The joys of traveling in Europe in the summer: beware! [View all]

[DFW]

Corona is still around, but people are acting as if it were not.

Exhibit 1:
Last Saturday, I was finishing up in Barcelona, and returning to my home in Düsseldorf. Only--the 7:45PM flight, which runs Monday to Friday, does not fly on weekends. So, I booked a 6PM flight to Frankfurt, with a connection by train to Düsseldorf, usually an hour and 25 minutes, and the train leaves from right beneath the airport. We got to Frankfurt a little late, but still with over an hour to get my luggage and train. At baggage claim, my suitcase was not there. I asked where Lufthansa baggage service was. I was given four different answers, none of which were correct. Finally, an Indian flight attendant in an LH uniform offered to help me, and finally, at the check-in counter, I got a suggestion to ask the LH office in the train station part of the airport. I went there, and there was my bag from Barcelona. Ah, OK. Oops, not OK. The train to Düsseldorf had been canceled, and the ones after it were delayed by an hour or more. After vegetating in the Frankfurt airport for more time than it took me to get there from Spain, a train to Düsseldorf FINALLY showed up. I got to Düsseldorf at 11:15PM. The last train to my town was gone, so I treated myself to a taxi for €40. Home just before midnight.

Exhibit 2:
On Wednesday, I was in Brussels, and deluged with work. I was hoping to get the 4:22 train back to Germany, but just couldn't get everything done in time. So, that left the 6:25 PM train as last chance gulch. It arrived 40 minutes late from Germany, and so left 40 minutes late as well. At the German border (Aachen), came an announcement that thieves had cutz and stolen huge pieces of the copper electrical cables that power the trains up to Köln. Therefore, the train had to make a huge detour via the small town of Rheydt, and then over to Köln. This was a huge detour for me, as Rheydt was already halfway to Düsseldorf on another local route. So I got off at Rheydt to see about a a direct train to Düsseldorf. Sure. it would come--someday. No one knew where it was or when it would get there. In resignation, I wandered back to the wayward train from Brussels, but it had finally been given the go-ahead to continue about 30 seconds before I got back to it. So, here I am, stuck in Rheydt at 9 PM, a time when I should already have been home. The place looked pretty deserted, but there was ONE taxi there. I asked him if he was willing to take a fare to Düsseldorf. He said sure, if I was willing to handle the fare (about $110). I was still on company time, so to speak, so I said sure, çok iyi (very good--he was Turkish) ! Again, I got home at around 11:15 PM, about three hours later than usual. I had to get up at 5:00 the next morning to be at my office near Utrecht the next morning.

Exhibit 3:
The next morning, I was up at 5, so I could drive to the Düsseldorf Airport train station, which had a direct (if frequently stopping) train to Arnhem in the Netherlands. From there, it was a quick 40 minute train on to Utrecht. Only--Thursday was a holiday in our part of Germany, so half of Germany was underway to Holland for shopping. It was standing room only all the way, and I had three pieces of luggage with me. It was still 40 minutes, but they didn't seem to go by so quickly this time, standing up in an un-air conditioned sardine can, listening mostly to German tourists complaining in German about the crowding, and Dutch locals complaining in Dutch about the Germans causing the crowding.

Oh, and some of you are thinking of coming over here for the summer? You might want to switch to Lake Champlain instead! In ten days, we are heading for the outer tip of Cape Cod, MA. We checked, and they are going to charge $90 a pound for lobster meat this year (!!!). Fortunately, we have made, just in time, the exciting discovery that there are different things to eat in Cape Cod BESIDES lobster!