I love to travel by train; in fact, it is my favorite way to move from one location to the next. I can look outside the window, the landscape changes, the air gets warmer as you go south, the light changes. There is enough room for my legs, I can get up and walk around and the toilets are actually big enough to move around, where I only touch what I choose to touch.
I’ve taken many trains in my life, all over Europe, some in the US, and today, dear DB, I had a new experience with you, the Deutsche Bahn (DB), added to my list: chaos!
It all started a few weeks ago, when we bought train tickets from Munich to Rome. After a few hiccups with the online app “trainline”, we could buy tickets, and when we also tried to make seat reservations, we were without success. My usual response: oh well, we’ll try to get onto the train as soon as it arrives in Munich, then find a few (our group is 4 people) seats that aren’t reserved. That usually works very well. And that’s what we did: the train comes in, we hop on and find not only a few, but many seats without reservations! Great, we settle in a group seat of four, get comfortable and we’re happy that we were so smart and lucky.
It turns out that all the seats in that carriage were without reservation tags above the seat, and in the whole train! They literally didn’t put the tags there, and not only we thought we’d beat the odds, but many, many other people who didn’t have a reservation and ended up on the train early and had found a seat and settled in, all of us were confronted by those right-on-time people who did have a reservation and made us get up and move!
The announcement that a software glitch prevented the tag placement came as soon as the train was packed full with people with reservations trying to get rid of us, the no-reservation-intruders and us trying to find an empty seat, just to be chased away a few minutes later by another reservation-owner. And just imagine, all of us, the lucky reservation owners and us losers had luggage: big bulky suitcases, backpacks, bags with food and drinks, little kids, etc.
Chaos!
Until somebody said that this is an Austrian train, which explained everything!
From Munich till Trento, Italy, we suffered, mingled our way from one end of the train to the other and back, until we finally arrived in Trento to switch to an Italian train that would take us to Rome. In Italy you get a seat reservation with your ticket. It’s not a choice, it’s included with your ticket, and there are only as much people on the train as seats available, nobody blocking the walkways, no camp outs in the entrance/exit areas; you can indeed go to the bathroom and everybody on board has a seat: wonderful!
And here we are, enjoying the changing landscape, the sun is setting and we’re on our way to Rome: life is good and I love Italian trains!
Sincerely,
Edith
