Deep Thoughts by an Unqualified Deep Thinker

My biweekly trip to Oldenburg was interrupted this week by a friendly little storm named Kyrill.

As I came back to my office after eating, a coworker told me that I should probably take off early for the day so I wouldn’t be caught in the storm. What storm? Was my blissfully ignorant reply. After wrapping up a few things I took off a couple hours early.

Fast-forward to my arrival in Hannover (roughly 1/3rd of the way to my destination) where everyone in my train was told to deboard because the line to Bremen was impassable. Then a passenger came back in and said he was told that we were traveling onward and that we should wait. Shortly therafter the conductor came and asked us in capital letters “WHAT ARE YOU ALL STILL DOING HERE? THE TRAIN’S BEEN CANCELLED!” Quite a few of the passengers thought the caps-lock was inappropriate and deboarded with an appropriate echo. As we entered the train station, it looked something like this (i.e. general chaos and panic):

Most of my train car’s passengers have now reached the service desk. My turn comes and I ask how I’m to reach Bremen. After finding out which train I’d come from the lady looked a bit surprised and said “Everyone in that train’s already gotten on buses and are on their way to a connecting station.” I now realize why everyone who had asked before me departed the line with a Germany curse word and a friendly glance at the guy who told us to get back on. The train station now looks like a one sided tennis match (everyone’s staring at the cool flippy flippy arrivals/departures board).

I was told later to head up and try to catch the 5:20 to Bremen since it hadn’t yet been canceled. The platform was a friendly place, complete with horizontal rain.

After I shot that clip, the flippy board on the platform rolled one last time until “Zug fält aus!” was displayed. Train canceled.

The departure board now was blank except for a single footnote: “Train traffic in northern Germany has been suspended due to the storm.” Since this has never happened in Germany, the news crews were quickly on the scene.

Here’s a rundown of what happened to get me to Oldenburg:

• asked, told to wait
• asked, told to wait
• waited for 3 hours
• heard rumors of taxi coupon
• smuggled a taxi coupon (they called them off as the guy was writing mine)
• asked a taxi for a ride to Oldenburg with the coupon and was laughed at (120mi / 192km trip)
• told to find others with the same destination
• ran around yelling Oldenburg / Bremen and found 6 others to share a van taxi
• slid around for a few hours in a taxi van and listened to a lady give horrible driving advice to our driver

All in all, a fantastic trip! The best part was watching people’s reactions to unchangeable events… That’s right…get mad about something that’s out of everyone’s hands! I should’ve done a mini-study.