"Hello Mum and Dad,
Prepare yourselves for a very long rant against Deutsche Bahn (the German train company) and Eurostar.
So as both of you know, Christoph and I were 2 hours 15 minutes delayed because the train from Brussels was missing. Initially the Eurostar people kept saying the delay was due to "bad weather in France" which was delaying the train - but the Paris 1:30pm train came on time anyway. Fine. But from saying the train would be 30 minutes late, they increased it by 15 minute increments every 15 minutes until the train FINALLY came at 3:15pm - and left the station at 3:30pm. The final kicker was that the train we finally took to Brussels was't even the train that we were due to be on, they had instead given us a replacement train. God knows what the hell happened to the people on the earlier train from Brussels to London.
Now the problem was that had the train been on time, we'd have been in Brussels with a comfy 2 hours and 20 minutes buffer. Surprise! We didn't make the train. First the train went slowly due to bad weather (acceptable, I grudgingly concede), but SECONDLY the train stopped for 10 minutes in Calais FOR THE CREW TO CHANGE. The train was like 45 minutes into its journey, WTF?! On the train, a eurostar employee finally comes along trying to gather numbers for the people who needed to make transfers to Germany, and it turns out to be easily half the entire carriage. It's then that we meet Anna, another German girl who is a student in the UK who is headed towards Wurzburg too. The eurostar employee says that she'll come back with more information. She never comes back.
As the train pulls into Brussels, the train conductor lovingly tells us that we have missed our train to Frankfurt (thank you very much) and that if we want to head to Frankfurt, we should take this other totally random train that is, by the way, leaving in 10 minutes. Cue what must have been 100 people running from one train to the other, dragging/carrying large pieces of luggage. This is approximately 7pm local time, and I have eaten nothing since which was very light in London. When we finally arrive at the platform, I am extremely suspicious because for some reason I think Liege is in the Netherlands... and we're headed to Germany. Christoph asks the conductor, he says Yes Yes Yes! and I doubt he even listened to the fucking question. We get on anyway since everyone else is, and that's what the previous train conductor said. All the while there were NO EUROSTAR EMPLOYEES ANYWHERE TO BE FOUND, not when we got off the train, not when we boarded the new one. WHAT THE FUCK.
So we arrive in Liege, a town that neither Anna nor Christoph had heard of (surely this is not a good omen right?) and the place is deserted except for obviously German and former Eurostar passengers lost and completely wandering around. Great. There is still no food to be found anywhere, although some people seem to have found a Kebab shop in goodness knows where and people (including us) are staring at them enviously. There is again no one giving directions. Through deduction, the passenger mass realises they must then go to Aachen, which is some German border town I have never heard of. The train for that is 20 minutes late, and we all wait 35 minutes in the biting negative degree snowy cold, stomachs rumbling but with no food in sight.
When the train comes, we all pile on, overwhelming the poor train and its passengers. Somewhere on this train, we leave Belgium, enter The Netherlands and then enter Germany. I have taken a tour of Western Europe without even asking for one. That's great. At Aachen, same thing as in Brussels, everyone gets off and runs the fuck for the train for Cologne. Then from Cologne we run to catch to the train to Frankfurt, which it turns out is delayed by 1 hour 30 minutes. Do you see a trend here? Somewhere around this time I totally lost hope, become grumpy, cold, hungry (I think my stomach started digesting itself) and a total pain in the ass. Thank goodness Christoph is much more patient and cheery than me.
We arrive at Frankfurt at 3:20 am in the morning. I am totally pissed off and hungry. While leaning on our luggage and looking extremely pissed off, Christoph and Anna go to talk to the Deutsche Bahn people (FINA-FUCKING-LY) and they manage to wrangle money for an epic 127km (or somewhere around that figure) taxi ride to Wurzburg. There are amazingly shops open at the station, and amidst navigating among hobos, I FINALLY GET SOME WARM FOOD AFTER 12 HOURS. Throughout the trip, there was either no food, or no time to buy food. Anna, Christoph and I share the cab back, and the driver is an amazing ex-banker from Pakistan who speaks German, and English with an American accent because he studied and worked in Texas before. According to Christoph, he was driving very scarily because he was overtaking other cars. (*Note: the Autobahn had almost broken down into a one lane roadway because there was just too much snow for the snowplows to handle. You couldn't see the road at all, just snow.) I don't care/notice because I am honestly beyond caring/dead asleep by then.
We arrived at his mother's place at 5:30am in the morning, hungry. We were supposed to arrive at 12 midnight, with warm bellies. As predicted, his mother woke up (because all parents are like that around the world) and went back to sleep after being happy and satisfied that we had finally reached home safely. Shower, sleep, and we woke up at 2pm today.
Deutsche Bahn racked up a €200+ taxi bill, and they're refunding half our train ticket price. I heard eurostar owes us one free ride because the delay was due to technical faults. Christoph thinks this made it all worth the trouble. Me? I hope both companies BURN IN FUCKING HELL.
Love,
Your Daughter"
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