I regret nothing
// November 5th, 2009 // Comments // Uncategorized
I don’t see much of planning. He’s like a brother I never had anything in common with and we just sort of grew apart over the years, civilly and without sadness.
Sometimes though my gross incompetency in this area does result in well, gross incompetence in this area. Today I wanted to go to Amsterdam to spend some time with Annett. Actually yesterday I wanted to go to Amsterdam to spent some time with Annett. I packed, prepared and was up early for just that reason (7am!). I even announced on Twitter to my tweeple that I was going to be out of town for a week and they shouldn’t inundate with requests for my company, which I’m sure they were going to do after ignoring me for weeks. As I went to leave I picked up the ticket and noticed that it wasn’t for yesterday, but actually for today. Waste of time. False alarm. Back to bed. Waste of excitement (especially for Annett lonely over there in the land of the toastie).
Anyway, I unpacked my ticket and filled the day doing what I do to fill the day everyday. The next day (today, hello there) I got up early again confident this time that I had the right day. I did. As I was packing a blazing row kicked between my two female room-mates. I moved to secure the crockery, then time dictated that I had to leave, the crockery would have to stand on their own porcelain feet, or their version of feet. I made it downstairs and with my big travelling rucksack on my back and my other rucksack wrapped on my front. I unlocked Annett’s bike that I was bringing for her and headed off double quick time for the Train Station. Then my phone rang, it was one of my roommates in hysterics upset after the fight and talking about relocation. Sorry. Bad Time. Can’t support. Barely upright. Many bags. Riding small girls bike. Late for train.
Feeling guilty at my roommate inadequacies I put the pedal to the concrete and made haste. Slow haste because I’d forgotten to clip Annett’s basket grips and they’d dropped down wrapped round the chain, got very tight, snapped in two, yet stayed tightly wrapped. No problem. I can still make it. Hands were inserted, eventually the clips, cord and the majority of chain grease removed and in/on my hands, let’s go. Small problem, bag on front too big, can’t peddle as legs lift up and knock it. No where else to put it, tram? Can’t, no cash, no time for cash. Pedal. Rotate legs outwards? Yes, works. Just. Not energy efficient. Not the time for efficiency. Pedal. Pedal. Tired. PEDAL. Tired.
I made it. With a cool four minutes to spare, with even enough time remaining for the acquisition of cash. Onto the train.
Are you getting on the train with the bicycle?
Yes.
Do you have a bicycle ticket?
No.
(silence)
………………………
(we stare at each other)
………………………………
(we continue to stare at each other, it’s become a sort of contest to see who will crack first. I give in, we only had four minutes.)
Well can I get one then?
Yes.
(silence)
………………………………….
(we stare at each other)
…………………………………
On the train.
Right….thanks.
I make the train, I get the ticket. Exhausted but with my two bags and a small girls bicycle I sit and relax.
I had a 17min connection window for the one change I had to make, in Hannover. The train runs 14mins later. The announcer helpful announces (well what else would an announcer do) that my next train is leaving from platform 12, ‘opposite us’ when we pull in on platform 11. I get stuck in the door as I hastily alight with the bags and the bicycle. A fat man watches me wriggle, stuck. He doesn’t help, he doesn’t smile, he doesn’t laugh. One of the three would have been a minimum. All was expected. Wanker.
I get off and see my train waiting opposite on platform 12 where it should be. I look for the bicycle carriage, I can’t find it. Whatever I’ll get on and deal with that later, its a 5hr journey, I’ll have time to find it. The doors shut eagerly behind me, I relax. Post relaxing I look up, the screen says the train is for Cologne. While not a whizz in Geography, I know that is not in the Netherlands nor on the way to the Netherlands. Wrong train. Shit. Getting on the wrong train is one of those annoying wrong decisions, as you are faced with your mistake out of the window at 150khr until the next station. Unfortunately this was an express, so the next stop was 120k and 50 minutes in the wrong direction. Shit sticks. Long 50mins.
50mins and a few phone calls to base HQ Netherlands later, I’m on the platform at Bielefeld (the next stop) waiting for the next train back to Hannover. That train arrived but it’s late, like every train so far today. With its late departure it should leave me two minutes in Hannover to get the next Amsterdam train at 2:40, costing me just two hours and a little embarrassment. People on the ICE train keep looking at me funny. Possibly because I’m sitting in the gangway with a small girls bicycle, and ICE trains don’t allow bicycles, and I’ve a ticket to go somewhere else, and I’m an idiot, and I have a stupid beard, and I need a haircut.
The train runs late on its journey back to Hannover. 2 minutes later. I get off with zero minutes to make it to the Amsterdam train, I carry the bike forward, down, around, up to another platform and just in time to wave the 2:40pm on its merry way to the city of the illegal made legal from the chilly comfort of the platform.
While I’m not the most perceptive, I was getting an inkling that someone was trying to tell me its just not supposed to be. Go back to your attic hibernating bear.
I waste two hours becoming intimate with Hannover train station, every train station in Germany is a clone of every other train station it seems, so don’t make a special trip there if you’ve been to any other one. It’s only remarkable in its unremarkableness.
I get to the platform 30mins early for the 4:40pm. I’ve learnt my lesson. Later than some perhaps, but learnt none the less. I ask 5 different staff members if this is the platform, and exactly where the bicycle carriage will be. 2 can’t understand me (in either language), 3 agree one particular section of platform upon which I should park myself and my bicycle. At 4:38pm I enter the bicycle carriage of the train to Amsterdam and park my small girls bicycle. Exhausted I sit, I could kiss the seat and the fat man who sits next to me as I write this and I hope can’t read English, if you can fat has become an English slang word for perfect proportioned, please stop hogging the arm rest.
I relax, laugh and regret nothing.
