Planes, no boats, but trains!
 

It had been over three years since I'd seen my German penfriend and her husband, and knowing that this year it might be difficult for them to come to see me, the next best thing was for me to go to them. My initial idea had been to go by train via Paris [any excuse] but due to the threat of rail strikes in the UK that got knocked on the head, So then I started looking at the route I took three years ago, from Heathrow to Frankfurt, but there are no flights from my local airport Newquay to LHR any more, so I was rather flummoxed until a friend reminded me that there are now flights from Newquay to Dusseldorf. Ok they are only once a week and leave at stupid o'clock but the airport is only 30 mins away and a week with my friends would be great. But would they have me?

Phew. It turned out that I would be very welcome to stay for a week or so in early September [which happened to coincide with my birthday, one which in German is known as a "Schnappszahl" eg 33, 44, 55 etc which you traditionally celebrate with an appropriate number of shots of liquor of some type] so I started to book flights etc, and discovered that for only €10 each way, I could book an extra seat next to me, which I snapped up. The flights were pretty early which was ok going out as I live so close to the airport, but coming back it would mean an overnight in Dusseldorf as I would never be able to get a train there in time to catch the flight. But I could book a hotel near the airport for the night before and my train ticket online with Deutsche Bahn. Sorted. Going out was more problematic as if the flight was delayed I'd probably miss any train I booked, so I decided to wing it.

Turned out I was somewhat prophetic as about a month out, the flight times were changed to the middle of the day. That was fine for coming back as I would not be affected by any delays as I would just have a 30 minute drive home, but going out it meant that I probably wouldn't get there until 4pm and with a 3 ½ hour train ride I'd be arriving quite late. But my friends offered to pick me up at Mannheim which would cut the train journey to 3 hours - or so I thought.

Next - and we're off - or are we?

Added trip report tag

The Schnappszahl part sounds more hazardous than the journey. Glad you made it!

Sign me up for your journey, annhig.

As someone with a Schnappszahl (which sounds terrifying btw) coming up I am signed up for the ride.

On for the ride

Signing on.

I’m on board too.

I’m buckled up!

<<As someone with a Schnappszahl (which sounds terrifying btw) coming up I am signed up for the ride.>>

I was rather terrified too, Hets, though fortunately I knew that I could trust my friends not to get too carried away with the idea. As it turned out it might well have explained another event later on in my travels but that's pure speculation. Stoke- you're right, if carried out to the letter it could be downright dangerous!

Anyway nice to see you both - and Bilbo, Thursdaysd, John and Janeyre too of course. [oooh look, no Oxford comma - Ms Coffey would be pleased!]

Though this wasn't my first post covid trip, it was the first where I was gong to be flying into an EU country after Brexit so I was a little apprehensive, however daft I knew that was really. Rumours have been circulating on the internet about certain countries requiring proof if you are going to visit friends and checking if you have enough money to support yourself. It seem pretty unlikely to me that anyone was going to be interested in my holiday plans but that didn't stop one or two "friends" trying to wind me me up about it. It turned out that the biggest problem to confront me was the traffic between me and the airport which turned a 30 minute trip into a 60 minute one, thanks to road works which are supposedly going to make travel in Cornwall easier. But not this year by the looks of it, and possibly next as well. Of course when I got to the airport it turned out that the flight was delayed, but I consoled myself with a beer and a sandwich and was pleasantly surprised when I got on the plane to find out that I had the whole row to myself. Result!

Hopeful of getting on the train asap I managed to get off the plane more or less at the front of the queue, but for the first time I can ever remember when we got to passport control there was no-one around to control them! So much for German efficiency [which my German trends assure me is a myth anyway]. Though they had the usual signs to separate the EU sheep from the non EU goats, the automatic machines weren't working either, so we all ended up in the same area, waiting for someone to turn up. Being utterly selfish I positioned myself in front of one of the passport windows and hey presto, once the immigration officer had wandered up and logged onto his computer I was first at the desk. And of course apart from examining the existing stamps in my passport and stamping it, he was completely uninterested in me. Next to the baggage reclaim which in the manner of many non UK airports instead of keeping incoming and outgoing passengers separate, took me through the middle of the airside part of the airport, before spewing me out into the concourse. Then onto the Skyrail to the station to do battle with the ticket machine. After somewhat random pressing of buttons I eventually got it to sell me a ticket and jumped on the first train to the Dusseldorf Hauptbahnhof where my Deutsche Bahn app told me I could get my train to Mannheim. Which was when the "fun" began.

I certainly find it weird to get a stamp in my passport, it just feels so oldie worldie.

Wait until next year when (in theory if they actually get it working) you are scanned instead. Should add to the fun at Dover, St Pancras and other ferry ports.

I like getting a stamp in my passport, lol.

Tagging along on your trip, annhig.

Me too but it's long time since I got one.

