Today is the 1st Whiney Expat Blogger meet-up in Marburg – a smallish University town in the north of the state of Hessen. I’d arranged to go by train, it’s a fair distance and by booking in advance I’d managed to get a 62.5% discount on the ticket, bringing it down to a very reasonable price – only slightly more than flying return to London with Germanwings, in fact.
As I’ve recently praised the punctuality of the local trains – if it says 6:22, it means 6:22 (one can easily say “it takes seven minutes to walk to the station, my watch and the train clocks are set by radio signal from the atomic clock in Darmstadt, therefore if I leave the house at 6:14, I have a minute to spare” and you’ll have to hang around on the platform for exactly one minute). It goes without saying that today it didn’t come, nor did the one after that. “Personenschaden” it said over the loudspeaker, which translates as “someone committed suicide by jumping in front of the train and it’s being rinsed clean”. IT DOESN’T MATTER! The trains are red anyway, just get me to the Hauptbahnhof! By the time I got to the main station, the train to Frankfurt had left. I explained to the nice man at the ticket counter what had happened and he explained that I could buy a new ticket at full price. I didn’t bother explaining to him what the words “utter twat” mean.
Hoping that the conductor of the next train to Frankfurt would be a bit more understanding, I hung around and got on that train to ask. No help there either. So, fellow whiney expat bloggers, I hope you had a great time in Marburg and I’m sorry I wasn’t there – especially Hamish and J, who I’d arranged to meet on train from Frankfurt, but I was being a whiney expat blogger, just on the computer, as God intended.
Monday afternoon update: I got a refund! Only for the journey there “because I could still have used the return ticket from Marburg that evening”. I like travelling by train, I really do, it’s having to interact with the staff that annoys the hell out of me. I’m going by car or plane to the next meeting….
Song playing as this was published: Texas - “Inner Smile”
You poor thing! We figured it was something like that, you being you and all. We did miss you though. Next time for sure. Funnily enough (well, not really funny at all on lots of levels), my train home (coming from Frankfurt) was also cancelled due to “Personenschaden”.
Well, I hope you had a good time! I’ve been complaining to Die Bahn and it’s because it was just an S-Bahn and not a “proper train”. If it was a “real” train they’d have validated my ticket for a later journey. It really annoyed me though, not just because I’d got up at 5:15 a.m. but because the S-Bahn is listed on the ticket issued by Deutsche Bahn. The guy at the station knew that no trains were running into Stuttgart on that line, but still wouldn’t validate my ticket - and I was loathed to pay full price for a new one.
Christina’s right, you’re astonishingly prone to calamity. It’s amazing how many scrapes you get into, and we’re so lucky that you do otherwise your blog wouldn’t be half an entertaining.
Glad to hear that you’re okay. I returned home 2 hours late thanks to DB, but nobody would tell me why.
DB seemed to be giving everyone the arse yesterday. Shame you couldn’t have made it. You missed some fine whinning
aw, schucks, if i knew about the meet-up, i could have taken your place. whiney expat? that’s me, alright! and marburg is not even half an hour away from my place! arrrrgh!
thanks for the visiting my blog, btw!
Wow, Germany must be efficient: you get told the actual reason for trains being delayed.
Almost never happens here - fairly recently, while standing on a platform listening to a series of automated messages telling that the train was “approximately” a specified number of minutes late, the local station staff made the following announcement:
“Yeah, sorry for the delay, there’s a one-under at X”. Shortly after this came series of staccato clicks over the tannoy, and then the same voice announced:
“Sorry for the delay. This is due to an unspecified incident at X”. Which was then swiftly followed by a different voice explaing that:
“Ladies and Gentlemen. We apologise for the delay you are a currently experiencing with this service. This is due to an earlier incident”.
Why is it that the most accurate, and probably reprimand-inducing, version also happens to be the least official?
J, Haddock: What pissed me off was that I live in a suburb where the S-Bahn track isn’t some underground track, but is also the main line to the south, Switzerland and for the Cisalpino to Italy (worth the trip for the views alone). The guy at the “service” point in Stuttgart (Herr S.) knew that line was blocked and could have just stamped my ticket and I’d have got there an hour later than planned.. Instead he decided to revert to type and be a git.
EasyJetsetter: Yes, there is the occasional mishap, but this was entirely avoidable, if the staff of DB had employed a tiny portion of intelligence….
Ruth: An expat in Germany making genetics references, it’s compulsory visiting, I think….
Anyhoo: Well, I know they have a policy here of newpapers not reporting suicide by train. However “train delayed because of damage to a person”, is the official reason they give at German stations.
Yes next year you and I will have to show or we’ll be like the red-head step kids at any subsequent meet.
I was telling J I’m glad I didn’t go now in a way because I have horrible luck with the Bahn.
Last time I used the train a dog pooped in my carriage
I can’t believe it.
They really wanted to make you buy another ticket?
IDIOTS! I think if you buy via Bahn, they are totally responsible for getting you to your target destination.
YOu should sue them
.
- Sparky