I'll dub this one "The day of getting lost."

Well, my brother left yesterday to go back to the states. Oh boy, did we have a great time! I hope he had fun as well. I'm desperately trying to get caught up on what we did. So here's the next installment.

The week after we got back from our trip up north, Todd decided he wanted to go see Hohenzollern Castle which is just a little south from here. So one day while Mark was at work, we hopped some trains to get to Hechingen, which is the city below the castle. As we approached the train station there, I was blown away by the sight of the castle up on the hill. One of the coolest castles I've seen here, by far!

We had tried our best to thoroughly research how to get to the castle, but when we arrived in the train station, we still had no idea where the bus was that would take us to the top of the castle. So after asking a few people around, we waited for a little while and caught the bus to the castle. After we arrived, we discovered that the only bus taking us down the hill from the castle was coming sometime well past 4 o'clock. We were so disappointed. How could that be the only bus going down the hill? We were mainly disappointed because we didn't want to spend all day at the castle (it's definitely not five hours worth of sightseeing, which is how much time we had until it came again) and we wanted to see Tübingen, a historical city that is just south of Stuttgart. Plus, we had a football game to go to later with Mark, and coming back to the Hechingen station past 4 o'clock definitely wasn't going to give us enough time to get back.

Since I didn't have any euros to get inside the castle (what can I say, Mark and I are pretty poor) Todd went inside and had a look around while I waited on a bench outside.

So it seems like I've been a pretty bad space cadet lately and forgot to get his pictures of inside the castle. He said it was amazing, though. But this is the outside entrance to the courtyard!

Sorry Todd, I couldn't resist!

I really wish I had more pictures of the castle. Oh well. I guess that's what happens when you're scraping the bottom of the barrel!

Since it only took my brother an hour or two to go through the castle, we decided we would just walk down the hill to the center of the city from the castle. After all, we couldn't wait another two hours for the bus back to the station. It wasn't a very long walk either, maybe about three kilometers.

The walk turned out to be awesome. We got tons of great views of the castle and Hechingen. We were so lucky to make it there on a clear day.

Yep, that's me.

I took about a million pictures of the castle on the walk back. I would take another picture, walk about 50 feet, look back at the castle, and be astounded again. *Snap!*

In the middle of Hechingen.

So after we arrived in the middle of the city, we were desperately searching for the train station. We had a general idea of where it was because we'd already been there, but when we would try to walk on a street that looked like it would lead there, we would end up at a dead end or a park. Finally I decided that we needed to ask for directions so we walked into a little shoe shop to ask.

I knew that we weren't really that close to the station and I didn't know if I could handle the complex directions that would probably be given to me in German, so I asked, "Können Sie English?" to the two people inside. The lady smiled and said she didn't really know that much and pointed to a younger guy in the shop. They couldn't speak English very well, so he drew me a map. We thanked them profusely and left the shop.

We followed their directions and it led us to the street Bahnhofstrasse, then that's where the map ended. (Bahnhof in German is the train station.) I was perplexed and we couldn't see the train station anywhere. Usually there are signs to the train station if you are close, but we walked up and down and we couldn't see one. Can you say frustration central? We spent so much time searching for the blasted train station and our train that we needed was coming soon.

I glanced around for someone to ask for directions. There was an older man coming our way who looked a little intimidating, but I decided to suck it up and just ask him where it was. I knew that we were close and I could handle the directions he would give me. So I asked, "Entschuldigung, wo ist der Bahnhof?" ("Excuse me, where is the train station?") Then he immediately rattled off sentence after sentence and I was instantly lost. But luckily, he used hand directions and I could tell he told us to walk straight then turn right. After he said a few more things, we thanked him and crossed the street. We walked up the street about a couple of blocks and the man who we asked for help was on the opposite side of the street walking in the same direction. Just then, we saw a sign telling us to turn right to get to the train station. I looked across the street at the man who had helped us and he was standing there pointing to where we needed to turn to make sure that we wouldn't miss it, all with a smile on his face. I gave him a thumbs up and thanked him again. I was blown away by how nice he was and how much he wanted to help us. Thanks German man, wherever you are!

