For obvious reasons, I have traveled a whole lot less in the past few years. I flew only one time (after a two year pause), and last year barely used Deutsche Bahn enough to pay for my BahnCard 50. And, last Wednesday, I traveled on the train for the first time this year, going down to Karlsruhe in the morning to spend the day at company headquarters, before returning to Frankfurt in the late afternoon.
Likewise, during the same time, I have continued to have limited contact with large groups of people. The biggest shopping street in my city, known as the Zeil, has not had the pleasure of my visits for many months. True, I tend to avoid Zeil as often as I can, because I am not a big shopper (as we know) and it is just not the place I like to stroll around. But, from time to time, I do need to walk through the shopping mall on my way to a dentist or doctor's appointment, which is what I had to do a couple of weeks ago.
On that afternoon a couple of weeks back, the weather happened to be really nice, one of the first days of spring. Everyone was out and about, and on top of a little tension I was feeling about the appointment, I was also a little overwhelmed to be around so many people.
The thing I noticed most was that people continue to concentrate more on their mobiles than on looking where they are going. The Zeil is a pedestrian area, and at the best of times can be really crowded, with people of all ages walking around, mixed with the odd cyclist or e-roller weaving through the walkers.
You tend to need to keep aware, which I was trying to do, but also trying to play a live game of Frogger, further complicated because the traffic is coming directly at you.
I navigated through the throngs that afternoon on the way to my appointment, but was relieved to finally be out of the area once my appointment was over. There were just too many people concentrating on anything but their immediate surroundings. Some friends of mine were in Disney World recently, and I can understand that the attraction creates a certain amount of distraction to the people walking around, but on the other hand, they are there for a specific purpose.
But a main high street in the center of my city? Sure, the weather was great, which prompts folks to get outside and enjoy the sunshine, but why walk around enjoying the sunshine while looking at your mobile?
Of course, this past Wednesday morning, I had my own mobile out, looking at my DB app, to confirm my train and seat reservation. I elected to look at this information while standing still, rather than trying to walk and play with my phone (and chew gum) at the same time.
I have said it before, and I will say it again. I am a fan of train travel. Even the shorter trips, as this jaunt was to be. The FFM to Karlsruhe trek takes about 1 hour 10 minutes, then a quick 15 minute taxi to the office. Easy peasy.
One thing I remembered on Wednesday morning was how much easier things flow when you get to the station with sufficient time to get your bearings and make your way to the correct platform. This is not always my case, but having a gathered a lot of experience with the finer points of running through train stations in Germany, it bodes well to plan ahead, as I did.
There was a time when I would book a train ticket without reserving a seat, preferring instead to sit in the bistro and have a coffee. More often than not, I was successful with this arrangement and could manage to find an empty seat where I could enjoy a cappuccino.
For those times I was not successful, it was a real rodeo. There are peak travel times, and again, years of experience as helped me realize when a seat reservation. (note - for those readers not so familiar with German rail travel, the trains allow for flexible booking, which effectively means that despite having only a few hundred actual seats, there could be more people traveling on the train. These people stand in the space between cars, in the aisles, or gather in the bistro. Let us just say it can get cozy.)
The benefit of getting to your train platform ahead of time is that you can familiarize yourself with the order of the cars, and from what section of the platform you can board the train with most ease. The platform has clear markings for section A (usually first class), all the way to section E or F, depending on the length of the train.
Thus, if your ticket says your seat is reserved in car 7, you look on the board and find out which section car 7 will be in. It is all pretty clear if you know where to look.
On Wednesday morning, my car was going to be in section C, almost D, so I walked to that area of the platform. The logic of this is that you board the train on the car that you are going to sit in, rather than boarding in another section and having to walk through the aisles of each car until you get to your seat.
Amazingly enough, those of us who have experience flying on airplanes knows this feeling. At the airport, they always try and board the plane from the back, and if you are the guy with a seat on one of the last rows of the airplane, you always HATE having to walk through the aisles that are crowded with all the jumpy people who are scrambling to load their oversized bags into the overhead compartment, and creating all kinds of disruption and frustration.
With train travel, you can skip this frustration. If you pay attention and plan ahead.
The train I was on that morning had a final destination of Milan. I had figured that the train would not be that crowded, but there could have been a few more travelers taking the short run between FFM, Mannheim, and Karlsruhe, which is normal for workers commuting to their place of employment.
Save for 3 other passengers, my car was empty.
A seat reservation is a rather small fee in comparison to the train ticket itself, and in situations like this one, I never really think that it is a waste of money to have an unnecessary seat reservation.
The irony, of course, was that one of the three passengers was sitting in my seat.
I adapted quickly to the situation, and took one of the other 55 available seats.
The train departed bang on time, making all of the announcements in Italian, German, and (American) English. I sat back and closed my eyes; we would arrive in a little over an hour to my destination.
The conductor came through to check our tickets, and again, I was reminded by how much I like the demeanor of most of the DB conductors. They are overworked, underpaid, have to endure the additional stress of all the pandemic travel regulations, and still they smile from behind their masks, greet the passengers with "Guten Morgen, die Fahrscheine, bitte!"
