Alpine Summer

Awesome. Just awesome. As if it knew my plans, I had a replay of the last Dublin morning and my alarm failed to sound. We eat breakfast and realize that we can't visit the Van Gogh unless we wanted to arrive back in the Schwä really late in the evening, which is something we specifically wanted to avoid. So, we pack up, head to the train station to grab one of the trains to Amsterdam so we can still get our ICE to Stuttgart.

We get to the platform for one of the trains a few minutes early. However, there's a train sitting there and the big sign outside says it's bound for Amsterdam. Sometimes a train is early, and sometimes they just sit for a while, so we don't think anything of it. We get on and get seats. As the train shoves off from the station, the electronic banner changes from Amsterdam to Arleim, then Arleim to Den Haag. Luke comforts me by reminding me that most trains just put the final destination after showing all the stops along the way. However, after a few minutes, he asks the woman in front of us if we're headed to Amsterdam. She informs us that we are not and that we should take the train all the way to Den Haag because they have a large station with many trains and it would be easier than sitting for a rare train at a small station. The ticket-taker tells us exactly what time and where the next train from Den Haag to Amsterdam will be leaving after we arrive, and the woman promises to help us when we get there.

Upon arrival, we only have a few minutes to go across the station. We wind up missing the train, partly because the woman helping us got confused and had to leave to catch her train. Luke goes to the information desk while I stay with all our bags, and returns with the news that our ICE stops in Utrecht anyway. So, we figure the best bet is to return to Utrecht and catch it there. Trains run from Den Haag to Utrecht every hour, and we just missed one. We sit and wait, and a train pulls up that promises Utrecht along its list of stops. We're a little fishy, but get on and ask someone before it pulls away. They confirm it, so we ride back to Utrecht.

While in the station, we stopped to get some food. There was a döner shop that advertised chicken döners, so we stopped to get one. They were very tasty and filling. We then waited patiently for our ICE. Luke had received a print-out of the schedule for our ICE in Den Haag which even included the platform number. However, as we got closer to the departure time, another train came on the sign, and about 20 other people were as confused as we were. Luke checks on the big board and it makes it seem as though it were never scheduled for that platform. We run to the new location and jump on a few minutes before it pulls away. The train is very full and it doesn't seem like there are empty seats in the next few cars -- there is also an All-American Tennis team of high school kids coming in behind us -- so we take the fold-down handicap seats. If anyone truly needed the seats, we would move. But, in the meantime, the next 20 minutes was full of shoving and yelling as the tennis team tried to find their reserved seats and kicked people out of them.

Our itinerary had one change in Köln, and, as we neared the stop, we got prepared to jump off. The train slowed to a stop . . . but not in the station. Not in anywhere, in fact. Just on the track, with nothing around us. For the next 25 minutes, we are at a standstill. Approximately three minutes until we actually begin to move, someone comes over the loudspeaker and announces the problem. Definitely in German, though, and not in English. But, we stop worrying once we start moving again.

When we actually pull into the Köln Hauptbahnhof, our very comfortable transition has now dwindled to 7 minutes. We hurry downstairs and to the other end of the station to find that the train isn't there and our train is not on the sign. We notice an electronic board that seems to be constantly updated with the next 20 or so departures. We locate our train on the board, and luckily, it's just late and another train is coming in first. As we head back to the platform and calm down, we see that the sign goes back and forth between the two schedules. It was enough to drive us crazy though.

The rest of the train ride was pretty uneventful. We got on, couldn't find a pair of seats that weren't reserved, but did find two aisle seats right across from one another. A man came by, at one point, to ask us to help him with a Deutsche Bahn questionnaire. He didn't have as many questions for us as for other people, but perhaps that's because we're not natives and don't use the DB everyday / week. Once we were in Stuttgart, everything was casual – this was the part of the trip we've been through seemingly a hundred times. We arrived back in the Schwä with enough time to complain about the Dutch railway and play a game of Zombies!!! with Jake and Matt.