Planning Drama II

Krista is smart.

I told all of my friends they should come to Europe and visit while I have a free roof (and tour guide) to offer here in Germany. Krista was my only friend smart enough to take me up on my offer.

Krista came on a Thursday. Thursday is when I have most of my classes. But this particular Thursday was a Feiertag. So I told her to come on this day because I would be able to pick her up at the airport regardless of her arrival time. Her plane was scheduled to land just after 10am. I don't have to get up too early to get to Frankfurt International and we still have a full day. Perfect.

Not perfect. Thursday was a Feiertag. The group we planned on heading to Berlin with also wanted to use this day for travel. I had told one of the two girls planning the trip (nameless, because it doesn't matter) a week and a half prior that Krista arriving on that Thursday. I don't know what nameless was thinking, but for whatever reason didn't see the issue with leaving at 8am Thursday morning then. I didn't find out that was the plan until the Monday before the trip, at which point I immediately informed her that Krista's plane lands at 10am, so that's a problem. Apparently nameless failed to inform the other planner (who I rarely see) about the problem until Wednesday morning - the day before the trip. The day before was apparently too uncomfortable to delay a departure time by a whole 3 hours.

Fine. With the addition of Krista and me, the travel group was 10 people. Perfect. Two groups of 5 (the group tickets cover a max of 5 people each). I don't need to delay the whole group. Nor would I want to. I just need to find three kind, unselfish people willing to hang back an extra couple of hours. Heck, the unselfish ones would even get to sleep in. No luck.

The group tickets mean regional trains only. Regional trains from Gießen to Berlin is an 8 hour trip with three or four train changes. Everybody wanted to get as early of a start as possible so they'd be able to use part of Thursday still to see Berlin. I found only one person willing to hang back - but even that was only if I could find two more people to hang back to fill the ticket. Wanted to help, but didn't want to help at the price of paying extra to get to Berlin. ..I didn't want to pay extra either, which is why I wanted to find people to wait in the first place. But I understand.

People have a harder time saying no to your face. Over the internet, it's easy. The phone is almost the same. So I went next door and explained the situation to Monika, who reluctantly offered to wait back as well, again if I found a fifth person to fill the ticket. The price difference between 4 people and 5 people for the group ticket isn't a whole lot. Which is why the group didn't have an issue leaving Krista and me behind in the first place. But Monika didn't want to piss off the rest of the group, who would then only be 6 people. Six is too many for one group ticket, which means it would be three people splitting each. Annoy two people or annoy six. ...again, I understand.

What I don't understand is why I couldn't find one more selfless person to wait a whole three hours. I guess some people I thought were Freunden are eigentlich nur selbstsüchtig Bekannte. Three others who I know would have waited had been planning a trip to Prague (a trip that fell through last minute). So we were stuck. Just the two of us. Nameless explained that we could still "save money" by splitting a group ticket between the two of us. It would "only" be €45 (compared to the whopping €18 it would have been with 5 people per ticket, or the €22 they wound up paying as a result of a missing Krista and Adam).

Krista isn't studying in Giessen, or Germany at all. Just visiting. So she is also without the Hessen ticket which allows everyone else (me included) to ride regional trains in Hessen for free. So she would have to pay the roughly €20 ticket to get from Frankfurt to Kassel on top of the €45 for the tickets to Berlin, jacking her total up to €65 for an 8 hour ride on regional trains having come right off 10 hours on a plane from Chicago. She said she'd worked her tail off for the last several months saving specifically for her trip to Europe, so she didn't have a huge money concern. After knowing that, I made the executive decision for her to pay a whole €15 more for a ticket on the ICE train instead. The ICE's are the faster trains. From Frankfurt to Berlin, it is only 4 hours instead of 8. So after picking Krista up at the airport buying tickets and eating lunch (or whatever meal it really felt like for her), we arrived in Berlin just half an hour after the first group had. They were actually still in the train station, just sitting down for something to eat.

What happened in the next several hours is probably what bothered me the most. We watched the others eat. We were still full from lunch and Krista's left over snack food for the plane ride here. Then we took forever to make our way to the hostel we were staying at on the southwest edge of the city. Sure, the buses were on strike (I seem to have pretty good luck with European capital cities), but how hard is it to decide to hop on an S-Bahn to the station nearest our hostel and take a (couple) taxi(s) from there? Or take a taxi from right where we were (which is what we eventually wound up doing)?

After having spent just over two hours in the city doing nothing, the ambitious group decided to rest for a bit after settling in at the hostel. 20 minutes actually sounded good to me too. But that twenty minutes quickly turned into 40, and then another half hour was tacked on when the girls (including one high maintenance male) finally decided to get ready. Krista's not one of them. It took her less than 5 minutes.

We were finally heading out to see the city as the sun started to go down around 8pm. Which happens to be after when the second group of us would have arrived if there would have been enough generous people to wait behind. ...so much for making the most of Thursday... At least now it's crystal clear to me how nameless makes her decisions.