Train Drama

We learned a few important lessons on our first long train trip to Belgium, primarily that traveling by train can be just as bad as everyone warned us it would be. We have heard jokes and complaints about Deutchebahn trains since we arrived in Germany: constantly late, often canceled, always annoying, but despite all the warnings, we booked a train for our trip to Bruges and Ghent because we decided it would be less stressful than driving and finding parking in strange cities. Plus, according to google maps the trains were a bit faster than driving. Win win!

Spoiler alert: it was not a win win.

The 4 hr 48 minutes train ride the map promised did not take into account the disaster that is the route between Cologne (Köln) and Belgium. (The different colors on the map below are different train lines, not issues with the tracks. The white dot on the right in the yellow circle is Cologne (Köln) and the one on the left is Liege.)

My biggest mistake was booking through Trainline, a third party app. On paper it saved us money, but the attempt to save money was not worth the headache it caused when the Trainline app never even recognized that there were major problems with the tracks in Cologne and that most of the ICE trains (the German InterCity Express trains) to and from Cologne were being cancelled, diverted, or seriously delayed. The ICE train we booked from Cologne to Bruges was flat-out cancelled, not that the “live” updates on the Trainline app ever figured that out.

On the trip to Bruges I was able to use the Deutchebahn app (Germany’s primary passenger train company) to find other train options, and navigated us from Cologne to Aachen, then from Aachen on to Brussels and Bruges. Not a single train we were on actually arrived on time, but the delays worked in our favor since our connecting trains were also delayed and we were able to make our hastily planned connections.

It was annoying and stressful, but not awful. It also helped that the trains in Belgium were willing to take our Trainline information as confirmation that we had paid someone for a trip to Bruges that day. The trip a few days later from Bruges to Ghent went just fine, perhaps because it was a Belgian train and the trip was only about 35 minutes.

The trip back from Ghent to Wiesbaden was not nearly as smooth. The problems on the tracks at Cologne only seemed worse than before, and as far as I could tell not a single ICE train was going from Belgium to Cologne that day. Again, the “live” updates for our Trainline tickets never even registered a problem. However, we were better prepared for problems, so we got to the station a couple of hours before our scheduled tickets and started looking for alternatives.

When we talked to the ticket agents in Ghent, they told us our best bet was to go to Brussels (which was always going to be part of the trip anyway) and they would help us sort it out. Once we got to Brussels, the agent told us our best bet was to go to Aachen, and they could help us sort it out. Sigh.

At this point I started looking at other ideas. Rental cars were a no go for same day travel. I actually booked a flight from Brussels that would have gotten us to Frankfurt within our original arrival window, and then immediately canceled it when realized with horror that I had booked the wrong day. Flights for the same day were considerably more expensive and the options were much later in the day, so we went back to looking at train options.

After searching various apps and options — all of which went through Cologne no matter how I tried to route us — I realized the single best bet was a Eurostar train that we could catch in Brussels and take straight into Cologne. As far as I could tell it was one of the only trains actually going into Cologne from Belgium for most of the day and it was the next train going to Aachen anyway. I tried to purchase tickets for it through the Deutchebahn app, but the app choked on the purchase and I couldn’t get it to go through.

With few options left, I decided to just see if the Trainline tickets would work like they had worked before. Instead we got stopped trying to board the train and were told we had to purchase tickets since it was a completely different train company. Luckily, despite being a very full train, we were able to wait in line on the train and purchase tickets once we were under way — as a bonus they were even cheaper that way than the app had them. As an extra special gift from the universe someone offered to move to a new seat so we were  able to sit together and settle in for the next leg of the trip, which was fortuitous, because this leg of the trip also included a 90 minute delay and quite a diversion before we finally made it into Cologne, so I was very happy we had seats together.

Once in Cologne I realized that our original Trainline ICE train to Wiesbaden was also behind schedule and we could still catch it. We rushed from one platform to the next and managed to cram ourselves onto the very full train. People were standing and sitting wherever they could, but it was the train we scheduled and even if we couldn’t find seats we could still make it home on time! Plus, the trip was only an hour, so it would suck to stand, but it wouldn’t be the end of the world.

Then the dreaded announcement came — problems with the track were going to cause a 120 minute diversion. At this point I said screw it. Because of all of my research for train options throughout the day I knew there was another train to Wiesbaden that expected low demand 60 minutes after our scheduled train — so we bailed from the crowded train before it left the station. I figured the worst case scenario was that we would get diverted and delayed on a train where we actually had seats, rather than sitting on the floor packed with dozens of equally miserable strangers. After all of the stress and chaos of the day though, I just went ahead and bought new tickets and reserved seats because I was done playing around.

The final train was anti-climatic. It arrived more or less on time, it was not crammed full of people, and we were easily able to find our reserved seats. It even arrived in Wiesbaden within 10 minutes of its advertised arrival time with no diversions or significant delays, which was pretty impressive! I was also quite pleased with our decision to switch trains when I checked out the previous train on the Deutchebahn app and realized that the stops in Wiesbaden and Frankfurt had been completely cancelled for them — so who knows where we would have ended up if we had stuck with it.

Moving forward we will be way more hesitant to book train travel. Most likely we will save it for shorter trips with no connections, or for direct trips between major cities. And no matter what, we won’t be using third party apps like Trainline to book tickets.