Sad to say that when I woke up on the morning of the third the weather was just as grim as it was the night before, and after a nice long breakfast I just couldn't face any queues so I decided to cut my losses and split early, hoping that in Germany I would have more luck.
Having already purchased a ticket in advance for a later train, I chose to try and get help from the Central Stations main service centre about if I could move to an earlier train or not.
However, what I found was that the customer services was a warped hybrid of something that resembled Argos, a nightclub and an airport check in desk. You had to take a number and wait for it to come up on the screens and then head off to one of the many many counters where the staff member there would do their best to help you. When I arrived after a short time I was given the number C203, which was quite disappointing since they had not even served C149. To add further confusion they were also serving B numbers, and had reached B88 so what that was all about I had no idea.
The
After about ten minutes they had not progressed beyond C152 and so I figured that there is a good chance I would still be here by the time my original train would leave, so I took my number, mustered all the bravado I could and just went off in search of a timetable for the next train to Dusseldorf, the plan in mind that I would slip on board just before it actually left, remove the original booking reservation attachment and then if any guard queried why I was on an earlier train I would say show the small blue slip number and say that the person on the counter said I could, and if that failed just play on the polite but naive stupid English tourist to carry the day.
As luck, or judgement, would have it I had guessed right that my ticket would be valid on any outgoing train and I just had to show the guard the main ticket in as much of a bored look as I could muster and they stamped it and moved on without even raising an eye brow. Nobody even ask to look at a passport when I crossed over into Germany territory
or got off at the other end.
At this point I thought that I had mastered the German train system, how little did I know.
From that moment on I had a real headache of a journey, as according to the timetable there was only one train per hour going to all the way to Wegberg, which required a change at Monchengladbach. Having contacted my friend over in Wegberg to say that I was already at Dusseldorf and that I wouldn't be much later I was confident that I would be there for most of the day, however I was unprepared for an uncharacteristic failing of German efficiency.
Patiently I watched two trains leave for MG, as they were not on my timetable and as cursed luck would have it just as my timetable scheduled one was about to pull in there was a slight technical fault on a different train that was pulling into the same platform as my one, and thus my one was delayed arriving on time. But only for a few minutes, so nothing too much to worry about I felt.
Yet when I arriving MG I found that there was again only one train an hour leaving MG for Wegberg and on my delayed trip out I had missed it by a couple of minutes, thus had another hour wait. You cannot imagine how I turned the air blue being the only Brit stuck at this German train station with no guard or service person in sight to ask what the hell was going on, assuming of course that I could have got my point across knowing less than five words of German in total !?!
With my mobile phone battery hazardously close to empty, no sign of a recharger point and my rucksack getting heavier and heavier by the second I barely managed to call an SOS to my friend and say that I was going to be even later still, and I think she must of either got bored of waiting, or felt sorry for me, and convinced her other half to come pick me up at the train station instead.
Finally back in Wegberg it was nice to be almost on home soil again, as of course my friends hubby is a British soldier based over there, and their house is on one of the bases.
It is kind of freaky to be walking around an army base, knowing that at the perimeter there is all wire mess and machine gun posts, yet apart from the boring designs and layout of the houses you could almost imagine that you was in a university campus, and with everyone around you speaking English ( or Irish ! ) the only dead give aways is the weather and the fact that everything is either Euro's or US Dollar's.
When you go shopping though, you once again realise that you are on a base as you go past people in uniforms, the nearest store is the NAAFI which stocks not only groceries and dvd's but knifes and combat fatigues, and when you go to buy certain alcohol you have to produce a nations card.
The next few days will be basically chilling out with my friends over here, quite a bit of watching movies, playing first person shoot-em-ups, getting drunk and maybe a few trips to places of nearby beauty. I did make the mistake of asking why we have to get drunk so much over here, and had she forgot that I am on a bit of a diet and a light-weight when it comes to drink and I was simply told, "You are in Germany ... and getting drunk is what you do here". Silly me for forgetting that.
Well as the old saying goes, "When in Rome do as the Romans do".
Cheers
Having already purchased a ticket in advance for a later train, I chose to try and get help from the Central Stations main service centre about if I could move to an earlier train or not.
