I was in Germany on an official visit and in Italy on my way back from Florence. I had made a previous booking through Expedia for a Friday night stay at a suburban Dusseldorf hotel . I was accompanied by my German colleague and through him I learned that the suburb was so far away that I would waste a lot of money going back and forth by taxi. So I decided to spend the  Urlaub auf Usedom  night at the airport to keep myself awake with a strong Starbucks coffee available at the airport.

Dusseldorf from Florence

I landed in Dusseldorf from Florence at around 6pm and after the last flight at 10pm the airport surprisingly stayed with just me and a few airport staff, something I could never expect at a major Indian airport. The next available flight was in the morning. I was completely stranded in a foreign country and had no idea how to reach Munster-Osnabrück.

Anyway, I tried to gather some information but almost no one spoke English in this town. I was at a loss because of this disability. However, a German gentleman helped me and told me that I could reach the station where the trains to Munster-Osnabrück leave and with any luck I could catch the last train.

train station

I rushed from the airport to the train station on the Skytrain, but I wasn’t as lucky as I expected. The last train ( Deutsche Bahn ) had already left and the next available train was at 6am. I would recommend all first time travelers to Germany to familiarize themselves with DB timetables and timetables before reaching Germany by accessing their website. This website also allows you to buy tickets online from international websites. I spent some time at the train station but it was open from all sides and I was freezing. I tried looking for a place to sit but they were all crowded and I couldn’t find a place to stretch out. The only option was the cold floor, which I didn’t want to use.

Somehow I got a seat and was lost in thought all day. About how my day had started early in the morning at the hotel in Florence and the donut I bought at the nearby shop to get to the venue on time. I remembered the crowded bus in Florence full of office goers and the young Italians riding their Vespas .

ticket counter

I quickly got bored at the train station and after asking at the ticket office, I took the free Skytrain and headed back to the airport. I spent my night there on a sofa sipping another hot Starbucks coffee. I bought a ticket to Munster-Osnabrück which cost 20 euros and got a destination ticket with a train change which I couldn’t understand from looking at the ticket. The train arrived on time but I was always confused as to which bogey to board and which seat to take as there was absolutely no assistance and the systems were very different than in India. I accepted the conductor ‘s help and boarded the train. The whole bogey was empty so I took a seat somewhere comfortable. It was an experience to travel on a German train for the first time in my life. The train was large and comfortable by Indian standards. No sizzling noises from outside so if I hadn’t looked outside I would have concluded the train was standing still. A few stops later, a few more people joined, and by the fifth stop, my bogey was completely full with, at most, people jostling near the door. Some German youths had beer bottles in their hands and were probably coming back from their schools since that day was a Saturday.

The gentleman next to me saw my ticket and suggested I get off at the next stop, but I didn’t understand a word and continued my journey. I didn’t understand his instructions until I checked the station name against the wording on my ticket, but by then I had already crossed 2 more stops. Anyway, I got off here and bought another ticket to Münster-Osnabrück. There are customer care centers in the stations themselves , which are very helpful with my limited knowledge of German.

Germany trains

I realized that trains can be late even in Germany and here I waited 1.5 hours for the train to arrive! But when the train arrived, everything was well prepared and I was able to snag a window seat on a sunny day – this was my reward after a sleepless night in the freezing cold.

It was a 1.5 hour drive and the countryside was full of greenery. An experience I will never forget for the rest of my life. The green fields seemed cropped with German precision and the landscape dotted with white towering windmills. The winding roads resembled streams of clean water in the Himalayas and the houses were just perfectly set against the background. The houses looked like the perfectly built Indian huts. The backdrop was as if this part of the world was still affected by man-made pollution – what a contradictory conclusion for the German landscape, as Germany is at the forefront of global industrialization! I had only imagined this scene in my dreams but could never see it among concrete towers in Indian cities. The cows mowing the field were healthy and beautiful in their white and black colors. This scene could easily inspire the poet who would like to continue traveling on the window side. It was a perfect setting for a film shoot. The scene was so mesmerizing that I continued to watch even with drooping eyelids.