Finally, we came to the train station and waited for our train that was supposed to come in about 20 minutes on Platform 1. A few minutes before our train was supposed to come, another train pulled up coming in a different direction than I expected our train to come. I thought it was ours because at another train station on our way to Hechingen, we waited in a train for a few minutes that looked just like the train that pulled up (if that makes sense). So I told Todd our train was here and we boarded. As soon as we got on, the doors closed and the train lurched forward. My stomach hit the floor and I instantly knew we were on the wrong train. I knew because our train was supposed to leave at 4:08 from Hechingen and this one pulled up at 4:00 and was obviously not waiting for eight minutes before it was leaving. It became more apparent to me that we got on the wrong train and it was all I could do to prevent myself from doing a facepalm. It was a full train, so Todd ended up sitting across the aisle from me. I poked him with my umbrella and whispered that I thought we were on the wrong train.

Now normally, this wouldn't be such a fatal error but we were out in a pretty rural part of Germany and the trains don't run as much as in other parts of the country. We needed a train to take us to Tübingen which was where we would take a train to Stuttgart. So I just told Todd that we needed to get off at the next stop, wherever that was. A few minutes later (thank goodness) we stopped at a village. I had a brief moment of glory where I thought we would be able to catch our train that was headed to Hechingen then to Tübingen at the village we were in. As we got off the train, we saw that train pulling out of the station headed toward Hechingen, the exact same train we were supposed to board in the first place and had now barely missed, TWICE.

I swear an ulcer had formed in my stomach, mostly because I knew the next train to Tübingen from the small village we were wouldn't be coming for another hour. We looked at the schedule and it confirmed it. We were stuck there and we couldn't do anything about it. We ran over various scenarios in our mind: could we find a bus to Hechingen then take another train to Tübingen, is there any way we could take another train from where we were and get a different connection? All answers pointed to a "no" because there was only one train going to Tübingen, so we had to wait either way.

The reason why it was so stressful was because the soccer game was supposed to start at 7 p.m. in Stuttgart. It takes about two hours by train to get from Hechingen to Waiblingen where we were going to meet Mark, and now the train that we needed was supposed to leave around 5 p.m. Soccer games are pretty short, and we couldn't be late.

"No problem," Todd suggested. "Just call Mark and tell him to meet us at the stadium."

"I don't have his work number," I groaned. "Whenever I need to talk to Mark, I just send him an email."

Upon further investigation, I discovered that not only did I not know Mark's work number, I didn't even bring our cell phone with me. Real nice.

Then we tried desperately to find an internet connection so I could send Mark and email (with our iPhone that doesn't have a SIM) and tell him that we were going to be late. No such luck.

We saw a phone booth and we were relieved! Then our plan changed to from calling Mark to calling my neighbor Ruth and asking her to tell Mark to meet us at the stadium.

"Do you know Ruth's number?" Todd asked.

That'd be a big fat no. Another DOH moment on my part.

No phone book at the booth, and no hopes of getting ahold of Ruth. Then I decided that I would try to call information to get her phone number. So I shoved a 50 euro cent piece on the phone, and it wouldn't go down. The slot was closed.

My stomach hit the ground again and I considered breaking the phone booth glass with the phone. Big fail, T-mobile!

We officially surrendered and knew we would be late. I started fishing around in my purse for any phone number I could find on a piece of paper, whether it be Ruth's cell or ours so I could leave a message for Mark. Then at the bottom of one of my pockets, I found our cell.

"I HAVE OUR PHONE!"

Then I immediately remembered that we were pretty much out of minutes, and wanted to curse to the high heavens. I tried calling Ruth anyway.

Thank goodness, she answered the phone.

"Hi Ruth! I'vegottatalkreallyfastbecauseI'malmostouttaminutesandIwaswonderingifyoucouldgiveamessagetoMarkforus."