The lady scanned my QR code, gave me a personable "Danke! Gute Fahrt!" and moved on to the next passenger.
As scheduled, we pulled into the station on time, I grabbed a taxi and made my way to the office.
Early in the afternoon, I realized that I could probably return to FFM a little earlier than planned, but in the end I elected to ride on the specific train I had booked. As mentioned, there is a certain amount of flexibility DB offers when booking tickets; on these kinds of treks you can pay a small premium and basically travel on ANY of the trains going from Karlsruhe back to FFM.
I had arranged for the taxi to pick me up from the office with plenty of time to get to the station. We made even better time than expected, thanks to no traffic on the highway, so I found myself in the Karlsruhe station with 25 minutes to kill. I peeked in the bookstore, found a Krimi that I felt like reading, and still had 20 minutes.
After identifying the right platform, I checked the board to find the section where my car would be. Then I had a few ciggy and did some people watching. Some were scrutinizing the board, trying to interpret where their car was going to be, others were just ambling around (as you do when waiting for a train), and most of the others had their nose in the phones.
The train was scheduled for around 17h, and was noticeably going to be fuller than the morning. DB do a reasonable job of giving the traveler an idea of just how crowded a train might be, but it is relative, due to the flex-travel. What I always look for in these situations is how many travelers are traveling with a LOT of luggage, since that does change the complexity a little bit.
Again, the train pulled into the station on time, and I was standing in the right place to board my car. There was a little bustle as some passengers got off the train, then we were able to board. Right off the bat, I noticed that the train (my car, at least) was already about 50% full, which was logical.
With some annoyance, I discovered that once again, someone was sitting in my reserved seat. I adapted quickly and sat in the next row, which was empty, keeping my fingers crossed that no one who had just boarded the train had reserved the seat. More on that in a second.
Some of the other travels did indeed have luggage, and I do admit that this is a bit of a drawback with train travel. As spacious as the train cars, the aisles can be kind of narrow, and luggage space can quickly fill up.
I grabbed the available seat so as to get myself out of the way, so as to allow the other folks time to get themselves sorted: trying to muscle the over sized luggage onto the baggage rack, or on the shelf above the seat, or wherever.
It is amazing what people pack, and why the mentality is "hey, if there are wheels on the suitcase, I can make it as heavy as I want to," without fully comprehending what happens when it comes time to actually have to lift the suitcase, like carrying it up the steps, or putting it on a shelf.
Unfortunately, I was reminded that not everyone has learned the trick of checking with section your car is in. People who were sitting in car 10 (section D) had boarded the train in section A (car 1) and visa versa. When this happens, you have major congestion in the aisles, as people are trying to walk through the cars, finding it challenging as they are blocked by people coming in the other direction.
And half of them are looking at their phones.
Once the doors of the train are closed, the train can depart the station. The passengers themselves will need a few minutes more to get settled.
Sure enough, at some seats a couple of rows ahead of me, the freshly boarded passengers had to ask the occupant to give up their seat, since they had actually reserved the seats. This is the rule of train travel, and most of the time, things go quite civilly.
The unlucky traveler did experience a bit more bad luck; right after moving from where he had been sitting, he found a new seat, took his place, only to have to move 2 minutes later when another traveler showed up to claim the seat, as they had reserved it.
On a little screen, sometimes on the outside part of the seat, other times directly over the seat, the reservation is displayed, and indicates starting point to destination. It is amazing how people interpret this information. I use an example from what typically happens in Frankfurt restaurants. A table might be booked from 20h, This suggests that at 18h, 2 hours before the reservation, the table is effectively free.
So, if you go in for an early dinner or whatever, you can use the table until 20h. This tends to confuse many people, and to some extent, I use this to my advantage.
The vacant seat I took Wednesday afternoon was reserved from Mannheim, which was the next stop. Thus, I knew I had at least 15 minutes to figure something out with my seating arrangement. Of course, I could always go kick the guy out of my originally reserved seat, but I was not feeling fussed, and found no reason to create additional conflict just for the sake of it.
Every once in a while, the reservation system on the train malfunctions, and the friendly DB conductor comes on the PA and casually says, "Hey, by the way, the reservation system is not working."
This kind of thing really does create pandemonium, and unfortunately tends to happen when the train is at its fullest. I have seen such instances bring out the worst in mankind, and thankfully it does not happen all that often. Still, it is a amazing how people just do not seem to be as flexible with such things. Imagine what would happen at a shopping mall if all the credit card machines in every store went on the blink. A minor (ish) inconvenience on the train is not such a big deal...at least for me, the guy who travels as lightly as possible, and tries to keep his nose out of his phone, especially while walking.
I considered this as I made the return journey to Frankfurt that afternoon. In Karlsruhe, I realized that DB had pulled a little switcheroo, and instead of arriving at the main station, my train would only stop at Frankfurt Süd. This was trivial, but important to recognize, lest I fail to get off at the right stop. It only meant that I needed to make an extra U-Bahn change. Big whoop.
Other than that, it has been a rather productive week. It is hard to believe that we are already three months through the year. The foot of snow that arrived on the 1st of April came as a bit of surprise, but then again, should anything surprise us any more?
see you out there. I will be the guy without my nose in my phone.
Bryan
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