Back on the road

We went to Hamburg this weekend. I guess five nights in the same place was just more than we could handle.
The actual reason was that our friends Dizzy and Sonja were having a barbecue, it sounded like fun, and we had nothing better to do. So we went up to Hamburg yesterday and spent the night.

It feels good to have been here for a while already, and think about how clueless we were last year at this time. We know what time the trains leave to and from Hamburg. I can understand most of the announcements that the train conductor makes. I know which buttons to push on the Deutsche Bahn ticket machine, even when the text on the screen is in German. Just imagine how great it will be when I can read all the words!

The machine was our downfall today, though. From Dizzy and Sonja's apartment we needed to walk to the tram, get our ticket on the way, take the tram to the main station and then got on our train for Hannover. By the time we got out the door we had precisely 40 minutes to do that. Our 'I'm trying to catch a train' walk and fast packing was a total waste. We were foiled by the couple that was using the ticket machine when we got there. They were pushing buttons and discussing and flipping screens forward and backward... That's ok. Those machines can be confusing and they give you the ability to buy tickets to and from any city in Germany (and a couple of other countries) with any number of transfers in between.


If this was an American couple, their thought process would have gone something like this: Wow this is taking a long time and people are waiting behind us. I will tell them I am sorry for the delay and let them go first so that I can mess around with this machine and not worry that I'm holding them up. Or maybe I'm in the middle of booking a ticket but I will at least turn around to say I am sorry it's taking so long.'
The couple, however, was German. So their thought process (I imagine) went something like this: 'Wow this is taking a long time. People are waiting behind us but that is ok. It's my turn now and I will do what I need to do even if it takes a while. Once it's their turn they can take as long as they'd like.' Their thoughts were most likely thought in German but I don't know how to construct sentences that are as complex as those, so use your imagination.

So, even though we knew exactly which platform to go to, we missed the train to Hannover by 3 minutes and spent another hour hanging out at the Hamburg station. It wasn't a big deal, really. I suppose we could have blamed ourselves for not leaving the apartment ten minutes earlier. It's just more fun to blame other people. I guess just because I know when the train will leave doesn't mean I will get there on time.