My first vacation day started off at 4 am. Apparently I was already anticipating the journey, otherwise I wouldn't have been awake 30 minutes before 4 am. Turned over one more time and got up 5 minutes before my alarm clock was supposed to go off. Took Gina for her morning walk. I decided not to have breakfast, still felt stuffed from last nights dinner. packed the rest of my stuff. And got ready for the cab to pick me up. I left at 5.30 am since I wanted to be at the train terminal Wien-West at 6 am. But my train wasn't scheduled to leave till 6.30 am. I got to the train terminal about 10 minutes before six. While there I checked and see if I could purchase Gina's ticket back, since for some reason I can't book that online. But there were way too many people in line. So I wanted to check on my phone. Guess what, I had no phone on me. At first I thought I might have lost it in the cab. But then I remembered putting my wallet and camera into my pockets, but not my phone. My guess is it is still sitting on my desk at home. I checked the time and there was no way that I would make it to my apartment and back to the train station in time to catch the train. So I was without phone, without a clock and without any means of communication. This really sucks. And these days there aren't many public phones around anymore. Being without a cell phone made me really feel somewhat odd and lost. Fortunately I was traveling First Class, therefore I had at least internet access. Good thing that I brought along my MacBook. As fun as it has to free WiFi on the train, one thing has to be said. The WiFi is somewhat spotty. Especially in Austria's province Salzburg Wifi on the train is very unreliable. And as soon as you pass into Germany, you don't have any WiFi till you reach Munich.
I did have a layover in Munich of about 50 minutes. I had chosen that on purpose. This gave me the opportunity to take Gina for a walk, so that she could do her business. Munich today was rather hot, but Gina figured out very quickly what the idea of this particular walk was. She did do her business very quickly and that was good so. I knew that there was a store somewhere close to Munich Central Rail Station and so I went ahead and looked for it. Located the store easily. I was hoping for a cheap cellphone with a small data plan. But the prices therefore were just outrageous. 200 bucks and up. So I chose a basis cell phone that just could do calls and send SMS.
After that Gina and I walked back into the Train Terminal. Checked which platform our train was to leave from. Fortunately the train was already there, although it wasn't scheduled to leave for another 30 minutes. We found ourselves some seats and Gina find herself quickly a spot. Good thing the ICE we were traveling with had a good working air-condition. This was very good for Gina, since she was pretty hot. And this ICE was having a WiFi hotspot and this hotspot was working perfectly fine. That was something that did make me quite happy.
It took me quite a while to figure out that particular cell phone. I had sent my friend Udo an email but hadn't heard back from him. So I tried to send him a text message. But this particular is very odd indeed. With every other phone I know you enter first the number and then the text. This phone however requires you to enter the text first and then the number. For that reason I sent my friend Udo an empty text message. Once I realized the mistake I tried to correct. Was just in the middle of typing the tex when my friend called my German Cell. Gave him a short rundown of the story and we both had a good laugh.
With this train journey entering it's 10th hour poor Gina really didn't want to sit on the train anymore. She couldn't get really comfy. And those 2 noisy kids in front of us weren't helpful either. I really can understand my dog, since I wasn't too fond of that long train ride either. For a dog a long train ride has to be super boring, as there is really nothing to do for her. But all things considered she was doing just great.
We arrived at Leipzig Central Station about 7 minutes late. Took some time to finally get out of the train. As we were walking down the platform we finally saw my friend Udo and his dog Silly. The two dogs sniffed each other and were getting along just fine. I was very happy about that. We made our way to the tram and took a short ride to Udo's apartment. That way a very long travel day came finally to an end.
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