Arriving in Hamburg

Well, here I am. In Hamburg,  sharing a flat with three women, two cats and a large number of fish. My mother once said,  rather unflatteringly as I thought, that the kitsch that wouldn't fit into my flat still has to be invented. Well it has, it's all here and it's wonderfully comfortable. But I'm getting ahead of myself.

The journey here was ... well there was a family with three daughters below the age of 10 in my sleeping coach and a gang of six 40+ drinkers next door. Peace, quiet and the possibility to sleep? Ha! The kids were up till all hours, then the parents decided they should go to bed at the same time as our neighbours started getting rather more drunk than was good for them. Unsurprisingly the girls couldn't sleep with all the partying that was going on. When that subsided and the girls finally could have slept they were too energised by their lack of sleep and so it was about 2 in the morning when I was able to get some sleep. At 5:30 the kids apparently had slept enough and started climbing up and down the ladder in our compartment and whispering at the top of their voices (which woke me up only after it started giving me nightmares - one of the girls was named Rebecca. I know some of you will understand that). The parents woke up about half an hour later and though they were really nice about it,  I realised that sleeping was now a thing of the past.

Soon I heard that, instead of arriving at 7:50 (as my ticket claimed) or at 8:28 (as the ÖBB had claimed) or even at 8:37 (as the DB had claimed) we were instead 90 minutes late and thus not to arrive in Hamburg before 9:20. We had our breakfast and after that the girls soon got rather loud and excited once more (and the men next door were firmly back in the grasp of their beer), and since the beds were gone anyway and rest not to be thought of,  we started playing "Guess what animal I'm thinking of". That went well for about 3 rounds and then the screaming and jumping restarted. Ah well...

The mother and I played on valiantly and then, finally,  we approached Hamburg.  I dug out my phone to call my hostess and suddenly realised that I had forgotten to transfer her number from my old phone to the new one. Clever, huh? Now what... I tried to send a message via Facebook but for some reason I couldn't get through to their messaging system. Also checking old messages, I was certain that she had once sent me her number there, was impossible. We arrived in Hamburg and I still hadn't reached her and thus was unsure what to do.

I checked my map of the city hoping to remember the street she lived on so that I could have taken a taxi, but without success. Then l finally managed to start data roaming and, joy of joys, she had already sent me a message wondering where I was. It took less than 5 minutes for her to pick me up and for her to be shocked by the amount of luggage I was carrying. In her apartment, which is shared by the aforementioned two other women, two cats and the fish, I moved into a cozy little room, just wide enough to fit in a bed, that's stuffed with books from floor to ceiling. I feel right at home. One of the cats has adopted me and is now sitting on my feet as I am typing this in bed. The Internet is, alas, down but it should be fine by Wednesday. Before then I'll try to get to a café with free internet so that I can post this. :)