Sit back, relax, and let me tell you the tale of my arrival. It's a long one...
*cue dream sequence transition*
The flight was easy: My first plane flew out of Boston at 6:00pm Sunday evening. With a short layover in Dublin, Ireland, the transatlantic portion of my journey was completed in a measly five and a half hours. At 7:00am on Monday morning, I began the short two-hour jump from Ireland to Germany. I arrived in Frankfurt around 10:00am and got ready to take a train headed south, toward my final destination: Freiburg.
As someone who lives in the "country", I have close to zero experience with trains. I mean, I did travel with Amtrak to NYC that one time, but even if you don't understand English, you just sit on that train until you see some really big skyscrapers and you can be sure you won't miss your stop. When you're thrust into a brand new, unfamiliar environment, haven't slept for nearly a day, and your German is
I bought my train ticket to Freiburg and went to sit at the track. I was exhausted at this point, but luckily a nearby food stand's Dijon Croissant gave me a second wind. The train pulled into the station and I hopped on, found myself a seat, and tried to relax. My eyes scanned the inside of the train and fell upon the LED screen that listed the stations we'd stop at. I suddenly noticed that Freiburg wasn't listed. Frankfurt Flughafen - Mannheim - Karlsruhe - Offenburg - Basel (Switzerland)... but no Freiburg im Breisgau. I had a vague understanding of the geography of the area, so I knew that Freiburg stood somewhere between Karlsruhe and Basel, but as the train continued on from Karlsruhe with still no mention of a stop in Freiburg, I began to worry that I had somehow messed up. I had read online previously that sometimes you have to catch a connection at Mannheim to get to Freiburg, but since we were already way past Mannheim at this point, I figured I was just going to have to get a hotel in Basel for the night.
We made our way to Offenburg, where I strongly considered disembarking in order to at least stay in Germany, but I instead decided to just stay on the train and see what would happen. Switzerland's not the worst place to end up accidentally, after all. And just as I had given up all hope—just as I had accepted my Basel-bound fate, a voice came on the intercom... "We will arrive in Freiburg im Breisgau shortly".
FINALLY.
Continued in Part II (which will come after I sleep a bit more).
Some photos from my trip so far:
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| Praise the legroom gods. |
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| You really don't know how tempted I was to say "top o' the mornin' to ya" in Dublin... |
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| Leaving Dublin, with the Irish coast on the left. |
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| A sea of clouds. |
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| Amazing views from the train. |
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| The mountains seen here are at the very edge of the Black Forest region. |
Thanks for reading!
