My travel blog posts are generally heavy on photos and sometimes a little light on for detail. Well this one is the complete opposite. Strap yourselves in for an unexpected adventure.

Remember how I glibly mentioned at the end of yesterday’s post that today was a travel day and that we were catching the train from Salzburg to Hamburg?

In late October I booked most of our long-distance rail trips for this holiday and Salzburg to Hamburg was no exception. After extensive research I decided on a 10am departure from Salzburg which would arrive in Munich at 11.41am. The connecting train would leave from Munich at 12.14pm and arrive in Hamburg at 5.57pm. I had made sure to allow enough time for the connection and it was only 1 change that we had to manoeuvre bags on and off trains.

We were in Strasbourg just after Christmas when we received an email from Deutschebahn (DB), the German railway operator. The email advised that the revised departure time from Munich on a different train was now at 11.21am, 20 minutes before our train from Salzburg was due to arrive. Clearly this was not going to work. I was not sure what our options would be so I decided that I would speak to someone in person when we reached Salzburg rather than trying to communicate via email.

On Wednesday morning we went to the ticket office in Salzburg and the staff were very helpful. We left with new times, tickets and seat reservations. We would now be on an earlier train departing from Salzburg at 8.33am and arriving in Munich at 10.24am which allowed us almost an hour before the 11.21am departure and arriving at 5.03pm, earlier than I had originally intended but most welcome.

However, the earlier departure did mean that we would have to make an early start from our Salzburg accommodation. We left in the dark at 7am to walk through the old town on wet and snowy cobblestones and then a short bus ride to arrive at the station in plenty of time. It was 7.45am and we discovered that the incoming train (from Warsaw) was running late and we were due to depart at 9.10am, a delay of 37 minutes. We eventually left Salzburg about 9.20am but when we were near the fringe of Salzburg suburbs the train came to a grinding halt for about 15 minutes. There was no announcement but I did see police officers walking up and down the external corridor of our carriage. After about a 15 minute delay with no explanation we were finally underway and we thought that the hiccups were behind us.

When the conductor came to check our tickets I explained that we would not make our connection in Munich due to the delays. He was not fazed and simply checked his timetable and printed out a new voucher/ticket for a later train from Munich at 12.24pm. We would still have a window of about an hour in Munich so I was confident that I solved our connection issue.

We did not have a seat reservation so when we arrived in Munich I went directly to the ticket office (along with many others), received a ticket to see a customer service officer only to eventually be told rather tersely that the window for seat reservations had closed so we’d just have to take pot luck. I figured that I did not have much choice and was resigned to the fact that we might spend 4.5 hours sitting on our bags in the vestibule of the train but it was a small price to reach our somewhat elusive destination of Hamburg.

Eventually the ICE train pulled in and there seemed to be plenty of unreserved seats. We settled into 2 facing window seats with a table, removed our coats, beanies and gloves and it was about 5 minutes until the scheduled departure. Then the announcement that struck fear into my heart, “This train is CANCELLED. All passengers must disembark”! Would we ever get to Hamburg?

It was back to the ticket office for another round. The queue of customers trying to get answers stretched well out the door of the large ticket office and onto the concourse. When it was my turn I got a more sympathetic and helpful person who spoke extremely good English and we eventually agreed that the best option was the 2.57pm train direct to Hamburg arriving at about 8.30pm. This meant that we had nearly 2 hours to wait and the train was not yet listed on the departures board.

Time to buy some lunch, find charging points for our phones then sit and wait. The sleet/snow outside was distinctly unappealing as we nearly froze in the concrete box which masquerades as Munich Station. When our train finally appeared on the board there was no allocated platform showing but I figured that would come up soon.

Anyway, with about 15 minutes until the scheduled departure I went and asked at the Information Office and the customer service officer said, “That train is not going”. I was gobsmacked and still trying to understand what this meant. As I asked, “What do you mean?” she printed out a new schedule/ticket and thrust it at me and said “Get on the 2.45 train to Hamburg or you’ll be stuck here tonight. It’s the weather”.

I was not about to argue so we did as we were told and thankfully the departure platform was very close to where we had been sitting. A quick sprint to Platform 14 and we boarded the first carriage with no great expectations. Even without a seat reservation there seemed to be plenty of space and we managed to get window seats facing a table. Once we were settled I actually had time to look at the new schedule I had been given. We would need to change trains at Mannheim with a mere 5 minutes connection but thankfully the trains would be on adjacent platforms. The downside was that the journey time was much longer and the scheduled arrival time in Hamburg was 11.34pm.

The connection at Mannheim was achieved without a hitch and we are now ensconced in our seats through to Hamburg. I am now writing this saga while we stop at what seems to be an interminable number of intermediate stations between Mannheim and Hamburg. The train is also travelling at reduced speeds because of the snow and ice due to the bad weather which has impacted much of northern Europe over the past few days.

Despite the challenges which have dogged us and many other train travellers over the past few days, it is all part of the adventure. I will be happy to climb into bed when we finally arrive in Hamburg although I suspect that will be after midnight at the rate we are going.

This is not my photo as I don’t have any relevant to today’s long-winded story but it is the ICE (Inter-City Express) trains that we have travelled on from Munich today.