Chasing Gabi in Germany
By Lothar. Filed in Germany |
Gabi is running another GAPP High School exchange trip. She left with 26 students on April 9, flying from Newark to Cologne, Germany. Left behind, I have been working the last 5 days.
Today is Sunday, April 13th and I am getting up at 5:30 AM, throw my carry-on bag in the car, and work at SPH from 7AM to 3PM. I am meeting Sonja at the Albany airport and she drives my car home. Perfect timing, we both arrive at the curb at the same time and I continue on my way to catch up with Gabi somewhere in Germany.
I am getting the dreaded “SSSS” on my Boarding Pass and I am glad to have arrived with some extra time for this extra-special security screening. They mess up my suitcase and I re-pack while waiting at the gate. My flight to Newark is climbing above the clouds, at first cruising South along the Hudson River. 40 minutes later, I can see the Manhattan sky line from Newark Airport.
Continental flight 50 is 40 minutes late and I decide to have dinner in a 60’s-style diner. I almost miss the flight and I am the last passenger boarding ( they never called our flight on the PA).
Fate is trying to delay my reunification with Gabi a few times now!
First we leave the gate 40 minutes late, then the captain parks our 767-200 on a remote taxiway, announcing that there are 20 airplanes ahead of us, waiting their clearance for take-off. We turn off the engines ( saving fuel) and wait. Eventually, we take off at 8:50 PM, crossing the Atlantic in 7 hours. We encounter a 200km/h tailwind and some moderate chop. At 8 AM, I am above Cork, England and Gabi at the High School Stadtgymnasium Köln-Porz. In Germany, we have to fly a long loop, going East past Frankfurt and are probably above Würzburg, when we finally turn around for our approach from the East into Frankfurt Airport. We finally land at 9:50 AM and I won’t make the ICE at 10:09. I am calling Gabi on her German cellphone. At this moment, she is riding a bus, taking her students from Cologne to Aachen, Germany. We make plans to meet in Aachen at 13:00.
I get my German Railpass validated and my train leaves Frankfurt at 11:09 AM. ICE 612 covers the 100 miles from Frankfurt to Cologne in 56 minutes, “flying” through Germany at a top speed of 300 km/hour. I do not feel the speed, I do not hear any noise from the tracks or switches, while I am having a nice breakfast with rolls and scrambled eggs in the Restaurant car. We arrive in Cologne at 12:05 and I switch to the “Thalys” train THA 9436, leaving at 12:13 for Aachen and Paris, scheduled arrival in Aachen 12:52.
Now our plan is falling apart again. 20 minutes after our scheduled departure, we are finally pulling out of the Cologne station. I notice that we appear to be going in the wrong direction. Shortly thereafter comes the announcement from the conductor: We will be arriving one hour late, because of a personal injury accident on the track between Cologne and Aachen ( meaning somebody committed suicide, by throwing him- or herself in front of a train.) Now I get to see the villages of the “Lower Rhineland”: Grevenbroich, Rheydt, Odenkirchen, Geilenkirchen and Herzogenrath, traveling the round-about way and finally approaching Aachen from the North. The young lady, sitting next to me is calling her family in Paris, and then lets me use her cell phone to call Gabi one more time. We discuss a new rendezvous point in Maastricht, Netherlands, where she will be with her students between 15:00 and 17:00 this afternoon. I arrive in Aachen at 13.40 and purchase a rail ticket to Maastricht, planned arrival time 15:45. Next I call Gabi from a public phone in the Aachen train station. BIG SURPRISE : she tells me that she is still in town here, having a coffee break at the restaurant “Extrablatt”, across from the old Town Hall. I forget my train ticket, jump into a taxi, and 10 minutes later, I walk into the restaurant and can take her into my arms. I did it, I have reached my destination!