What fun! Reading along!

s

Gare du Nord to St. Pancras a few weeks ago, my passport scanned just fine on the French side, then UK scanner said Seek Assistance. I got a real UK person and stamp a few yards further.

Uh oh. Hope the "fun" to come wasn't too terrible.

My trusty DB App told me that there was a train at 16/25 from Gleis 11 from Hamburg to Munich stopping at Mannheim so I hurried over there and at about the right time the train came in and I got on it. I hadn't had a chance to reserve a seat but though it was quite busy I found one quite easily and someone kindly helped me put my case on the luggage rack. It was an ICE train so very comfy and quiet. We were making good time so I messaged my friends who were meeting me at Mannheim to make sure that everything was ok their end which indeed it was and they would meet me off the train. However one of the features of an ICE train is that they have a display of the places where the train is going to stop and as we were going along it dawned on me that Mannheim wasn't one of them. Still my App said I was on the right train but as time went on i got more anxious, and there seemed to be no-one to ask. Eventually as we were about 5 mins out of Frankfurt a ticket inspector appeared and confirmed, as I had suspected, that I was on the wrong train. This one was indeed a train going from Hamburg to Munich via Dusseldorf and Frankfurt but after that it took a different route to Munich. However as luck would have it the right train would be coming into Frankfurt about 5 mins after this one and on the opposite platform so no need to chase around the station looking for it. Or so I thought.

So I gathered my things, grabbed my case and got off the train. And there was the other one coming into the station on the opposite platform. Perfect. Except that everyone was getting off. " Zug haeltet hier" - the train stops here. [never did find out why]. So now what was I going to do? The platform was heaving with people with exactly the same question as me, but I mangled to elbow my way through to nearby timetable which told me that there was a stopping train to Mannheim from Gleis 12 so off I trotted, down the steps to the underground tunnel only to find my way blocked off by building works. What? So I retraced my steps, found a notice board with departing trains on it, and found a stopping train to Mannheim leaving in about 5 mins from yet another platform. So I ran for it, leapt on, and found a seat. Nowhere to put my luggage but I didn't care - there was a vacant seat next to me.

Of course being a stopping train it was going to take a lot longer to get to Mannheim, but could I get through to my friends? WhatsApp, email, even text weren't working. Finally I got through on the phone and I managed to tell them the time and platform where I should be arriving - about 9pm I thought. "Yes, we'll be there" they assured me. So at 9pm there I stood on platform 10 at Mannheim station with no friends in view and no answer to my phone calls. ???? Eventually 10 mins or so they appeared from the other end of the platform [i never did find out what had happened to them in those 10 minutes!] and after a joyful reunion, we made for their car and began the drive to their home about 90 mins away. The traffic was bad but we did eventually arrive at their house and I quickly fell into bed. At times I had doubted that I would ever get there but finally there I was.

Holy cow. That was crazy. Glad you eventually made it and I sure hope the rest of your trip was drama free.

Glad you made it! Following along on your adventures.

wow...
try doing that with a bicycle ;-)

Oh boy, those train dramas.
Feeling your pain.

Oh, man, Ann! One stressful trip. I hope you were well pampered after that.

You'll have to wait to find out! Of course I did have to get a train back to Dusseldorf so.......

Thanks for all your kind railway thoughts - and trains will feature again later in my story.

Waking quite late the next morning, I discovered that R was already up and about and preparing what turned out to the the first of several very lavish breakfasts. Being frugal folk, R and her husband P tend to eat hearty breakfasts and dinners at home, and to economise when they eat out. This led to a few problems a few years ago [the first time that Bill and I had stayed with them for quite a long time] as we were doing the typical British thing of not eating too much at breakfast in order to be polite, expecting to buy lunch when we were out. Not a bit of it! In the end we cottoned on and stopped being polite which made life easier.

Reading over my thread I realised that I haven't actually explained who these friends are. When I was at school, at about age 13 I started to learn German and the next year, our teacher who had a friend who taught English in Germany, provided a pen friend for anyone who wanted one. Completely randomly I was given R as my penfriend and we started to write to each other, me in German and she in English. I learnt that she lived in a part of Germany called the Pfalz [the bit north of Alsace and west of the Rhine called the Palatinate in English when we call it anything at all], and that she lived on a tobacco farm with her younger border Hans, her parents, an aunt and her paternal grandparents. My dad, who had himself learnt German at school, came up with the idea that in the summer we should go on a touring holiday of what was then called "the Continent" and with the help of the RAC, plotted a route through France and Germany which would take us to their house for a visit. To this day neither R nor I can remember whether they knew we were coming but on one very hot Sunday afternoon we, my dad, mum and I, arrived outside their house and knocked on the door. I have the impression that they must have known we were coming because we were greeted very warmly, plied with Kaffee und Kuchen, given a tour of the outbuildings and farm, including the Tabakschuppen [a type of barn where the leaves were dried which are seen all over this part of Germany] and I remember very distinctly her grandfather showing my dad where the tanks had rolled over the fields, though whose tanks they were, if I ever knew, I have completely forgotten. Apart from her none of R's family spoke English [though her dad understood some because he'd been a British POW in northern Germany after he'd been taken prisoner after fighting on the Eastern Front against the USSR] and only dad and I spoke German, and that not very well, at least in my case . However we all got on well and just "clicked". So this was just the first of many visits I have made to see R including attending her wedding to P a few years later, and of hers to visit me, including my wedding to Bill a few years after that. All thanks to our teachers randomly choosing us to write to each other!

