Today I travel to Gay Paree. My mobile ticket has long since been booked, and is primed and ready onscreen with a belt-and-braces screenshot in reserve. I packed last night. Departure times and route numbers have been checked and checked again. Four alarms were set. Nothing can go wrong. I even pull off a barely-awake sprint akin to one half of an exceedingly unsynchronised three-legged race down my street to the Schöneberg S to ensure I’m on my platform at Berlin-Südkreuz with plenty of time to spare. And of course, with such pernickety attention to detail, I am. After giving myself a smug internal high five I kill time by drooling over the counter of the Scoom kiosk and reward myself with an absolute hammer of a falafel wrap for my journey.
My first train up to the Hauptbahnhof arrives. I have a good few minutes more in which to make my connection than my squeaky-bum-time jaunt to Warsaw originally suggested, so I’m pretty chill. Hoiking my thumbs in my backpack straps I stride nonchalantly up to the departures screen and scan for my platform. Scan again. Perhaps the screen’s faulty? I stride to another, and scan. Scan again. I find a good old fashioned printed timetable board: see, here’s my train and platform. A jot less nonchalantly I trot up the stairs to the platform my train should be departing from in order to check with a kindly member of staff. Still pre-6am, of course, the kindly staff are all still tucked up in bed and my train is not listed on the screen of this platform either.
As much as I adore train travel I cannot abide, nor indeed cope with, uncertainty. By now wobbling like a new-born foal I make laps of the station, clasping a palm to my forehead in the international language of “Help Me!”. Every information point I pass is closed. I flail into the nearest open shop where at last somebody who at least works in the general vicinity pops up, sympathetically directs me towards assistance, and zips up my backpack which in my mithered state of mind I can’t recall opening and is about to wantonly sprinkle a fairytale trail of odds and sods behind me.
“Ahh, hmm,” the helpdesk clerk squints over his glasses at my ticket, and nods sagely, “the timetable for this route has been revised: this service departed 20 minutes ago”. Peering back through his lenses and sensing my impending hysteria, he swiftly magics up a new route which lands me in Paris in an acceptable timeframe, reprints my ticket, and validates it for this new route with an impressively officious stamp-and-signature combo.
Crisis averted, I step away from the helpdesk, let some adrenaline drain from my jelly legs, and check my new journey deets. Two hours. Two hours to kill?! Are you having a gira- oh, can it, brain. Things could be a lot worse. Fresh air seems in order. Tentatively flexing my pegs, I rise, gather my belongings, and bob off for a calming constitutional of the immediate area outside the main entrance. Ain’t that just like me to wind up in the least scenic of spots. I can’t fathom which proves more twistedly hilare: the chainlink-and-landfill waterside drudgery, or the night-terror rictus grin of the metallic stallion cowering before me and the parasitic, petrified disembodied noggin ensconced within.
Back inside and safely cradled in the soothing, familiar embrace of Maccy Ds, I slurp down a pint or two of coffee in an attempt to blanch these horrific images from my mind’s eye until finally! My next train is ready to board. Köln here I come. This leg is thankfully lazy and passes entirely without incident. I nap awhile and awake just in time to bag one of my by-now-signature ‘crappy sida town’ snaps of our locomotive’s sluggish chug into the city. An efficient connection and I’m on my third and final leg. To celebrate I flump my weary bod into the first available seat and decorate myself and half the carriage with an unorthodox but colourful confetti of carrot, cabbage, and falafel crumbies. Note to self: never trust German public transport kiosk food to actually be suitable for public transport consumption.
No. Not without incident. Along comes the conductor to shatter the equilibric calm. My credit card palpably winces as it is forced to cough up for a new fare, my DB-validated ticket meaning nothing here. I’m ousted from my seat as it is already claimed by another passenger - the invisible man perhaps? But, the conductor is strict yet fair, and asks a lady a few rows up to move her bag so that I can sit next to her, as this is the only seat on the train not reserved. I proffer begruding-yet-grateful thanks to both and nip off for a slash before returning to claim my new throne. German. English. French. Shouty Mime. Blank eyes bore into mine as I reel haplessly through my feeble index of communication in an attempt to explain to this ‘lady’ that I’m the very person the conductor informed her of mere minutes earlier. Nada. One of her companions across the aisle intervenes, disgruntled that someone might dare to disrupt her slumber, and I awkwardly park my backside in the icy shade of my new neighbour’s glare. Thus begins the most itchily uncomfortable hour I have ever spent on a train. My mere presence somehow offends not only the Bag Lady but all five of her travelling squad. I whip my pocket mirror out at regular intervals, inspect my jawline, my neck - I’m convinced the incessant beams of so many evil eyes aimed on me are powerful enough to make me break out in hives.
Mercy arrives at the next stop in the form of the passenger booked into my supposedly unbooked Sitzplatz. I can’t scarper fast enough. The ‘bar car’ is not a bar at all but an overpriced, seatless tuck shop. I lock myself in a blessedly sanitary and spacious toilet, and get down to some restorative ablutions as a means of sloughing off the stress and running down the clock. A testy hammer on the door eventually turfs me out; froglike I squat on a sciatica-baiting makeshift pew for the final descent into our destination.
