TRAVEL | TRAVEL STORY | WESTERN EUROPE
A Disastrous Reintegration Into the Western World — Part One
One missed bus, a bus that left 25 minutes early without us, and a debit card that wouldn’t work.
We had just spent the previous three years living in Africa and Eastern Europe. Much of Africa doesn’t operate on schedules or timelines. Africans move forward gracefully and take each moment as it comes, not fast and hurried as our culture does.
Eastern Europe is different also. While they do have transit systems and timelines, it is still not as fast-paced and frantic as Western Europe and North America are. We like to think of it being a place that fits right in the middle of both worlds — Africa and the West. Of course, there are rules and structures in Eastern Europe, but everything just seems looser and less restrictive than countries in the West.
It’s probably why we like it there so much.
When we decided to return to Canada for a visit, we knew that we would have to adapt to the ways of the West. We knew that things would be more fast-paced and expensive. We knew that we would have to deal with more technology and schedules that were on time. We knew all of this in advance, but that didn’t help us.
After a lovely month of staying at Arabas Hostel, where we painted numerous murals, we finally left Thessaloniki, Greece, and were bound for Frankfurt. Of course, travel these days is not for the faint of heart, and we learned quickly why.
I should note that we almost took a 50-hour bus ride from Thessaloniki to Frankfurt. Almost. You may think it sounds ludicrous for us to even consider something like that, but the truth is that we both really enjoy traveling by bus. We like to see the landscape changing and morphing out the windows, and it gives us an on-the-ground perspective that you obviously can’t get from an airplane. Plus, the bus route was set to go from Greece to Italy by ferry, then we would drive all the way up Italy through the Alps, finally crossing Switzerland into Germany.
I can only imagine that the scenery would have been spectacular. But sleeping in seats for not one, but two nights, plus dealing with jetlag, felt like it would take us weeks to recover. So we finally opted to fly. I’m still unsure if it was the right decision as it led to immediate problems in our lives.
We were scheduled to fly out of Amsterdam on March 7th, 2023. The airline we were using, Canada’s West Jet, only flies from select European destinations during the winter months. Amsterdam was one of the options, and we yearned to visit there again after only being there once for 23 hours in 2015 on a layover. Initially, we tried to get flights from Thessaloniki to Amsterdam, but they were complicated and cost prohibitive. Also, one option that wasn’t too expensive would have had us enduring a 19-hour layover in the Istanbul airport. No thanks!
A Turkish visa was off the table for us as we had just spent 3 months there. Plus Visa’s for Canadians cost 70 USD! Too much for one night.
Knowing that Germany is just next door, I looked into flights from Thessaloniki to Frankfurt and was thrilled that we could not only get a direct flight but there were reasonably priced tickets for 160 Euros each including one checked bag. We decided that we would leave a few days early, on March 2nd, then would travel by bus or train from Frankfurt to Amsterdam.
We were excited to see a little bit of Germany as neither of us had ever been there before.
A lovely girl that we met at Arabas Hostel in Thessaloniki happened to be from Cologne, just a 2-hour bus journey from Frankfurt, and although she wouldn’t be there, she told us that her neighbor had a key and we could stay in her apartment if we wanted to. We were thrilled at her kind offer and made plans to go to Cologne, which included booking a bus from Frankfurt after our flight got in.
There were 2 options for the bus — one that left 2 hours after our flight arrival, or one that left about 4 hours later. The later one meant that we would arrive at about 1:00 am. Not wanting to bother the neighbor at that time of night, we opted for the early one. We figured that we would have lots of time to make the connection as there were trains that left right from the airport to the central station.
Of course, with things being the way they are in these days of travel, our flight from Frankfurt was an hour late leaving. We should have known.
By the time we picked our luggage up, we had about 35 minutes to make the connection. We raced down to the train station not knowing exactly where we needed to go or even how to get there. I knew that the bus pick-up was only a 2-minute walk from the Frankfurt Central Station, but when we got to the platforms, everything was in German and we had a hell of a time trying to figure out which train to take or which platform to be on.
We finally asked a man who started trying to help us. We walked over to the map together and he pointed at a few things but then he had to run because his train had arrived.