Anyway, back to breakfast! As well as the usual selection of Wurst [german sausage] there were boiled eggs, tomato and cucumber [not my favourite breakfast food I must admit] radishes and [new to me] large chunks of hot Weisswurst which I was told is a particular speciality of a local prize winning butcher. Later in my stay they discovered that it would soon be closing down because no-one could be found to take it over and the owners wanted to retire. How sad especially as it means that P will have to go further afield for his favourite Weisswurst. We also had tea for breakfast instead of their usual coffee - over the years they have come to like "proper english tea" which I made with some teabags I had brought from home, knowing that whatever they had would not hit the spot in quite the same way as Twinings English Breakfast.

I don't really remember what we did after that but in the early afternoon we took a very short excursion to a nearby town where a local gardener had been awarded a national TV prize as part of a programme called "Garten und Lecker" which broadly translated means "Gardens which taste good". The format is that with the help of designer and cook, the gardener entertains 7 fellow gardeners picked from all over Germany for their gardening and cooking prowess who then award points for best garden, best food, etc etc. Now i don't know about you, but I had been imagining a very well tended garden with well manicured lawns and orderly if not regimented borders. Not a bit of it. This garden was just this side of haphazard, with windy paths, a plethora of different styles, materials and colours all placed next to each other, plants crammed in seemingly at random, and lovely secret sitting places with lots of water features and climbing plants especially roses. It was, to borrow a phrase from a character in "Porridge", a riot of colour. There were also a number of tables and a cafe serving food made from the vegetables and fruit grown in that garden which had qualified it for the programme. It was a wonderful little oasis on green calm and it was no wonder to me that it had won, though of course I hadn't seen the competition.

While we were exploring we came across the owner who was immensely chatty [unfortunately mostly in Pfaelzisch which is the local dialect with which I struggle] but I got the gist, and when my friends said that I was from England he was extremely keen to introduce me to his partner who he said had recently been on an english language course in Cornwall. Well it turned out that he'd been in Bournemouth not Cornwall but no matter, he had obviously had a terrific time and loved England and the English with a passion which was lovely to hear.

After an hour or two even we had had enough [ they are both as keen on gardens as I am] so we drove to the nearby home of their DS, DIL and 4 year old GD who were expecting us for tea - or rather Kaffee und Kuchen - which in this case was a delicious Zwetschgekuchen made from local damsons. Their GD was most upset when I sat in the "wrong" chair at the table but I moved to let her Opa [grandfather] sit there and peace was restored. She was rather wary of me at first but by the end of the week we were getting very well. Her parents who both speak vey good english are teaching her too so I will be sending them a few books for her to learn from as they are not easy to find there. After that we walked over to the Rhine to see how low it was [much lower than on my previous visit 3 or so years before] and then went home for supper. No idea what we had except I suspect that it featured meat and potatoes of which R is inordinately fond .

Tomorrow - and now for something completely different.

What a lovely way to make a new friend Ann. No one seems to have pen friends any more do they? I had on in the then communist Czechoslovakia. No idea how we came to be penfriends but we were and remained so for a long time. Around the time of the break up of the Communist bloc she stopped writing. I never found out what happened to her. Even in the Prague Spring she had managed to get letters to me telling me about it.
We were also all assigned a French penfriend in school (German wasn't an option there sadly), but we didn't click and it petered out after a few letters.
It sounds like you had an enjoyable time after the train stress. Looking forward to more.

I also loved the story of your pen friend annhig, brought back memories of mine from when we were in school. Her name was Anne, but for the life of me I can’t remember her last name! We corresponded right through high school, but it petered out once we got to college, don’t know why.

Yes heti, no one has pen friends any more, nowadays kids are on Instagram, etc. Perhaps you can try to find your friend on Facebook, I reconnected with several old school friends after 45+ years! Social media does have its used 😉

Love it. So good to have lifelong friends like that, too.

Me too!

Can't wait to read more about your trip, annhig!

Really enjoying your tale of lovely friends, huge hearty breakfasts (not my favorite either), unexpected gardens and mystery suppers. Can't wait to read about your next Monty Python adventure.