Fun on the Autobahn

If you'd like a soundtrack to this part of our journey, yes, there's that wonderful song by the German band Kraftwerk, "Fun on the Autobahn". We though, started our drive listening to David Bowie's album "Low".

And our drive was fun. Until it wasn't.

We started our drive early. Left our key on the reception desk because no one was up to take it. It was rainy. Foggy. We drove under the portcullis of Burg Colmberg for the last time, making our way to the Autobahn. The A3 to be exact.

So despite the rain, we were doing well. We even liked going super fast on the Autobahn. Remember, fahrvergnügen? That was all well and good, even in the misty rain. It became not so good when we hit the traffic jam. We really didn't want to pay for another day if we were late returning the car. We had left more than three hours for this trip.

It became even less okay, seriously bad, when we got off the highway at Frankfurt airport. The traffic was Atlanta Georgia on interstate 85 in the middle of the day bad. Okay, we expected traffic. We live in a big city which has bad traffic. Our daughter had lived outside DC for years, and we drove all over down there. But this bad traffic with stress and worrying about the rental in a foreign country? Yikes.

We researched all of this. Okay, I did the research, Herr Hai watched the videos and read the sites I found. We watched EXACTLY how to get from the highway to the gas station and then the proper garage where we had to drop off.

Obviously it didn't work out that way, or I wouldn't have said it went badly. Somehow, we missed the gas station entirely (and you know what that means, returning a rental car not full---$$$$$ and at European prices). We got into a lane that was so wrong-- we were hemmed in by cars and busses. We realized we had messed up when we needed some card to get through a gate-- thankfully the bus driver behind us, after getting out of his bus and banging on the window-- realized we were super dumb Americans-- forced his bus back into the traffic so we could get to where we needed to go.

Thank you, nice German bus driver.

So we returned the car, just on time. It didn't matter anyway, because they were so busy with the couple who had take a huge piece out of one wheel and the side panel of the car they were returning, they just waved us off. I'm sure we'll get a bill for the gas, later.

So we made it. We did some reconnaissance for her flight in a few days. We didn't have a lot of time to transfer from our train to our flight, so we found the air-rail luggage drop off, then the way to the long-distance train station. All good.

Then, we went to find our train to our next stop, a nice town in the Middle Rhine called Boppard. As the time came nearer, and we were getting our things together (still had that jinky blue bag), there was an announcement.

The Deutsche Bahn voice intoned from above, "Leibe Kunden und Kundinnen..." garble garble echo echo in the high ceilinged hall...the gist of it was, our train was canceled.

We were on a tight schedule. Only a few days were left of our vacation and I wanted to see a lot of things. I didn't want to wait another hour for the next train. Thank goodness we had that Russian burner phone, and the DB app! I found another route-- take this train to this little town, run really quickly (hope it's not late), and get on this other one....

We made the first train, even though we had to go back to the other terminal. It was late, of course. As we pulled into the a station in some suburb of Frankfurt, we saw our other train already there. Okay, now you're going to be on time?

We ran for it. Once we were on the train, Herr Hai asked, "Are you sure it's the right train?"

The train conductor was walking up the aisle, and he looked kind of taken aback by our rather freaked out appearance. I tried to ask in German, "Bitte, ist der Zug gehen..." So much bad German there. My ancestors are turning in their graves.

"Where do you want to go," Herr Schaffner asked, in English.

All I could think of at this point was a paraphrase from Bram Stoker's "Dracula", "Seeing from their violent demeanor, that they were American..." The real line is "his" instead of their and British/English instead of American.

Of course by the time I answered, "Boppard," it didn't really matter. The train was already on moving. We were such a mess, he didn't even ask to see our tickets.Leer más