My friend- the train

2:15am and I just came home from Mainz where I was at a very enjoyable birthday dinner party. Good food and nice people- it is always great to know that your friends have carrying and lovely folks around!

But back to my headline, back to my "other friends"... the train or the German train company DB.
German trains are known to be efficient, clean, hyper-modern, comfortable, fast and contrary to all the clichés about Germany, trains are soo often not on time. And YES they are really unpunctual- I could fill books with my experiences.
Sometime you can understand why: Getting home around Christmas is a nightmare. Not only that all the trains are packed (have a seat reservation!) but there are also quite a lot of people killing themselves by jumping in front of a train. That itself is awful but usually the tracks have to be closed after incidences like that for hours and hours due to investigations and all that. You are late, you miss your connecting trains, you are even more late, miss the next connections, ...
But most of the times you just wait and ask yourself why they are late. Also, you departe a station on time and arrive at the next one with a 10 minutes delay not knowing why...

Well, it is not Christmas and for God's Sake noone commited suicide today.

On my ride back I had to change trains in Frankfurt. Frankfurt Airport Station is probably one of the prototypes for clean and futuristic stations in Germany, but I wasnt so wild about spending there 28 minutes. Of course by midnight (Welcome to Europe) all the shops and the lounge are closed, so I had to wait on the platform and there is not much to see. Ooh and did I mentioned that it was cold!? It was cold; around 3° C...
I waited and waited and suddenly the loudspeakers cracked. That is always a bad sign if they dont ask immediately for your attention for the incoming train.
My inner alert bells started ringing. A friendly voice announced that my train connection had gotten cancelled due to logistic problems, but another train substituting that connection would be there in about 25 minutes - *yippieh* more time to freeze my little butt off...

The train came and was warm! but we were so late that I missed my connection for public transportation in Heidelberg- My options were

a) to walk about 40 minutes from the station with my heavy backpack
b) to wait another 35 minutes for the next night bus, take the 10 minutes ride and walk the other 10- 15 minutes OR
c) take a cab....




... it is spendy to be me.....