I managed to get the majority of the message out when my phone beeped and it hung up on me. Ruth called me back and I was able to give her the rest of the details for Mark. What a relief! Finally, our train came and we were on our way back to Stuttgart to meet up with Mark. I sat there stressed the whole time thinking about whether or not Mark would be able to find us around that huge stadium. We were also a little sad that we weren't able to see Tübingen. Blah!

On the way back I also realized that we probably would have had problems boarding the train we should have boarded in Hechingen, the one that was leaving at 4:08. Since the train we got on that took us in the wrong direction arrived on Platform 1 and our train was supposed to be coming eight minutes later, there was no way it would have stopped at Platform 1. My suspicions were confirmed when we stopped in Hechingen on the later train and we pulled up on Platform 2. I really hate it when they switch platforms and you missed/can't understand the announcement! Anyway...

So around 7 p.m., we arrived in Stuttgart and were frantically walking to the stadium to meet up with Mark. After about 10 minutes, we spotted each other and Mark gave us our tickets. We were all so thankful that things had worked out after all. (And were even more thankful for Ruth!)

Our tickets were in section 71. We walked till we found a gate that said it was the entrance for 62-70, 73-78 (or something like that). Mark said it was the right gate nonetheless, so we crammed into line to get to the game. As we finally approached the little machine that scanned the tickets, we were denied! Exasperated, we pushed our way back out of the line and asked a worker where the entrance for section 71 was. I mean, where in the world was the entrance for sections 71 and 72? Did this make any sense at all? He looked at our ticket and seemed confused, then pointed to the complete opposite end of the stadium.

SIGH.

A few other people were in our same predicament, so we tried walking directly to the front of the stadium where our entrance was. Except the only problem was that we couldn't walk directly there, we had to walk around all the practice fields which took us about 20 minutes. We got trapped a few times, and some people that were also trapped resorted to climbing over fences and trying to get through that way. It was a complete nightmare. What a horrible design for a stadium!!

So by the time we made it through the games and sat down, we had missed about 20 minutes of the game. Luckily though, we didn't miss the only goal which happened about 10 minutes after we got there. Stuttgart scored. Hooray!

Here's a few pictures, since I've basically typed a novel of all the times we got lost. Ha!

The crazy, flag-brandishing, chant-screaming, stomping fan section.

The game was really fun. VFB Stuttgart played a Spanish league team and beat them, 1-0.

The team thanking the crowd.

After we filed out of the stadium, we joined the masses in the walk to the S-bahn station. Oh boy, was it packed! People were crammed on the platform, down the stairs, and underneath the platform. We were hoping we wouldn't have to wait forever for a train because of all the people. As we waited, the crowd started to get more dense and we were jammed right up against a group of teenagers. They were laughing and carrying on as usual, but one had a backpack and as he was laughing and moving around, he kept smacking me with it. I couldn't move away because I had no where to go, so I just started throwing some elbows and pushing back. Don't mess with me youngling, I've been battling outside forces all day and I don't want to deal with your foolishness!

The train pulled up and people slowly started pushing to cram onto the train. I briefly remembered a video I saw once in some Asian country (Japan perhaps?) of where the train was so crowded, the controller had to go around and push and tuck people inside the door just so he could close it. Luckly, we managed to make it on the train. It sure was crammed though.

Trust me, it doesn't look that bad from this picture. But it was, especially by the doors where we were.

It was pretty funny how many people fit on the train. I felt pretty awkward taking a picture, but I couldn't resist! Plus, we only had to ride the train until the next stop where we could connect with our train to Waiblingen. Luckily, we were able to push our way out the door of the train and eventually make it home safely. What a day!

Even though we got lost about a billion times and were trapped in the small village because of my fatal error, we still had a great day. It's the chaos that makes it fun, right? In fact, I laugh about it now. What a disaster!

Next post I'll update you about our trip to Switzerland which was awesome and we didn't get lost. :)