In every legend, the hero goes through some harrowing experience. Some trial where, in some cases, they even descended into hell, the abyss. I never thought I would have my own abyss until we tried to go to Luxembourg.
After a night out in Cologne, me, Bailee, and Anna had a bus to catch to get to Luxembourg. We woke up, all feeling a little worse for wear, packed our stuff and got ready to go. But then, a fateful text arrived in our group chat: "The trains aren't running." We panicked, unsure how we would make it to the station, so I tried to get an Uber. Uber failed. Then a new text came: "The trains are fine." We ran, bags in tow, to the tram stop only to see it drive away. We refused to miss our bus, though, and called a taxi. We now had 20 minutes until our bus left. The man in the taxi spoke no English and did not appreciate/understand my attempt to communicate via Google translate. We arrived at Bonn hbf with 4 minutes to make our bus. We ran frantically around the station with no idea where it was. We saw a large crowd gathered in the distance, and prayed that was it. We hopped on the bus and thought, naively, that the struggle was over.
The bus was rough. This was the first weekend of the 9-Euro ticket, and everyone and their dog had decided to travel. There were no seats on the bus, and I stood for the entire 40 minutes. The heat beat down, and at every stop, the bus got more crowded and consequently hotter. I started to sing the song "I Will Survive" quietly to myself, trying to transport myself from the claustrophobic situation as sweat dripped down my face. After a short eternity, we arrived at our next stop, and boarded a train. It was comfortable. We again thought the worst had passed.
But then, Bailee realized she had forgotten her passport. My motto had always been no man left behind, but in that moment, realizing we still had one more train, I had to make a tough decision. The odds of something going wrong without the passport were low, but the consequences would be too great to risk. Bailee chose to stay back, and Anna and I decided to keep going, feeling like some force was actively working against us.
The final train was the worst. There were again no seats. By this point, we were exhausted, hot, hungry, and a little hungover. We sat on the ground, unable to continue standing, and I fell asleep curled around my suitcase. After about an hour, some people left the train, so we went up to the top level and took a seat. Unfortunately, heat rises, and for some reason, it felt like they had turned the heater on. A man sat next to me and decided that it's fine to vape on public transport. As the cloud of vapor hit my face, I was unsure whether I would throw up or pass out first. When we could both not stand it any longer, we rushed back down the stairs and continued to feel near the verge of a panic attack. We both felt like we had entered some weird purgatory, an alternate dimension where time was slow and miserable.
Eventually, we made it to Luxembourg. The rest of the weekend was actually pretty nice, but the journey there was so rough that it kind of made it not worth it. 5/10 probably wouldn't do again.
No comments:
Post a Comment