keninabu!

At the border

I was at a small German bath-town, on the border.

The train was late by an hour in Frankfurt, and by the time it reached this town, it was already one-and-a-half hours overdue. I missed my original train connections AND the substitute ones given by the Frankfurt Deutsche Bahn service personnel... on the other side of the border, my sweetheart must be worried sick, I thought.

There was a line at the DB service counter, and in front of me were two men speaking to a young trendily-dressed woman in Russian or some Slavic language; she was dressed in some white fur and some Britney-Spears-imitation jeans and top, while the two looked Turkish, with dark hair and more rings than a tambourine. It made for a distinct contrast from the clean, whitewashed south German station which we were at.

They were serviced by a German middle aged employee with a balding patch, who was pleasant to his previous customer, but who was not too happy with this crowd of three as they approached him, and immediately started speaking in heavily-accented English.

I dragged my bags to the other counter.

"Guten Morgen."
"Guten Morgen, wie kann ich Sie helfen?"
"Meiner Zug hattet Verspaetung, und meiner Fahrplan ist jetzt alles chaotisch..."

Looking at my ticket and the previous train schedule that I was given, he said, "Kein Problem, einen Augenblick, bitte"

He is probably in his twenties, with dark hair, balding top, and blue eyes behind thin wired spectacle frames, and a ready and gentle smile. Reminded me completely of a teddy bear.

"Sie haben zwei Moegligkeiten..." and then, I couldn't hear anything that he said, due to the rising voices from the Slavic group, arguing with the DB person.

"Entschuldigung, ich kann Sie nicht hoeren..."

"English?"

"Oh, yes, definitely."

"You have two possibilities from here to France. Let me print it out for you."

After printing it out, I looked at one of them, and said, "But my ticket is not valid for this: my ticket is only valid for local and regional trains, not Eurocity trains..."

"No problem" and he proceeded to stamp and write on my ticket that my ticket is valid between this town and the destination. "There you go, sir. Have a good trip."

"Danke! Schoenen Tag noch""
"Ebenso! Auf Wiedersehen!"

So that was how I got into France on an upgraded train, albeit it was late by about 3 hours!

It makes me wonder, if he was able to do that, why didn't the lady in Frankfurt Flughafen do the same thing for my ticket?

posted by keninabu @ 8:48 AM