Let's say... you book a flight from New York to Los Angeles and instead they decide to land in Kansas City for some unknown reason. You'd assume the airline would help you schedule the remainder of your flight, right?
Well, that's not how the trains over here work, evidently.
The wife had a trip to The Hague (there's that pesky capital T again), so I tagged along, as usual. Our train tickets were direct from Frankfurt to Utrecht (in The Netherlands), then switching trains to The Hague.
When we got to the station for our trip, I opened the app to see what track our train would be on, and there was a big red notice that the train wouldn't be going past Cologne, but everything else in the app looked correct, if that makes sense. When the time came to board, I asked (in pidgin German) the conductor-guy at the door about our route. He just sighed and told me to go ahead and get on. So we went ahead and boarded, and figured we'd handle it as it came.
When the conductor (attendant?) came through to check tickets, we spoke (?) about how we could get to The Hague. She looked at her scheduling app and found a connection in Cologne, where we'd swap to another train going to Utrecht, then onto a different train than our original one to The Hague.
When you're on a train, you take your seats, and an attendant comes by and checks your ticket, to make sure that you've actually got a ticket to be on the train... so what's going to happen when they come by to check our tickets and we don't have tickets for that train - and I can't exactly explain what happened, in my pidgin German?
Turns out, it's not a big deal. They don't seem to care. Evidently (at least on that route), there's enough of a problem that they just assume that if you've got a ticket for any train on that route, that's good enough for them.
Who'd've thunk that German "efficiency" would lead to this sort of confusion?
So, we hopped onto trains which happened to be going to the right places, and used my pidgin German to get across what had happened... which was met with a shrug and a look of "Eh, what can you do?"
Met by utter amazement, on my part.
So, we rolled into The Hague only a little later than intended.
On our previous trips to The Hague, we've stayed close to (or in the middle of) the more "touristy" area, and that's the area I'm most familiar with. Now that it's come up naturally in conversation, let's talk about my "familiarity" for a paragraph or two.
I have a bit of a "gift." We jokingly refer to it as my "spidey sense" in our family. I have an extraordinary sense of direction. I spend a little bit of time studying a map ahead of time, and my sense of direction points me in whichever direction I need to go. If I have a certain store I'd like to go to, I can glance at a map to see where it's at, and (generally) point myself in the right direction pretty quickly. Not necessarily turn by turn directions, more of a "three blocks in this direction, and about a block toward the right" feel.
Having quickly covered that, our hotel this time was in a completely different section of town. Rebecca's "spidey sense" was a bit off from mine - I was orienting more toward "This is the direction we need to go," whereas hers was more "I'm more familiar with this direction, and we can navigate from area to area to get to the new area." We disagreed, I gave in (knowing that I could eventually get us there when she started listening to me), only for her to immediately give in and go in the direction I'd wanted to go originally. We headed in the right direction, and off we wandered, looking forward to a refreshing walk after being cooped up in multiple trains for hours.
We had about a 45 minute walk to get to our hotel, not too bad, and it wasn't raining (yet), just a little chilly. Turns out, the hotel was just past a little "Embassy Row," so we got to play a game of "identify the flag" for the last few blocks of our walk.
We asked at check-in for a restaurant recommendation - this is a new thing the boss has started doing on our trips. We've gotten some pretty good recommendations - that night, we walked over and had Italian food at a local place.
Next day, the wife was off to work, and I was off to explore. Well, not really. I had an assignment this time (in addition to a visit to my Hat Lady). Last trip, when I almost "van Gogh'd" myself, I had to go to the emergency room to get stitched up. We got a bill in the mail, which we paid, then submitted for reimbursement from our insurance company.
Well, the bill didn't have an itemized list of charges. When we originally got the bill, I contacted the billing office of the company, and due to privacy laws in the EU, they couldn't mail me an itemized list of charges, and also couldn't email it to me. The only way I could get an itemized list of charges was to go there in person... OR, the insurance company could request it. Well before our trip, I had contacted our insurance company and given them contact information for the billing service, and was assured that they'd put a note in my file, so that the people looking at the claim would see it.
SPOILER ALERT: They didn't. What they "didn't" (make a note, read the note, actually do anything about the note) isn't really clear, but prior to our trip, I got an "Explanation of Benefits" from the insurance company explaining that they wouldn't be paying that reimbursement, as there wasn't enough documentation.
Flash back forward to our trip... the first day, I walked from the hotel down to the hospital, and eventually got a single sheet with a summary of charges on it. In Dutch. Just a single paragraph. Alrighty then.
