We decided to go to Cologne because Jingwen was in Frankfurt for work. They are both cities on the west side of Germany. We had planned to go on Saturday but Jingwen couldn
't get the special priced ticket for Saturday in time so we went on Sunday. So I wandered around Berlin on Saturday by myself. I will post about that later. Sorry, these past few posts have been out of order.Anyway, I got a ticket to go on a night train that would from Berlin to Cologne in 6 hours. It's like a red-eye flight, except on a train. I left my dorm pretty early, around 10pm. The sky was still bright. It didn't get dark until almost 11pm. You might have heard that beer is the national drink in Germany. They actually have a drinking age but no one even knows what it is. Teenagers have a lot more freedom to drink and party here than in the States. Schools let out at 1pm so we always see high school students just sitting around looking bored. These high school kids go out and drink on Saturday nights. I met a bunch of them while on the Berlin local trains. They were really drunk.
I got to Berlin Haufbahnhof pretty early for my train. Haufbahnhof means main train station. Most cities have one. Most of the stores were closed except for a few food places. So I was walking around when I got stopped by 2 police officers. One of them spoke English and asked me for my passport. I had thought about bringing my passport with me but didn't see a need since I wasn't going to leave the country. They then asked if I had any other ID. I handed over my ID card for the local train, MIT student ID, and later my Bank of America card. None of which they were satisfied with. I was really confused. The first thought that came to my mind was that something really bad, like a robbery, must've happened and now they're looking for the bad guys. But that didn't seem like the case. Anyway, I had to go with them to the police station, which is still in the train station. They asked me for my name, date of birth, and later my address here in Berlin (which I managed to mess up). They kept asking me where I live in Berlin. I told them and they seemed disappointed. I think that had I lived any closer they would've taken me there and got me to show them my passport. After all this, they said it was okay and let me go. I asked if it was normal procedure multiple times but I don't think they understood me. Finally as I was leaving, one of the guys answered and said that everyone in Berlin carries their passport around with them. Not sure if this is actually true but was pretty shocking to me since the shortage of passports in the States had been on the news lately. And I read on a website today written by a German national who went to the US for grad school about the differences he noticed in the two countries. He said that German police frequently stops people and asks for ID, especially if you're a foreigner or look foreign.
Even after all this I still had to wait a while for my train to come. But I guess it's good that I went so early. When I was on the platform, there were fireworks off in the distance. It was a pretty nice view from the platform. That went on for a few minutes. My train came a little late, 5 minutes or so.
When I got on and found my seat (you have to reserve a seat for night trains), there were already people in the compartment. In fact, all 6 seats were already taken. One of the guys asked me to switch a seat with one of them and showed me a ticket with seat number 85 on it. I was supposed to be in 95. Well, he didn't really speak English but I figured that's what he was trying to say. So I was like "okay" and went to the next cabin, which has seat number 85. I opened the door and these 2 ladies did not seem too happy to see me. One of them insisted that I show her my ticket and pointed me back to 95. I looked over at seat number 85 and sure enough, that seat was taken up by the other woman's feet. I made it pretty clear to her that I had switched seats with the people in the next cabin but they didn't want me to sit with them. So I went back to the other cabin to try to get that guy to show them his ticket. But one of the train officials came and asked the group of people to go back to their original seats.
Which all worked out in the end since that guy had already asked quite a few people to move to different seats. The seat reservations don't really matter unless you're sitting in someone's seat and that person actually cared about where they sat. So I ended up in the cabin with one other person. We sat there for a minute or two and this French couple walked in with a huge suitcase. The husband didn't seem too happy with the seats. I think they had reserved a cabin with beds. He goes off to talk to the train officials for a while. The other lady and I wanted to turn off the lights to the cabin so we can look out the window. Only problem was, the French lady didn't speak any English. Neither did we. Well, the other lady spoke a little bit but she didn't know how to say "light". And later we found out that the French lady didn't have her prescription glasses and couldn't see anything. So all the pointing at the lights was useless. We just ended up turning the lights off and she was okay with it. The couple moved after a while to another cabin and the 2 of us had the whole cabin to ourselves. Which was really nice since we got to lay down and sleep.
So this thing is getting pretty long and I still haven't gotten to the actual trip yet. This trip might take 3 parts. heh.
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