The alarm went off at 06:15. Hugo somehow did not cough during the night, so that was at least good.
We took a quick bite of the pizza that had not fitted into the two plastic containers we had been carrying around specifically for leftovers.
We had to leave the apartment key inside the door, but the front gate also needed a key. Some people were coming down by the lift, so Caro ran down the stairs to try to keep the gate open. By the time Hugo reached the bottom, the gate was closed and Caro was still inside as well. It had already been closing when she reached it, and she was not prepared to sacrifice a limb to find out whether it would detect her and stop.
We stood there for a while hoping someone else would arrive. Then Hugo noticed a well-used button on the opposite side of the portico. He pressed it, and as if saying abracadabra, the gate opened.
We walked to Bologna Centrale for the third and last time, stopping only for our last Italian cappuccino.
At the station we were feeling sad and happy, and then suddenly flabbergasted. Next to our train, RJ 88, the departure board said CANCELLED.
We stayed remarkably calm, looked up alternatives and took a ticket for the information office. The queue was long, so Hugo asked someone whether we should wait there to find out what to do about the cancelled train.
“Bus outside,” he said.
Without any more detail about where or when, we started walking outside. Bologna Centrale covers a very large area. We passed all the city buses and eventually reached a random street where a few other people were standing around.
“What are you waiting for?” we asked.
“The replacement bus to Munich.”
He also needed to reach Frankfurt. More people arrived and started asking us whether this was the right place. We could only say that we had no idea, but other people were waiting for the same thing. Some needed to reach Berlin, others Hanover. What a logistical nightmare.
The bus eventually arrived. The driver said he was only going to Innsbruck and that was all he knew. We all got on and left about 30 minutes after the train should have departed.
He initially planned to stop at all the stations where the train would have stopped, but at some point started asking whether anyone was getting off at Verona, Bolzano and the other stops. Nobody answered, so it looked as if we would head straight to Innsbruck.
One passenger asked for a toilet break and the bus simply stopped beside the road, where only that one man got off. We had barely started moving again when someone else went to speak to the driver. Soon afterwards he stopped at a fuel station and announced a 15-minute break. This time everybody got off and queued for the two toilets.
Once we were moving again, Hugo noticed something interesting. The train we could theoretically catch in Innsbruck, RJ 86, was scheduled to leave Verona at 11:01—the city we had just driven past. If anyone had said yes when the driver asked about Verona, we could all have caught that train to Munich.
Then we started turning into Trento. Hugo checked again and saw that RJ 86 was delayed. Depending on the red lights, we might have four minutes to reach it. Hugo got the original Frankfurt traveller on board with the plan, followed by another six people.
The bus pulled up beside the station, but the road was one-way. The driver, completely unaware of our plan, continued for another two blocks in a large circle to find somewhere to park. Every red light and every person on a zebra crossing pushed everybody’s nerves a little higher.
When the bus finally stopped, we scrambled out. Hugo asked the driver to wait five minutes in case we failed and had to run back. He agreed.
For some reason we followed other people into a subway, only to emerge about 300 metres away on the wrong side, having completely bypassed the station. We ran all the way back, entered the actual station and crossed again to platform 3, where the train was already standing.
By then we had outrun the rest of the group. The train was quite full, but we found two seats without reservation signs and sat down. It left soon afterwards. We did not see anybody else running onto the platform and had no idea what happened to them, although we later spotted one or two people and assumed the rest of our breakaway group had made it as well.
We could finally relax and enjoy the Brenner line views. The Italian and Austrian mountain peaks were spectacular. Despite not having booked seats on this train, we could sit all the way to Munich.
No surprises, but this train was also delayed. One of our Frankfurt options had already left, while the other showed a 15-minute delay. We got off at platform 11 and ran to platform 23, only to hear—and then see—that it had moved to platform 22 and was even more delayed.
Another train first had to arrive and leave before ICE 528 finally pulled in, about 20 minutes after we had reached Munich. Again we found unreserved seats and settled in for the three-and-a-half-hour journey to Frankfurt, hoping this was the last of our train adventures.
We arrived at Frankfurt Hauptbahnhof at 20:44 and first bought a Fleischkäsebrötchen before heading for Tram 11.
Stepping outside in German cities always surprises us because of all the homeless people and the visible mental illness and erratic behaviour around the station. Luckily we only waited four minutes for the tram. Eleven stops later, the a&o hostel was directly across from our stop.
It was the cheapest place we could find and it was super noisy until after midnight.
Leave A Comment