A few days before we were scheduled to leave for Croatia I lost my bank card (actually it was the second time I lost it, but who's counting). Of course I immediately went to the bank and put a freeze on the card and ordered up a new one, but beyond that I didn't put much though into it. Dylan and I have a shared account, and so he was able to get money for me, and I also still have my credit cards, etc. The morning we were supposed to leave for Croatia, I woke up and was preparing to print out our E-ticket, when it occurred to me that I had purchased the E-ticket with my bank card, and I was supposed to use my bank card as an ID with the ticket. As a matter of fact, the ticket clearly stated on it, that it would be invalid without the corresponding ID card listed (my bank card). This was a little stressful, but I figured it would be no problem to call up the train company, and have them issue me a new ticket, or change the required form of ID, or something. So I called up the German railway, I wasn't feeling particularly ambitious, so I asked for an English representative. They nicely transferred me, and then I heard this message in English "Thank you for your call, unfortunately no one is available to assist you at this time, please try back later... click". I tried this twice more before giving up on getting to speak to anyone in English. So now I'm trying to explain and resolve my problem in German (not that bad actually, my German skills are coming along!). The first person I speak to says that's no problem at all, but since it's an international trip, he'll transfer me to the international branch, after which, of course, the call gets dropped. The next person I spoke to basically told me I was completely out of luck and would need to buy a completely new train ticket. After such vastly different stories, I decided to try one more time. The third person I spoke to told me if I could get a letter from my bank saying that the card was lost, I should be fine, but she couldn't make any promises about that letter working outside of Germany. At this point I've spent over and hour making phone calls and am totally mentally exhausted. We decide to just get to the train station early, and try to find someone their who can give us a more concrete answer.
At this point I decided to finally go ahead and print out our ticket. Of course, our printer does not work. There is no ink or something, and while it will print a shadow of the ticket, it is not presentable. No problem. Dylan will ride down to work and print the ticket there. I search for "dbahn"(the German Rail company) in my emails, and forward the most recent email with an E-ticket attachment to Dylan to print off. When we get to train station Dylan spoke (in English) to one of the information attendants and she assures him that with the letter from the bank, all my other forms of ID and Dylan's bank card we will be fine, no problems! What a relief. Things just keep getting better as we get the train and realize that the "parent-child" seats that I have booked for us are a compartment of 6 seats with a sliding door that we have all to ourselves. We are finally able to start relaxing and enjoying our trip! After about a half hour the conductor comes by and we show her our ticket and explain to her the issue with our ID card. To which she responds that our ID card is no problem, however, the fact that our ticket is for Saturday (we were traveling on Thursday) was a very big problem, and if we can't produce a ticket for today, we will either have to buy a ticket to Salzburg, and then get out, or buy a new ticket to Croatia which will be very expensive since our initial ticket was a purchased with a special fare. The explanation for this predicament is quite simple, we had changed the dates of our ticket at some point, and had accidentally printed up the old, no longer valid ticket. Looking back on it it seems a little funny, and it's a good story. But at the time, you can not imagine how stressed I was. I was literally shaking and practically in tears. At first glance, I could think of no solution, but then it occurred to me that maybe if I could just show her the pdf of our legitimate ticket, she would give us some grace and allow us to stay on the train. Thankfully, we had purchased smart phones a few months earlier, and I was actually able to pull up the correct email and e-ticket on my phone. Once I zoomed in, she was able to scan the e-ticket off of my phone with her ticket scanner. Amazing! She warned us that this may not/probably would not be accepted as a valid ticket once we were out of Germany, but we had made it past the first hurdle, and decided to ride it out and see how the rest of the day would go.
The rest of the train ride was stressful, because I never knew exactly how things would go with our tickets, but it went about as well as could have been expected. In Austria, I explained the situation in German and showed him the pdf, he stared at the screen, and then us for a long time, mumbled something incomprehensible, and then left and didn't come back. In Slovenia the conductor spoke neither German nor English very well, but was very adamant that he needed a paper ticket to punch, and so our pdf was not sufficient. We finally offered him the invalid ticket for two days in the future, and he punched it and went away satisfied. In Croatia she barely glanced at our ticket, and told us everything was fine.
After 8.5 hours on the train we finally arrived in Zagreb, and right as we climbed out of the train there was Orejano, our friend from Boulder. What a relief to see a friendly face and know that we would not have to handle and more obstacles in the day! A few minutes later his wife, Ticijana came running up and swept us all into a big hug. You can't imagine how much it meant to finally be with friends, and just be able to relax and enjoy.
The boys in our train compartment. I'm so glad we had it, it made the ride much less stressful, and I don't think I could have handled one more stressful aspect on that particular day!
I'm so sorry you had to feel stressed on your very cool trip. I think you do a great job of scheduling and planning. I'm glad you were eventually able to relax and enjoy. You deserve that!
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