My trip back to Braunschweig from Liverpool was, quite possibly, the worst 24 hours of my life. Or at least in the Bottom Ten.
The night before I left, I couldn't sleep. I mean, just could not make myself sleep. I was up until about 5:00, maybe 5:30. But then Caroline's mom wakes me up at 6:45, 15 minutes before we have to leave. I've gotta throw on clothes, pack, and head out the door. No jacket on, because I lost it in the club on New Year's Eve. Halfway down the block, I realize that I left my Christmas gift book, Dreams from My Father, at Caroline's house. Too late. Gotta go on.
The trip to Manchester airport takes an hour. The sun was just coming up and everything was dusted with snow, so it was beautiful to look at. Beautiful and very, very cold. At the airport it's me and Caroline. We meet another Braunschweig friend, Matt, there. He and Caroline are on the same 10 a.m. flight. Me, I don't leave the airport until 7:40 p.m. and will be spending the next 11 hours in the airport. Hey, it was either come early with Caroline or shell out money for my own transport. So everyone gets on their planes and I settle down to wait for my plane in the cold terminal with my two bags. I write, I doodle, I read the book that I've already read. Then I decide, hey, let's go see Manchester! I have just enough cash to get a train from the airport to the city and back.
Train to the airport was warm, the city was neat. But on the way back I somehow get on the wrong train and end up somewhere past Buxton called Whaley Bridge. The conductor tells me I can catch the next train back there. So I get out and look around. Whaley Bridge is just that -- a bridge over the railway, a defunct one-room train depot with padlocks on the doors, and a covered shelter. I sit in the shelter and wait for my train, which will come in 25 minutes. But it's so cold that I can't stop shaking, so I start opening my luggage and pulling out all the clothes that I have and putting them on. I had on jeans, two pairs of socks, two shirts, a dress, a vest, a light jacket, two pairs of gloves, and two scarves. Still freezing. And I have no money to call a taxi or buy something to eat because, since coming to England, my German debit card hasn't been working. I used it as a a credit card for a while, because my pin wasn't working, but now for some reason I can't do that. So I'm frozen solid in Whaley Bridge with 80 pence and a dead cellphone to my name, waiting for a train that will come in 25 minutes and hoping I make my flight.
I get the train(s) to the airport and, finally, get on the plane. I sit next to a big man smelling strongly of B.O. on the Boeing 737 that RyanAir says will have me in Bremen by 10:30 p.m. I try to sleep on the flight, but I just can't and end up looking out at the circuit-board that is Manchester from a plane at night and listening to Eve 6 and Arctic Monkeys on my mp3 player. At the airport, I pick up my luggage and the first thing I do is charge my phone and call my roommate Nadine. See, I figured my card wouldn't work in England because I didn't have the right PIN number or something. I call Nadine and ask her to confirm the PIN number from my files at home. She does, and it's the number I've been trying to use. Nothing I'm doing wrong, so why won't my card work?
What am I going to do? I'm stuck in Bremen Airport with my luggage and less than a euro. I have no way to get to my German bank account until tomorrow at the very earliest but I have no place to sleep tonight and I need to get to the train station before the last train to Braunschweig leaves at 11:30. I'm hungry. I'm cold. I'm dead tired. I realize that I've got a bank account in the states that I could overdraft at the ATM and then pay back later, so that's what I do. I get 40 euros out and get a bus from the airport to the main train station ....
... just in time to miss the last train home. #$%&ing great. Now I'm in the exact same position I was in in the airport, only now I'm stuck in a train station without any heat. I could've cried. The next train comes at 4:18 a.m., which means I have 4 1/2 hours to wait, I think to myself as I buckle down on a bench to spend the night. But I can't sleep there either. Despite the fact that I'm dead tired, I'm too afraid of someone stealing my stuff to sleep. So I get up, walk around, talk to people, anything to stay awake. I play with the ticket machines and see what the most expensive ticket I can buy is, just for kicks. I feed a puppy who wanders into the station half of my leftover tuna sandwich until his owner comes and gets him. I talk with an old Moroccan man also waiting out the night in German about Israel and Palestine. I draw. I makes lists. I contemplate my life. I go to the bathroom and warm my hands up under the automatic dryer. At about 3:00 in the morning I meet a nice young man from Pakistan who invites me across the street for a coffee in this cafe, which is nice and warm. We talk about life.
Finally, my train comes. I think I'm home free and lay down to sleep, completely exhausted. But then the ticket taker comes and asks for my ticket. I give it to him, but he's looking at it all funny. He says I haven't paid the right amount and that I need to pay him the rest right now or get off the train. Well, what do I do? I try the German card. Doesn't work. I can't overdraft the American card again. On a whim I try my old credit card and - shock of shocks! - it works. Whew. Now I really am free to sleep, which I try to do on the two and a half hour ride to Braunschweig.
I get out at Braunschweig to what I think is about a foot of snow and the early morning commuter rush. I stumble home, put on pajamas, and crash for the next 10 hours.
Worst. Day. Ever. It can only get better from here!
(this is the photo you would've seen if you'd clicked the link above)
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