The First Day

The day started off with my flight ... delayed by 2 hours. Finally reached Frankfurt airport at 8 am. It is so huge it took 10 minutes of bus ride to get us from the flight to the exit. Got the luggage and off to the train station. Train travel is very costly here. Cost us 19 euros for travel from Frankfurt to Kaiserslautern, a 2 hr journey on one of the slower trains. We (me along with Om and Manpreet from IITG) got on the train and found a few ex-IITians on the same compartment. The train journey was going fun. But Murphy decided to give me a bad day and the real fun began [:P].

Me, Om and another person Sivakumar had to go to TU, Kaiserslautern and were supposed to get off at the station "Bad Münster am Stein-Ebernburg" which was to come at 12:30. We did get down but on the wrong station, a station before Bad Münster. I found out from the station Information counter that we could get on the next train out straight to Kaiserslautern on the same ticket, which was quite a relief given the cost of tickets. So I give my fellow travellers tha happy news and I am suddenly struck by this grave realization: My baggage is missing! AAhhhh! Obviously I freaked out a little because we had no way to know whether it was on the train or somebody stole it. Fortunately Sivakumar had a phone and I saw a ray of hope. Now the question was whom should I contact.

First we tried to get a contact to the Saarbrucken station where the train was headed, so that somebody could pick up the luggage there but to no end as the number we got was not working. Now Om remembers the name of this guy who is going to pick up Manpreet at Saarbrucken and I thought that it would be my best bet. But Om doesn't have his number. So I call up my father to try and get the number of Ehad (the guy picking up Manpreet) by searching on the net. After 2-3 tries we got the right number. We called him up only to find that he's already left for picking up Manpreet. Fortunately, though, we were able to get his mobile number.

Murphy decided that he's done with teaching me a lesson and things finally started getting into place. The bag was with Manpreet and he'll keep it till I pick it up on the weekend. The good thing was that the bag had the less essential items and the major survival stuff and most importantly my passport were with me.

We got down at Kaiserslautern and Om's prof's secretary took us to the univ where I found my prof just when he was about to leave. In the meanwhile Stephanie (my prof's secretary) had been to the station twice to pick me up [:P]. I got to my apartment which is a pretty good place and started unpacking and slept half-way only to get up in the middle of the night to have some food. All in all I slept 12+ hrs. Long blissful sleep after a long time.