Citation Needed

Could there be a more German photo than this, taken at the end of my road? Even a picture of Lederhosen-clad men drinking beer, eating Bratwurst, leering at bedirndled Fräuleine with a backdrop of Oompah bands and mountains could not capture the spirit of a country as well as this photo. The literal translation is

Access to the railway is forbidden! Section 58 of the regulations of construction and operation of urban railways.

What makes this so very German is

1/ Verboten! Verboten! Das ist hier Verboten!

2/ The little section thingy. A German kezboard even has this on top as 'shift' + '3', relegating the local currency to an Alt-Gr manouvre. Referencing the correct paragraph of legal texts is obviously more important than paying for stuff.

3/ The appeal to a list of rules, rather than to common sense. Section 58 of the rules does of course exist, and says, in legalese, that people should keep off the tracks.

In England a similar sign would say "Please Keep off the tracks", although some more abrupt ones may omit the 'Please'. The specific authority telling you this isn't important, because this is a sign. It carries its own polite authority.

When I become King, all signs will be polite, logical, and carry proven scientific statements backed up by useful references.

Automation

I just lost it while trying to buy a train ticket from Bochum to Erlangen. I was getting on amicably with the ticket machine until it asked me which route I wanted to take. It gave four options, each with a different price, each consisting of 3 cities I hadn't heard of and one city that I knew, but that wasn't on the way from Bochum to Erlangen. I searched the screen for the button "Just put me on the next fucking train to Nürnberg" or "Automatic route selection using arrival time optimisation" but there wasn't one.

So I decided to go to the ticket office, and tell them to put me on the next fucking train to Nürnberg. The counters were blocked by a couple planning a 3-week rail holiday and an old lady who was being explained what a railway was. I got confused, thinking how annoying other people are, how best to program a ticket-selling machine for people with simple aims who are in a rush, and how I was going to miss my train.

I couldn't keep patient enough to stand in a queue, so I headed back to the machine and selected the most expensive of the four routes, just to be on the safe side. The route was via Dortmund, the train I took went in exactly the opposite direction, but wtf.

(I wrote this rant last weekend. I was going to follow it up, locate the missing cities, draw a map of Germany with the routes on, and make a big post. After careful thought, I decided to get on with more important things and not get so worked up. I also decided that the extra 5 Euros wasn't the end of the world.)

Better to cry in an ICE...

...than a Regionalbahn. I got the high speed train to from Bochum to Erlangen, and filled out some forms about my psychological health. I have an appointment on Monday with a psychologist, and I have a lot to discuss. When I finished filling out the forms, I burst into tears and shook quite a bit.

After half an hour of crying, I cheered up a bit, and the young girl sat opposite gave me a picture of a horse. She drew horses, the sun, butterflies and grass, and wanted Würzburg castle for christmas.

Train Connections

I'm back in Erlangen from Bochum. On the way I tried to comfort a girl who failed to get off the train at Hanau because the doors didn't open. This meant that she had to take a round trip to Wuerzburg and back which took a couple of hours. I pointed out that it wasn't that bad, there was no need to cry and this kind of thing happens to me all the time.

And just to prove that I wasn't making this up I then got on a train in Nuremberg that went straight through Erlangen and out the other side. I didn't know that any trains did this (duh!), so I took an hour long trip to Bamberg and back.

Bochum

My life had slowly been drifting into a totally lazy nothingness, so I packed a toothbrush and five juggling balls and got a train to Bochum. I hoped that things would become a bit clearer being there rather than in Erlangen.

I nearly missed two trains, the first one I only caught because the guy selling Bratwursts helped me buy a ticket. My last remaining screwed-up five Euro note kept being rejected by the ticket machine, despite receiving a good kicking. Luckily the Bratwurst guy was able to give me change.

This gave me five minutes in Nuremberg to buy a proper ticket, some breakfast (it was only 1pm) and a magazine. I then sprinted to the platform sidestepping lots of little people and was able to sneak in the door where the guard was waiting. The train left literally 5 seconds after I got on. After walking around Bochum for 20 minutes I gave up and booked into the Hotel Ibis.

That's the good thing about being completely disorganised: it gives you something to write about. The journey was quite nice, a little old Austrian women gave me a ham sandwich and the train went down the Rhein valley past lots of castles and the Loreley rock.