Always Confirm the Street Name

As you can probably guess from the name of this post, I'm writing this because we indeed did NOT confirm the street name. But first, let me start from the beginning.

The beginning starts in Munich. Well kind of, it starts right as we were leaving. We had looked up the train times and found a train departing around 6 for Hannover. As the train pulled up we noticed that it was quite full. We all lugged our luggage on board to find almost no seats. As we were pulling our stuff down the isles, we all discovered every seat on this train was reserved. Why hadn't the website told us this?! We found a place to drop most of the luggage and found a few seats spread out that nobody appeared to be sitting in. Rebecca and I found two seats across from each other, next to two guys who basically laughed and talked about us in Italian the entire time we were sitting there.  We thought they were just laughing about the 7 Americans trying to find open seats on a train that was 95% reserved. We soon found out why the guys were actually laughing… apparently 98% of the train was reserved and the people who had the seats we were sitting in were just in the cafe eating. After a couple train stops, only a couple of us still had places to sit and the rest of us were left standing in a passage way between cars. At this point all we could really do was laugh at ourselves for not knowing to reserve seats. After a while of us sitting on the floor, and having to stand up every time a person walked by, this nice young man popped his head out of his reserved air-conditioned box on the train and told us the hall had fold out seats built into the wall that we could sit on. We laughed some more at ourselves as we folded down the seats and tried to enjoy our train ride, while people still had to constantly climb over us. About 15 mins later, we finally found out some of the seats in the boxes belonged to people who had already gotten off the train and we're not reserved anymore! Thank you Jesus, we now not only got real seats but also air-conditioning, score!

When we finally arrived in Hannover 4 and a 1/2 hours later after some train delays. We were all exhausted and dragged our luggage to the nearest ticket kiosk. Which, we could not figure out for the life of us. Half of us went to find food and the other half headed to the information desk. Apparently in Hannover, they don't sell tickets at the info desk. Oh, joy. We were however informed that our train wouldn't be until 12 am. Oh, joy, again. We decided to get a cab to the other train station where the hotel was going to send a shuttle to pick us up from. After trying and failing to find that address, we looked up the address of the hotel and saw it was only 9 mins away by cab. We decided it would just be easiest to take a cab straight there! After finally finding a taxi to hold all 7 of us and our baggage, we were finally off to our hotel. I had already been in contact with the hotel manager and he told me to call again when we arrived. We arrived at the hotel, in a dark and sketchy area, split the 10 euro taxi ride. and unloaded our stuff to find the hotel door locked and no one at the reception desk. I called the manager and he said he would come right down… after about 3 mins and still no manager we came to the realization we were probably at the wrong hotel. We called our other friends who were already checked into the same hotel we had reservations for and figured out we were definitely at the wrong hotel. They were by a McDonalds, and we were by nothing but a sketchy part of town. After spending at least 10 mins trying to find our reservation address and failing, finding a nice German girl who then went and woke up someone staying in the hotel that spoke english to help us, and many laugh attacks, we finally got sent the correct address. Who would have thought there were two Hotel Marjani's in Hannover? Not us, seeing as it was very small and more like a hostel.

We then tried to call a cab, again. After about 5 mins of trying to say the name of the street we were on correctly in German, and even spelling it all out, two cabs were sent our way. Thank the Lord, we were finally on our way to the correct hotel. As we drove, and drove, and drove, I watched the cost of our ride increase, and increase, and increase. We went all the way through the city and through some scary looking woods. I started to question if our cab driver knew where he was taking us, or if he was just taking us to these sketch woods to murder the 4 pretty girls in the cab. 70 euros worth of taxi time later, we finally arrived at the correct hotel. By this time it was one am. We practically all fell into bed that night and we all learned two important lessons:

Google sucks. Because when you search for this hotel in Hannover, only one address comes up
Always confirm the street name on the reservation before you jump in a cab

We all got there safe though, and we all got some good laughs at ourselves that day too!