it being a “german weekend”, i’m working on the train today — currently the ICE 184 from zürich to stuttgart. wheather outside is fantastic, a beautiful, sunny spring day. inside (in the train, that is) the mood does not quite reflect the weather…we are still in singen, although we should have left singen at 10:10 — we are now at +18 as the experienced train traveller would say. the problem seems to be that the front board computer likes it so much here in sunny singen, that it absolutely refuses to let go of the station…we are now in our second or third power-cycle-reset of the whole train (everytime they power cycle the train, my thinkpad is a bit annoyed about loosing power and burps, eh, beeps).
10:55…after some further power-cycle-resets the train manager declares the train “dead”, we get vouchers and also get to change into the slow train to stuttgart leaving at 11:19 on the same platform…
13:45…a packed RB train (regionalbahn) arrives at stuttgart. i’ve about 20min until the next IC train to nürnberg is due to depart — which i spent getting some semolina pudding with cherries and a latte macciato…as i’m about to pay, a loud explosion sounds through the station hall and i catch a glimpse of a very bright spark coming from the direction of the engine that just pulled us into the station! for a brief moment people freeze in their tracks…police officers are running toward the “scene”…luckily, it turns to be “just” a tremendous short-circuit! wow!
i pay for my pudding and coffee and make my way to platform 16 where the IC from karlsruhe is due any moment now…and wait…and wait…as the departure time is almost upon us (but no train to depart with), there’s an announcement that the train will be 9min late (+9 as the seasoned train traveller says) due to problems with one of the carriages…as i’m enjoying the sun (but, alas, not the equally enthuasistic pollen who seem to have a field day out today), waiting for the train to arrive, another announcement provides the interesting titbit that the zollern-alb-bahn to sigmaringen will only go as far as bisingen as an earth slide has interrupted the rail tracks after bisingen…hmm…somehow a bad train day, i think.
oh, and in the end (some more delays on the nürnberg–erlangen leg, nothing to really write home about) i reach erlangen with +130…
