I hate trains... even more

Otherwise titled, “Why I can never win at life.”

Or, as pondered, “Why can I never win at life??”

So yesterday was an adventure that I did not want to relive. On Take 2 to Germany today, I got up (relatively) on time. I had everything ready... except my power cord for this computer, it turns out... I even had time to blow dry my hair. I wore my converse, I put on a watch, I double-bagged my lunch and even had room in my purse to stick my lunch in there (read: I should have realized that I hadn't packed my power cord). On the way there, I thought that I might be walking too slow, so I did my best power-walking-while-dragging-a-suitcase-that-dad-will-be-lucky-to-get-back-in-one-piece and actually got there with ten minutes to spare. This was fantastic because as the train pulled away, I learned that my watch was actually two minutes slow.

I was at such a low level of stress that I was even able to take a short nap on the way to Lyon. We arrived at Lyon Part Dieu (where I was actually supposed to be this time) without a problem, and I was happy to find that my next train, scheduled to depart in about 45 minutes, was listed to arrive on time. I strolled through the station, bought a coffee, bought a magazine, and sat down in the waiting area for my train to arrive. Then I looked up at the board. My train was now scheduled to arrive twenty minutes late. Eh... okay. I had 50ish minutes between trains, so that was no problem. I started flipping through my magazine. I had bought it because it had Kate Winslet on the cover, and I absolutely adore her. But the rest of the magazine was pretty boring. Meh. I started toward the platform about ten minutes before the train was supposed to arrive, and glanced up at the board again. Now my train was scheduled to be 40 minutes late. Aaaaand I started to get unhappy. Not panic, but get very very unhappy. Disappointment with trains is becoming routine for me. I was bored with the magazine, so I pulled out my journal to write so as to conserve battery and spare everyone yet another ranting blog entry. Just as I got to the part about my train being 40 minutes late, I heard an announcement... my train was now a solid hour behind schedule.

Long story short... I missed my transfer. We ended up getting to Strasbourg about 52 minutes late – I felt that it was very poetic that I was able to watch the train I was supposed to be on pull away as our train slowed to a stop. It was one of those moments that you always see in movies and wonder if it actually happens in the real world.

Well, it does.

So. I get to Strasbourg and ask the nice man at the ticket counter what time the next train to Saarbrucken is. He hums along as he looks it up... then lets out a low whistle as a look of surprise spreads across his face.

Six and a half hours. Putting me in Saarbrucken at 9:15pm. This is not the vacation I was planning on. But, as he was a very nice gentleman, and not a crabby English-speaking woman, he immediately started looking for any possible way to get there sooner. After a few minutes of looking through things on the computer and various papers, he composed a plan of me taking a train to one station and then there's some sort of a tram which will then take me to Saarbrucken at 6:15. Aaaand the ticket that I have is good for it. Yay!

This is the plan. With my luck, though, my train will be an hour late and I'll be stuck in Strasbourg forever. Which is not ideal... the coffee here is ten cents more expensive, and you have to pay fifty cents every time you want to use the bathroom. In which case, I guess it's a good thing the coffee is more expensive.

I hate trains.