Alone Again

Day: 314

I heard his alarm go off…. Damn 3:30am already. I had told my brother I would walk with him down to the train station to see him off on what I had been grooming him for all week. Solo travel. Aaron’s mission was to somehow manage to get from Salzburg, Austria, transfer trains in Munich, Move from train to plane in Frankfurt and be back to California with a day to recover before heading to work again at Nick.

He had his train tickets and his plane tickets; he had asked me every question there was about train transfers, how to check in at the airport, and what to do if something went wrong. Now he had just one more. “Think someone will jump me on the way to the train station?” He really knew I didn’t want to get out of bed.

“No… But if you feel uncomfortable, run like hell til’ you get to the station.”

With the extent of my good advice given to him, we said our goodbyes and I rolled over to go back to sleep.

Beep! Beep! Beep!

Now it was Kenneth and Brandon’s alarm, (at a more reasonable 7:30am), who were off to Prague. We too said our goodbyes, with no advice about muggings, and I was once again alone, with no idea of where to go next.

My first instinct was to roll over and return to my sweet slumber, but the ungodly 10am checkout policy forced me to my computer to find somewhere to go and get my blog up before getting lost in the Bavarian train system.

After a little poking around on the internet I decided to head north to Passau, a tiny German town of 27,000, on the Austrian border. Me, being cheap, (or Europe being so damn expensive right now), decided on a regional train with one transfer, to be there in four hours instead of the three hours on the high speed trains.

By the time I arrived it was already three in the afternoon, I hunted down the hostel about a kilometer from the train station and rang the bell. No answer. Ring again. No answer. Fuck. It had a little note about going down the street to check in at a small shop, so I wandered the block over to the shop and guess what? Closed, but the sign said it reopened at 4pm on Fridays. Sweet…I’ll just wait.

I waited about twenty minutes before I remembered that, unfortunately, today wasn’t actually Friday, it was Monday. Damn, the little shop was closed on Mondays.

Not knowing how I lost track of days, I reprimanded myself as I walked the block back to the hostel. I rang again, with still no answer, but it did have a telephone number under where it told me to go to the shop. The last phone I remember seeing was about a kilometer back, at the train station. Slightly frustrated I set off, finally finding a phone that worked with the phone card I had about a hundred meters shy of the train station.

“Hallo?”

“Yeah…do you have room in your hostel tonight.”

“Ja… 20:00 o’clock”

“What?!” Glancing at my watch, that was still 3 ½ hours away.

“I be at hostel 20:00 o’clock”

“No one can let me in before?”

“Try ring bell, maybe someone let you in.”

“ummm…ok. Danke.”

I huffed it back the kilometer back to the hostel, even more frustrated by now (and tired of walking with my backpack full of camera gear). I had just about given up on this independent hostel, and was ready to move on to the super-sterilized HI down the street (which charges extra euros if you happen to be over 26), but since Das Lila Haus (The Lily House) was on the way, I tried the buzzer one more time. An Austrian with a French accent introduces himself and lets me in.

Gareth, proceeds to lead me into the smallest hostel I have ever been in. Two rooms (4 and 6 beds, respectively), a small kitchen and a single bathroom. I am then informed that he is just another guest, and it is just he, I and another German staying here. Possibly because of the difficultly of getting in, I think.

The story makes sense later that evening after I have taken a little walk and am sitting drinking a cup of coffee as 8pm rolls around. An attractive, frantic, overstressed, hyper woman in her late forties comes bustling into the kitchen. I proceed to understand that I am to pay her the 15 Euros a night, and she proceeds to tell her life story to Gareth in German as I sit there, patiently trying to understand.