 10 minutes after the train I wanted had left. The next train leaving would be at 3:15. That meant 2 good hours of waiting in a practically deserted train station.
I had a lot of stuff on the internet and other things to catch up on, so I sat down on my luggage (Goodwill, $7. One of my best finds yet!) because it's the perfect height to work as a chair, and I pulled out my netbook.
About an hour later, a man walking in to the station came over and asked me if I knew if any restaurants there were still open. I had no idea, so I mentioned something about seeing something around the corner. That's when I noticed he had a quad and a copy of the most recent conference Ensign in his hands. We got to talking, and I found out he's a recent convert in Frankfurt. Good, guy, but I'm not sure he was quite all the way there. It definitely livened things up a lot and made the wait go by quicker.
Eventually, my train did show up, so I had to leave my new friend. Why Kiel you ask? Good question. I wasn't really sure when I decided. It just seemed random enough that I went for it. I got to Hamburg, and had enough time to go get some breakfast and store my bags in a locker. My camera still doesn't have any charge, so I bought a single-use one, and felt like a true tourist. I'm sure I was a really easy target to spot- the camera, traveling alone, no real sense of purpose of direction, and then of course I don't sound like a native German either ;)
By the time I got to Kiel, I'd decided that I wanted to go there to go in the ocean. I started my mission in Greifswald, and we had a couple of p-days/YSA activities where we hung out on the beach. I, being the fresh from the MTC missionary that I was, didn't even want to wade in the water, and as such had never been in the Ostsee (Thinking back on it now, that's not true. I'd been in. Twice. But neither came to my mind this morning).
So, I decided to go to a stop on the bus map of Kiel that was labeled “Strand” (=Beach). Unfortunately, I got on the right bus, going the wrong direction. For 15 minutes. By the time that I got back to my starting point, I didn't really have enough time to go all the way over and make the trip to the beach, so I improvised. I walked down to the harbor, found the end of the harbor where steps lead down to the water level, and stuck my feet in there. I had a lady who was just sitting there take my picture. It was pretty cool.
I decided to complete the tourist image by heading back to Hamburg and going on one of the Open-top double-decker bus tours of the city. Dieter, our guide, was a pretty funny guy. He would start going off about something in German, and then realize that he was supposed to be saying in English afterwards as well, and then he'd switch, but then get distracted and eventually realize that he needed to switch back to German. I was glad I could follow him the whole time :)
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