On the Way to Bonn

I had planned to leave Berlin on Friday around 10am getting to Bonn at 2pm. I even emailed Fan with the train schedule. And then my boss finally showed up to the office on Thursday and asked to meet with me Friday morning at 10am. I couldn't really say no, especially since I haven't met with him in about two weeks. So I took the train that left Berlin at 3pm instead and got to Bonn at around 7pm. Luckily, Fan got the email and did not wait for me at the train station.

My supervisor gave me a new project that involves soil, biomass, and contamination. It's another one of those "what does he want?" things. I tried to get more information out of him but I get the feeling that he doesn't really know what's going on either. This really sucks. I'm stuck doing research again. I want to do something real. Is that so hard to ask for?

Anyway, it's probably good that I left early. Absolutely no one was at work. Both of my officemates are out. Even the secretary wasn't there. There might've been two other people besides my boss and me. I got a ticket for the ICE from Berlin to Bonn. There were some very confusing announcements on the platform. Well, confusing since I can't understand German. Anyhow, I figured out that the train is going to two different places and I should sit either in front or in the back, depending on where I want to go. It was good that I was paying attention to the signs since the train separated at one of the intermediate stops. One part of the train went to the Koln/Bonn airport while the other part continues onto Bonn and Koblenz.

The train was more than half full. I had read on an earlier trip that the seats facing each other have electric sockets available for laptops. None of those were available but I wanted to verify whether this claim was true before I sat in one of these seats anyway. I sat across the aisle from one of these seats and pretended to look for things in my backpack for several times trying to spy the electric socket but with no luck. Finally, when I was getting off the train, I found these sockets. There is only one socket for each table (4 people). I was a bit disappointed. I guess it's better than Amtrak where they state on their website that there are very little electric sockets available in coach.