Train tickets

By now everyone has heard this story, but I'm going to post it for documentation anyway. On Wednesday afternoon Ashley, Jean, Catherine and I stopped by the ticket office in the Hauptbahnhof to buy/reserve train 12 train tickets for the weekend to Paris. Keep in mind that this was after another day of walking all around Dusseldorf in the heat for the scavenger hunt, and we were already hot, tired, and slightly cranky. Oh, and Kirsten was expecting me and Ashley home for dinner at 6:00. So we stood in the long line for about 15 minutes, then spent at least 45 minutes at the counter working things out. The woman who was originally helping us spoke pretty good English and was even nice enough to find a 'youth' deal that would bump 6 people up to 1st class for a very reduced price. The five of us with Eurail passes had to settle for reserving seats in 2nd class which we were completely fine with. Everything looked good until she hit the "reserve" button and got an error message. Then our original person had a break and switched in the middle of the transaction with a woman who was harder to communicate with. The error message had to do with the seat reservations for Eurail passes. Evidently the train companies only set aside a few seats per train that can be reserved by someone with a Eurail pass, since the reservation is 10 Euro, and the ticket is like 70 Euro. So at the time it looked like the 5 of us were not going to be able to make it to Paris, while everyone else got to ride in first class. Every time we would ask the woman at the counter a question she would respond by shaking her head and saying "one moment please". She either wouldn't or couldn't give us occasional progress reports or updates. So the four of us stood at the counter forever, shuffling our feet and talking amongst ourselves as she clicked and typed and clicked some more. I'm not sure if it was because of a language problem in that she didn't have the best English ever, or if it was a culture barrier. Back home usually people booking tickets or helping you out try to give progress reports or put you at ease or give you alternate options and ask what you prefer. Not so with this lady in the Duesseldorf Hauptbahnhof. It was a very frustrating experience. As you know, eventually it worked out where we all have seats too and from Paris. Granted, its bad timing and we have to take two different trains to get there, but its better than getting left behind. We have a lot to squeeze into two days, but I'm planning on sleeping very little. Hopefully it will all work out.