You may recall I mentioned that my train ride from Berlin to Dresden would be short and not have any transfers. These are both true, but it also managed to be the most uncomfortable train ride so far.
I know, I can barely believe it myself. It ended in tears before it even began–err it began in tears. It doesn’t matter–it made an old lady cry (not me).
At Berlin HBF (main train station) I stood around the departure board for an hour waiting for my train to display which track it will be departing from (no benches). It wasn’t listed until about 25 minutes before departure. This is not convenient for me for so many reasons, no the least of which is my get-there-early neuroses. Another of which is that this station is four stories and full of stores. It’s basically a mall with trains. So you could be three stories away from where your train is going to depart and have only 25 minutes to fight the crowd, lug your suitcases, figure out where the track is, and get there. If this seems like plenty of time, you’ve never seen my walking pace.
When the train finally displayed I had that familiar problem that my ticket had only MY destination, not the train’s destination, so I had to do some cross referencing and no-internet research (aka talking to people). Don’t forget to schedule that into your 25 minutes. After I’d been waiting at the platform (standing, no benches, can I just complain about how there are so few benches at a train station? Don’t people get there with bags and crap and then have to wait? How are there not enough benches? People were sitting on the floor. It was not ok. Put in some benches, good grief) and an echoed German PA reverberated across the tracks. Some people in my crowd started shuffling away. An English translation followed: the platform for my train had changed. Time to move again! Yay!
The train was late and people were clamoring to get on. I had an assigned seat on car 259. I wish the cars on the train were more numerically sound (idk, maybe #1-12?), because 259 wasn’t that easy to find and I didn’t have a lot of time or space to look. The crowd was bottle-necked between the train and the staircase and everyone was sweating like this was some other German train. I had to run down the platform after breaking away from the crowd and push my way on to the train before the doors closed. Everyone else did the same. No one was on the right car. The narrow aisles within the train were jam packed with people trying to pass each other with all their gear when the train started to move. The lady behind me, old enough to be my grandmother, had a tissue over her face. She was shocked the train would leave before she could sit down. I was pretty indignant at the lack of organization myself, but now I am far too jaded to be shocked. I looked at her ticket and discovered we were heading in the same direction, so I told her she could follow in my wake of destruction. She didn’t laugh so she must be German.
When I finally pushed and ducked and jumped my way to my seat, people in the area near me were complaining that more tickets than seats were sold, so that is why the aisles were crowded with lingerers like on a rush hour subway commute, except with luggage. Germany totally wins for most disorganized country. It took me about 40 minutes to push my way to my seat, so the 2 hour ride passed pretty quickly once I was sitting with my luggage in my lap (there was no room on the racks and the aisles were already full of people).
I did manage to bail off the train in Dresden (no easy feat with the aisles still full) and found not only sunshine but a delightful lack of crowds. It is even less crowded in my airbnb where I have been recovering my nerves.
I miss having a car.
paralyzedbynotcaring 