From there, I walked over to see my Hat Lady, and found that she's closed on Mondays. <cue sad trombone sound>
So, I wandered back up to the hotel. That night, we had snacks at the hotel lounge, then walked through the neighborhood next to the hotel to find real food. Ended up at a local restaurant, had their version of "Bang Bang Shrimp," no sauce to be found, just a little bit of spice in the batter. Meh. Also got something called "corn ribs." Intriguing concept. Think half length ears of corn on the cob, with the cob cut into 6 pie shaped wedges. Basically, 3 or 4 rows of kernels. Buttered, rolled in some sort of barbecue seasoning. Not bad, but nothing to write home about. (Blogging about it, though.... fair games)
Back at the hotel, I was looking at the paper that I'd gotten from the emergency room, and on the letterhead, I saw a street name that I thought I remembered. A quick glance at Google Maps, and... turns out, the hotel was actually on that street. I looked up the address, and it was two blocks away from the hotel. I referred back to my emails with the lady in the billing office, and she specifically said that to get an itemized list, I'd have to come by with my passport. Looks like I've got a plan for tomorrow!
Next day, I headed out and went down to the billing office. I found my way into the reception area, and happened across two people who were quite eager to help. I explained my story, and one of the people told me that she'd go get someone to help me out. The lady came out and listened to my tale of woe, and told me that she would be happy to help me, but that she needed to return to the office and finish up with a meeting, and asked if I would mind waiting for a few minutes. I assured her that it wouldn't be a problem at all.
I played on my phone for a half hour, when she came out, overly apologetic, and told me that the meeting was almost over. I assured her that it was no trouble at all, and that I was in no rush. She came out about 20 minutes later, apologizing profusely, and gave me a translated version of the paragraph that the folks at the emergency room had given me, but in a more traditional format. We traded pleasantries, and I hit the road again.
Turns out, there's a tram stop right around the corner from the hotel that goes right by the hospital and dropped me off around 2 blocks from my Hat Lady.
I had walked 5 miles the day before, and a 15 minute tram ride would have circumvented all of it. D'oh!
I rode the tram to visit my Hat Lady, and.... she wasn't there. Both previous times I'd been there, it had been the same lady. This time, it was another lady. I still bought a hat - don't get me wrong - but I was looking forward to seeing her again. I have hopes that once I've seen her a few times, she'll give me a discount.
I putzed around the tourist area for a little while, then went down to catch the tram back up to the hotel. That night, we stuck around the hotel, eating in the lounge.
Next day, we arranged for a late checkout, and headed next door to the art museum first thing. The wife is continuing her fascination with van Gogh, and there were a couple of his works on display there. We went back and checked out of the hotel, then got on the tram to get back over toward the train station.
On the way through town, the wife saw a familiar location, so we got off the tram to visit the cheese shop that we've made a habit of stopping at. We've gotten cheese from this shop each time we've gone to The Hague, so I guess it's another regional haunt like my hat store.
We just walked back to the train station, stopping for a quick bite to eat on the way.
For the train ride back, we essentially reversed our original (planned) train ride. Interesting little story attached to that, though...
For some reason, we were ticketed to get off of a train that would continue on to Frankfurt, and wait for another train to come by. So, we got off the train, and dutifully waited - even though the train we were on would have gotten us there about a half hour earlier.
So we're standing on the platform, watching the train that we'd just deboarded from disappear into the distance, at which point, my darling wife decides to check for her cell phone.
At this point, I must digress for a moment, and tell you about her cell phone collection. When we moved over here, we ported our US numbers over to Google Voice. She kept her US phone, but didn't get a SIM card for it, so it only works when she's attached to wi-fi. She uses that one for her mobile games and Google Voice. She's got 2 additional cell phones for work, one with a US number, and one with a German number.
Luckily, it was her wi-fi cell phone that she left on the train. Luckily, because if it was a work cell phone, there would have been a lot of paperwork and a LOT more panic to go through.
I wandered around the station for a while, looking for someone to talk to, but wasn't able to find anyone. We got onto our final train, and I took off looking for someone to talk to on board the train. Finally found someone, and explained the whole thing to her, with the car number and seat number where the phone would be, and told her where we were sitting in the current train. She said that she'd call the other train, and would come let me know what happened.
She came back about a half hour later, and told me that they'd found the phone, and would leave it at the service desk in Frankfurt; we thanked her effusively.
We arrived at the station and went to the service desk. The gentleman at the service desk looked around half-heartedly, and told us that he didn't see it, and that we'd need to go to the Lost and Found area the next day. At that point, I started planning the easiest way to get down there... and then my wife walked around the booth, looking at the other stations, and saw her cell phone sitting on a ledge with a post-it on it. She got his attention, and demonstrated that the cell phone was hers, so she was immediately able to reclaim it.
Rather than sitting on a bus for 45 minutes to get home, we just caught a cab home - it was already late, and we just wanted to be home at that point.
Lessons from this trip:
- Train cancelled? Eh, we'll figure it out.
- I will check for public transit before I blindly start walking.
- I cheated on my Hat Lady. I'll probably confess next time. Probably.
- If a train's going where we want to go, we're just gonna stay on it, whether our tickets are for that particular train or not. If it works for them when they want it to, it'll work for us when we want it to.
