Sorry, a bit of a whine fest, but the anger still reverberates.
Yesterday we decided that I would visit today in Suebia. So I dutifully checked the train connection, and found all good – no more nasty construction work, a simple one-change-only journey in time. Due to sad experience, I also looked at the bus connection, all well. So I stood at the bus station too early this morning, enjoying fresh air, and singing birds in that plane tree. Some other people joined, four or five. The bus made its way up the hill in time, followed its path, some minutes later it appeared at the top of the hill downwards bound, I grabbed my portemonnaie to buy a ticket.
The bus set its indicator to the right, turned, there it went. We looked at each other in astonishment. A lady stated the obvious – the driver followed the detour that had been rescinded last week. “He must realise his mistake, and should come up the hill in five minutes or so.” After ten minutes it was clear that he would not. A younger couple went away, a young foreign man, seemingly a student, looked at his phone (the app of the local transport facility is useless for some days now, I accidentally had heared it in the local news while driving), I felt a wave of sheer, red anger rolling over me.
So I did not realise that the lady was talking to me. I could not follow and as friendly as I could manage in this situation I asked her to leave me alone. I felt the need to move and walked around the plane tree. She actually asked whether I would share a taxi cab, what I did not want. A car stopped, driven by another lady, they chatted, and both drove away.
I was still there unsure what to do, trying to come to a conclusion. I knew that the next bus would come soon, but this one, as experience has it, would arrive too late at the station to catch the train. So I phoned Suebia.
I slowly wandered a few steps down the road still talking on the phone, when the first bus came bimbling up the hill, the driver waving at me to join, while the next regular was behind him. Yes, at this moment I became a bit upset, and told him very clearly that I would not need his service now. It was really useless by then, more than 15 minutes over time.
While I went home, two small white dogs came and looked at me, turning away unimpressed, literally shoving me aside. At home I felt the need for a cup of coffee and a cigarette. That was when I realised that I was out of rolling paper.
Still mumbling I decided to look into the computer, I simply was afraid that I had missed something last evening. But no, all departure times were as I had wrote them down. Then I saw at the Deutsche Bahn site a little red notice under the connection I had wanted to reach, reading “Kein Halt heute”. “No Stop today”. Whadyamean?
It hit me like a hammer – even if I would have jumped into this rotten bus – and hence run through the bus station & the main station to reach that damn platform – there would not have been a train. Just a huffing, puffing, and yelling mago. At this moment tears of anger appeared in my eyes.
This “express” just shuttles between the Franconian and the Suebian capital, and for whatever godless reasons it stops for a crew change in a town called Lauda, just behind (or before) the frontier between Bavaria and Baden-Württemberg. Sometimes there is no new crew, and then the train parks and the passengers wait in the rain for an hour until the following train comes by. Been there, done that. It always rains in Lauda.
Last night they had no replacement crew, and nobody could be arsed to drive the train towards Franconia in the morning. So of course it started from Lauda. How to reach this rotten place was not part of the travel information.
At this moment I yelled nasty words.
Later I went to the supermarket to buy stuff like fag paper, things I could put on bread. On the parking lot, near the plastic shed for the shopping trolleys, I was greeted by a man who had worked for The Knights (he was basically driving his now sadly deceased daughter), a now retired theoretical physicist, who (unasked) explained his view of the pandemic to me. It is a wild conspiracy theory that left me feeling very uneasy, because of his earnest, seriousness, and sense of mission. I had had a good rapport with his daughter, liked to discuss with his wife (a mathematician), and he sees me as one of the worthy, who just needs to be told the truth.
After all this, the rest of the day felt strangely empty. i wanted to cook, and had all the ingredients ready, they are still sitting there next to the sink, but I feel torpid. I want a fag, sleep, and forget this day.
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63 mago 