From Budapest to Berlin, Without Love

Apparently, Monday's not a good day for the Deutsche Bahn either. Germans are stereotyped as ueber-punctual and very strict. These characteristics apply to their train system, which is extremely reliable, well organized, and quite clean. Unfortunately, today was not their day, and it definitely was not mine.

After seeing my mother off at the train station in Budapest last night, I got onto my train heading to Munich at 21:05, arrival time 6:15 this morning. At 6:00, no one in my couchette cabin except for me was awake; as it turned out we were experiencing a ca. 75 minute delay.

I originally had a connection from Munich to Berlin at 7:20, but by the time I got there it was already gone (apparently, that one was running on time). If things worked out the way I wanted, I would've arrived in Berlin at around 1:30pm, so obviously it was going to be a while.

I changed my ticket at the Reisezentrum for a train at 8:22, which was great! Except that the train was still in the station at 8:40, and then came the announcement that "der Zug ist kaputt," which was carried over by one of the passengers as perhaps the Lautsprecher was kaputt, too.

I got off the train and ended up befriending an Albanian who was on his way to Dessau, but was heading in my direction to a connection in Leipzig, so we finally got on a train that left at 8:55 and got to Nuernberg at 9:50. When we went to the Reisezentrum to get a reservation for the last train (my last, his second-to-last) to Berlin/Leipzig, it was too close to departure time to make seat reservations, but the train wasn't fully booked so there was hope.

And hope there was (kind of) as the seats reserved for physically handicapped passengers were empty, and none had come throughout the ride. Unfortunately - and how could this day go without one last delay - we were still delayed by 40 minutes. He missed his earliest connection to Dessau by about 20 minutes, but I think he could take care of himself. In the meantime, I finally got to Berlin. Except it was already 15:40. And I needed a shower badly. No work for me today!