Many of you heard snippets of this story from my European trip this summer. Below you'll find the entire adventure.
September 2011
"You can turn your back on a man, but never turn your back on a train."
I took the night train from Copenhagen. I could have flown, it would have been cheaper and quicker, but I'd never done a long-haul train trip across Europe, and by all accounts it is the proper, traditional way to move about The Continent.
I was headed to my cousin's house a two-hour drive outside of Frankfurt to see his wife and five kids again before flying back to the States out of Paris. The trip itself was supposed to take around 14 hours altogether, but amazingly enough with only one transfer. That meant I had 12 hours on that night train to sleep, read and generally relax. I even had a compartment to myself for most of the trip, and managed to sleep through the four hours where I was not alone. Before I passed out I'd hopped off the train at a few stops to stretch my legs or have a smoke, always able to tell when the train was going to depart by the electronic sign on the platform, but never brave enough to let the train out of my sight just the same. I slept for a total of five hours, stretched out across three seats, cuddled into the tiny pillow and navy blue blanket I'd “borrowed” from Air Berlin on my flight over. (For the record, I was planning on returning them when I flew home.) When we arrived in a station, the lack of motion would disturb my rest, though I generally just went right back to sawing logs a moment later. Sometimes the train would only pause for a minute or two, sometimes 20.
I finally roused myself at the Frankfurt Hauptbahnhof, a station I have been through a few times. This was the second to last stop until my transfer to a little regional train, so I wanted to be awake and watch the sun rise over the German countryside in my private compartment for this last segment. The sign on the platform said the train wasn't leaving for another 20 minutes, and I knew there would be a bakery or two at the end of the platform. I took my purse but left the rest of my things sprawled out across my side of the compartment – laptop, pillow, blanket, snacks. My ukulele, rucksack and velvet fedora that a friend had given me last time I was in Frankfurt all sat in the luggage rack above my seat.
Bleary eyed I stumbled down the steep steps of the train and onto the platform. I wandered past a Deutschebahn employee who I'd seen at every stop. She was just lighting up her cigarette. I thought about asking when we were leaving, but the sign was there, plain as day, and my brain was still full of sleepy molasses. I successfully got myself a cup of tea, and was just pouring sugar into it when I heard a conductor's whistle. I started, got a brief rush of adrenaline, but them dismissed the thought – Frankfurt Hauptbahnhof is a huge station with lots of trains, and anyhow the sign on our platform said I should have plenty of time. Just the same I made the 15 second walk back to my platform in ten.
And when I returned to my platform? THERE WAS NO TRAIN THERE ANYMORE. I had not been gone five minutes. Gaping, I stood and stared at the gap where my train should be. Fortunately I'd had the good sense to bring my shoulder bag with me, which contained my wallet, phone and passport, but everything else – rucksack, computer, ukulele – were still on the missing train.
The rest of the story after the jump!
My body jerked into motion before my mind really caught up. When I'd disembarked I'd noted a train two tracks over that was going to Mannheim, the station I where I was supposed to change trains. I rushed over to get on that train – maybe I could meet my other train there! – but began to panic when I could not find a DB employee on the platform.
There was still ten minutes before it left, so I skittered over to the customer service desk, spilling hot tea on my hand repeatedly as I ran. Before me was a queue of three people, and I was so perturbed that I didn't even think to use my German. I asked the man in the front of the line if I could please go first, I had an emergency, and proceeded to ignore all of my English-for-Non-Native-English-Speakers training by frantically rattling off the story at a breakneck pace. The man in front rubbed my shoulder comfortingly, though the woman behind him irately said something about her transaction being important, too. Already dulled to German curtness after months of living in Berlin and especially so now I rushed up to the first available agent. I spoke as slowly as the adrenaline would allow, but the matriarch behind the counter sneered and told me I need to see the next agent over for English. This time I actually managed a, “Sprechen Sie english?” and he was a little more yielding that his counterpart. He called the control center and told me that if they could reach the train they would pull my luggage off at Mannheim. He fixed my ticket so I could take a high-speed train that left in 20 minutes.
That was a very long 40 minute trip. I hurried through Mannheim station to the customer service desk, and the young woman with long zebra-print fingernails behind the counter seemed to know who I was and what I was looking for. She called a porter and told me he was on his way with my things. Thank goodness! When the porter arrived he had a small black backpack and nothing else. I informed the woman as calmly as I could that this was not my luggage. After a few more phone calls she gave me the number for the station the train terminated at in an hour and said I should call them. In Switzerland.
I am almost conversational in German, but foreign languages are much harder on the telephone without the physical cues one receives from the speaker. I called one of the few native German speakers I know, Marion from Berlin, and told her about my plight. She was kind enough to get the number from me and coordinate with the station manager in Basel, a town on the border of Germany, France and Switzerland. And it's a good thing, too, as my phone ran out of battery right after I gave her the info, and of course my charger was in my rucksack.
The DB employee I spoke with in Mannheim said I should just go on to my destination, so I took another regional train to my cousin's house outside of Ramstein Air Force Base. Without the 40 lbs of gear I'd been toting around Europe, I felt strangely light during the 10 minute walk from the “station” – a small shelter along a strip of gravel – to my cousin's cute little house nestled in amongst the wheat fields.
My phone was out of commission until I got my charger back, but luckily I'd written down Marion's number and had messaged her my cousin's before my phone gave out. When I arrived I called Marion and she said that she had eventually reached the Basel station manager, that they had my things, and everything appeared to be there... but because there was so much stuff their insurance would not allow him to put it on a train headed back north to Mannheim. That's right, I was going to have to go to Basel and retrieve my gear.
I was planning on spending three days with my cousin and the kids before taking a three-hour high-speed train to Paris, but the plan had changed. It looked like I was going to get to bump up my country count for the trip. I canceled my high-speed rail ticket and bought a day-pass that was good for all regional trains in Germany. My cousin's wife Melissa gave me a change of clothes and I washed the outfit I'd been wearing on the train, and the next morning I took five trains and seven hours getting to Basel. My train even stopped on the platform that held the Lost and Found, and the nonchalant clerk dragged out a box full of my belongings.
I breathed a huge sigh of relief to find that everything was there. Even my snacks.
I stayed with a nice lady I found on the CouchSurfing web site that night and enjoyed a balmy evening exploring the picturesque gingerbread city. The next day I took a bus out to the edge of town and hitchhiked the rest of the way to Paris, thinking that maybe all my luggage wasn't quite as heavy as I had once imagined.
THE END
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