No tax, but you've got to pay for the ketchup.
For those that didn't know, I recently got to trek across Germany not
once but two times in order to pick up and drop off Sarah. Zittau, being
on the eastern front, (Polish border), is just a little far away from
Cologne, (French border). You'd think someone would've clued Sarah into
that before buying plane tickets, but maybe not... :] (Just
kidding!)
Continuing, the first trip involed me traveling to East Berlin, waiting
overnight in the station (1am to 5:30am), and then going the rest of the
way to Cologne in order to meet Sarah at the airport. After meeting her,
together we travelled to Frankfurt where we caught a fast train to
Dresden, which connected us to Zittau by way of two trains and a bus. All
in all, my trip time was something like 25 hours, and hers, with flights
and trains, was around 27. Surprisingly enough, baring the comments in
the 24.11.2003 update, everything
went pretty smoothly.
After a nice week of time together, we began our return journey this past
Friday. Lets just say that the "smoothness" accompanying entire nights in
trainstations and unexpected Deutsche Bahn oddities was not exactly a
repeated phenomenon.
To start, we got a late departure from Zittau on Friday, as I was
seemingly incapable of getting myself in motion. After hitching a ride to
the trainstation with John's roomate, we had an uneventful ride to Cottbus
and then on to East Berlin. Things began getting a little confounded
here. We had reserved a hotel that was within a 2km radius of the
trainstation. The thing was, we had no idea which direction, or even
where to find a map.
After getting some food, we decided to catch a cab, and made our way
relatively cheaply to the hotel. They had a 24hr check-in, so we got our
room, (which was very large, and pretty nice for only 45eu), and managed
to get a decent night worth of rest.
The next day was spent wandering Berlin, trying to see sites, shopping,
and just enjoying the day together. Stress was only induced after being
late for our first selection in trains back to Cologne. To compound
things, we hadn't yet found a place to get on the internet in order to
reserve our next night's hotel stay. After getting back to the
trainstation, we found an internet cafe, but everything reasonable within
5km of the Cologne station was booked.
In the end, we got a room 6km away, searched around for a bit, caught
another cab, (16eu each way), and made it to the last hotel around 1am.
The real problem here was that Sarah's train the next morning left at
5:54, and she had to check in with Lufthansa. (airline) How the airline
is affiliated with the trainstation, I will never understand, but they
are, so we ended up getting about 3hrs of sleep, and then having the desk
attendant call us another cab so as to make our way back to the
station.
Trains left, planes left, more trains left, and everything went smoothly
for all right up until I hit G�rlitz. I'd just like to take this time to
say that if and when I'm in charge of the planet, my first order of
business will be to evacuate G�rlitz, and then incinerate the whole
friggin city with lasers. The place has to have some sort of evil
hellspawn-like power in which all forces are concentrated on completely
and utterly annoying my travel plans.
For example, over the summer, we had to catch a bus back to Zittau after
our G�rlitz portion of the visit. The driver stunk, and was mean to us,
always yelling to be quiet. That wasn't really anything by comparison
to the next encounter. It happened on a trip to Dresden and in the
process, managed to leave Corinne and I trapped in some sort of
seemingly Satanic vortex all night, exhausted, freezing, and alone,
waiting for another train or bus to come along and take us home.
This time, it wasn't quite so severe as it was annoying. My train pass
that had worked the whole way through two trips cross country was
all-of-a-sudden invalid on the train between G�rlitz and Zittau. Imagine that,
just deciding that Dave hadn't been through enough, and should be
forced to pay an additional 5eu just to slowly drag himself out of
the gravity well aimed at hell that is G�rlitz.
In any case, the people there seem nice enough, as one of my roomates is
from there, as is John's friend Mike. Furthermore, my favorite beer of
Germany also is brewed there. With this in mind, I say, the brewers can
use their recipe elsewhere, and the people can relocate, spreading their
powerful knowledge and skills involving the repulsion of evil to the
corners of the earth. (They'd have to have skills like that in order to
survive in such a place...)
Ok, I'm done ranting. The story from here is boring, and goes as follows:
I walked home. I'm happy to be here, needless to say, and am looking
forward to some much needed rest. Until next time...
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