Lemme tell you a grand ol story. This morning, after a hearty visit to the "local" pub (and 2 stolen Guinness glasses later 😉) and its subsequent cautious celebration of the election results (we finished up around 230am) I woke at 415 to catch the bus to the airport. I had plenty of time so that wasn't a scramble situation, thankfully. But. My bag was too heavy. I'd snagged a few groceries before leaving, so I was faced with a different adventure, in which I tried to guess which items in my bag would 1) be worth it regarding weight 2) would fit on my body or 3) fit in my splitting carry-on without tearing the seams completely. Which is to say, I was ROASTING as I scampered towards my terminal.
The flight itself wasn't bad, I drank half a nalgene & slept through most of it with gratitude. The night before had been lovely so I wasn't mad about being tired at all. I wandered through Frankfurt's airport, fully aware of the privilege of speaking a language that took over the global markets, thus was written beneath the native language on all the signs. Wowzers grateful.
I made it onto the correct shuttle with the help of multiple information desk pals. I got onto the train, a bucket of questions and confusion because I had one ticket, but my route indicated a change of trains. I asked one of the officers who informed me that I would stay on the train all the way to Nürnberg. So I people watched and opened up the German DuoLingo to catch up on a language in which I knew a total of 5 words, 3 of them being the first 3 numbers before starting a soccer game. (Shout out to Sonja) we started the journey and pulled into the station, which was massive and beautiful. There was an announcement entirely in German (sure) and I waited for the English translation that had followed for previous announcements and kept waiting. And waiting. And then as the announcement continued in German, I watched a flurry of passengers grab their bags and mutter "shiza!" a they get off the train. So my frenzy kicked up a bit and I asked the train officer what the announcement said.
"There are technical difficulties with this train, so you will need to board another one."
"Cool, cool. Uh. Which one? Towards Nürnberg?"
"Platform 9, under the tunnel turn right"
"Thankyoublessyou!"
So I joined the pack of scrambling patrons and saw a woman who had been sitting across me on the train initially, and asked where she was going. Also Nürnberg, so I asked if I could follow her to the right train. We were *just* trading broken language fragments and getting to know each other, when someone told her that the platform had changed again and was leaving in 5 minutes. Cool, cool. We both made it onto the train, but she had a first klasse (class 💁) ticket so she found a seat while I wandered to the next coach. LOL THE WHOLE TRAIN IS OVERBOOKED. So I stood with another woman in the small space between the "restaurant" and the next coach, laughing at how silly all of this has been. She'd been on this train properly, but in the scramble someone had taken her seat. Once everyone settled, she went back and snagged her seat and I stood for a bit near the door, but was annoyed by the motion sensor door that I set off every time I breathed. K,bye. So I joined the amiable group of older folks who committed themselves to the floor space they found in the joints between coaches. And for the next 3 hours, I too am committed to laughing in this wee little floor space. What a great adventure so far.
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