“Just wait here! Your train will come.” He yelled as he raced towards his train. We were relieved that we were on the right platform at least.
We approached the ticket vending machine and blubbered our way through purchasing a couple of tickets. It was like decoding a computer database trying to figure out what the central station was called and what line we would be on. In the end, we spent 11 Euros each. We cringed at the price, welcome to Western Europe! (The conductor later told us that we paid a few too many Euros, but at least we got the right tickets for the right train!)
The platform that we were on had an indicator that said 7:09. Our bus was at 7:15. I didn’t really believe that the next train wasn’t until 7:09 because I knew that a train from the airport to the central station would be running constantly. In fact, we watched a train on the next platform come every 5 minutes or so while we stood and waited painfully for ours to come.
We waited and waited and waited.
As the time ticked by, we could see that the time indicator was indeed telling us that the next train was at 7:09. We were defeated at that point and knew that we wouldn’t catch our bus. But we didn’t know where else to go but into the city anyways. From there we would surely figure something out.
While waiting, I checked my Flixbus app and saw that we were able to change our ticket to the later bus, but it would have cost us 40 Euros to do so. There HAD to be other solutions, we surmised. If we could just get to the central station, then we would figure it out. Plus, we felt that we may be able to get a credit for the missed bus if we could only talk to a ticket agent.
Finally, our train came. A few of us got on and thankfully there was a conductor just inside the door we were entering. “Hauptbahnhof?” Somebody asked him. This was the word for the central station, I recognized it from buying the tickets.
A discussion ensued and the people started to get off. I looked at him wide-eyed, “Central Station?” I pleaded in a bit of a desperate tone.
Switching over to English for us, he explained that we were on the wrong platform and pointed toward the one that we should have been standing on. Yes, THAT ONE! The one where we had seen the train come and go constantly since we arrived. Aargh! I kicked myself for not asking more people instead of just trusting one person.
We knew that had we gone to that platform, we would have made our bus.
We arrived to the Hauptbahnhof and despite seeing places to eat, and being very hungry, we quickly made our way out of the building and started on the two-minute walk to the area where the buses were meant to leave from. It was about 7:30 pm at this point and although we knew we had missed our bus, we wanted to talk about the options to a ticketing agent, just in case we could transfer the money to another ticket.
Seeing a Flixbus parked in the bus exchange brought relief as we at least knew that we were in the right place, but that was short-lived as we realized that the ticket office had closed at 6:00 pm.
We felt defeated.
Being hangry (hungry + angry) wasn’t helping our current situation so we wandered back to the train station to find some food. We just needed to sit down and figure out what we were going to do next.
I messaged our friend's neighbor on WhatsApp and told her that we had missed our bus so that she wasn’t waiting for us.
‘Oh no! What are you going to do?’ was her immediate response. Good question, I thought.
After a bit of back and forth, she suggested that we look into catching a train because she said that they run regularly. We had also thought of this previously and looked at the ticket prices online. Not surprisingly, they were crazy expensive for last-minute tickets.
Something we had learned before embarking on this adventure into the Western world is that tickets must be purchased in advance or we would pay dearly.
The other problem was that we only had cash with us. While in Africa our credit cards had expired and our only debit card was acting up. Many times over the past couple of months it had not worked in the ATMs and it was definitely stressing us out. Beyond wanting to return to Canada to check in on family, getting our banking issues sorted out was also a priority.
Of course, in much of Western Europe, plastic is the main way to pay for things. Chris went and talked to a lady at an information desk to ask about purchasing train tickets and he was told that we either had to book online or purchase them from the automatic ticketing kiosk on the platform where our train was leaving from. The second option obviously wasn’t available to us based on our current cash/card situation.
It was now dark and the train station looked like a frightening monster. People were moving fast in every direction and in our current state, we couldn’t even fathom trying to figure out which train left from where. No, a train was not an option for us at this point.
Honestly, we were only mere hours back into the Western World, and we already felt defeated. The wifi at the train station was appalling so I had a lot of difficulty trying to figure out where we could even stay near the train station. Of course, as I said earlier, it was dark outside and we couldn’t see much around us. But then I remembered seeing a Mariott sign lit up high on a building when our train from the airport pulled in.
Part 2:
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