However, what I found was that the customer services was a warped hybrid of something that resembled Argos, a nightclub and an airport check in desk. You had to take a number and wait for it to come up on the screens and then head off to one of the many many counters where the staff member there would do their best to help you. When I arrived after a short time I was given the number C203, which was quite disappointing since they had not even served C149. To add further confusion they were also serving B numbers, and had reached B88 so what that was all about I had no idea.
The
After about ten minutes they had not progressed beyond C152 and so I figured that there is a good chance I would still be here by the time my original train would leave, so I took my number, mustered all the bravado I could and just went off in search of a timetable for the next train to Dusseldorf, the plan in mind that I would slip on board just before it actually left, remove the original booking reservation attachment and then if any guard queried why I was on an earlier train I would say show the small blue slip number and say that the person on the counter said I could, and if that failed just play on the polite but naive stupid English tourist to carry the day.
As luck, or judgement, would have it I had guessed right that my ticket would be valid on any outgoing train and I just had to show the guard the main ticket in as much of a bored look as I could muster and they stamped it and moved on without even raising an eye brow. Nobody even ask to look at a passport when I crossed over into Germany territory
or got off at the other end.
At this point I thought that I had mastered the German train system, how little did I know.
From that moment on I had a real headache of a journey, as according to the timetable there was only one train per hour going to all the way to Wegberg, which required a change at Monchengladbach. Having contacted my friend over in Wegberg to say that I was already at Dusseldorf and that I wouldn't be much later I was confident that I would be there for most of the day, however I was unprepared for an uncharacteristic failing of German efficiency.
Patiently I watched two trains leave for MG, as they were not on my timetable and as cursed luck would have it just as my timetable scheduled one was about to pull in there was a slight technical fault on a different train that was pulling into the same platform as my one, and thus my one was delayed arriving on time. But only for a few minutes, so nothing too much to worry about I felt.
Yet when I arriving MG I found that there was again only one train an hour leaving MG for Wegberg and on my delayed trip out I had missed it by a couple of minutes, thus had another hour wait. You cannot imagine how I turned the air blue being the only Brit stuck at this German train station with no guard or service person in sight to ask what the hell was going on, assuming of course that I could have got my point across knowing less than five words of German in total !?!
With my mobile phone battery hazardously close to empty, no sign of a recharger point and my rucksack getting heavier and heavier by the second I barely managed to call an SOS to my friend and say that I was going to be even later still, and I think she must of either got bored of waiting, or felt sorry for me, and convinced her other half to come pick me up at the train station instead.
Finally back in Wegberg it was nice to be almost on home soil again, as of course my friends hubby is a British soldier based over there, and their house is on one of the bases.
It is kind of freaky to be walking around an army base, knowing that at the perimeter there is all wire mess and machine gun posts, yet apart from the boring designs and layout of the houses you could almost imagine that you was in a university campus, and with everyone around you speaking English ( or Irish ! ) the only dead give aways is the weather and the fact that everything is either Euro's or US Dollar's.
When you go shopping though, you once again realise that you are on a base as you go past people in uniforms, the nearest store is the NAAFI which stocks not only groceries and dvd's but knifes and combat fatigues, and when you go to buy certain alcohol you have to produce a nations card.
The next few days will be basically chilling out with my friends over here, quite a bit of watching movies, playing first person shoot-em-ups, getting drunk and maybe a few trips to places of nearby beauty. I did make the mistake of asking why we have to get drunk so much over here, and had she forgot that I am on a bit of a diet and a light-weight when it comes to drink and I was simply told, "You are in Germany ... and getting drunk is what you do here". Silly me for forgetting that.
Well as the old saying goes, "When in Rome do as the Romans do".
Cheers
Hi! Found your blog from asking Google how to remove Artex from my ceiling (it's quite nice to know the internet is as crazily structured as my own mind) and got absorbed reading through some of the newer entries. You're a very good and engaging writer.
ReplyDeleteGood luck for your travels and congratulations on having the courage to live your dreams! I'll be reading to see how you get on.
Mel.