On a fateful day of my gap year, I packed a hefty duffel
bag, which was filled to the brim with “adulting essentials”, left home and
headed to the station for my first ever solo trip. It was an ambitious plan; I would
scale across Europe for 2 weeks, as a backpacker, at the age of 18. I caught an
overnight train from my hometown’s railway station to reach a small picturesque
town in Germany, where I would spend the day before heading out for Frankfurt
the following day. Pumped with energy, and levels of adrenaline in my blood
alarmingly high, I caught the train and being a vigilant solo traveller (and
paranoid!), I double padlocked every compartment of my duffel bag, plopped it
on the luggage rack beside my seat, and sat staring at it, hoping to scare away
any potential petty thieves from eyeing my precious towels, shampoo or change
of clothes. The eight hour long train journey seemed a bit too exciting at
first, but towards the 4 hour mark, my excitement had definitely died down. I sat
munching my ‘peasantry’ snacks, and trying to imagine seeing ‘stunning scenery’
through the darkness, but the prospect of spending rest of the train journey in
an empty compartment seemed bleak. Being a broke high school graduate, I couldn’t
afford to spend the precious data pack I had bought to entertain myself, I relied
on my thoughts to keep me busy for the remainder of the journey.
After an eternity, the train pulled at my destination, and I
lugged my luggage off the rack and jumped off the train. I was sleep-deprived,
tired and hungry, which coupled with my inherited clumsiness, made me ‘accident-prone’.
At 7 AM, in this ‘off beat’ town I found the whole station to be deserted. To add
to my problems, all the directions were in German, a language I knew literally
nothing about. At just a glance, it looked like gibberish written in English
and I spent literally minutes trying to make sense of it. I am a complete fool.
Even though multiple articles online seemed to list this
place as ‘one of the lesser known German gems’, Google seemed unable to locate
a café in vicinity which could serve me breakfast. Google suggested that the
best way for me to fill my tummy was to go to the supermarket and shop for more
‘grocery’. I headed to the supermarket, and the language barrier I felt
horrified me. No one seemed to speak English, and I had to ‘act as a
supermarket’ for someone to finally understand me. Those angels finally
directed me to the right location. All the labels in the market were in German,
but buying bread should have been a simple enough task. I grabbed a loaf, and
went up to the cashier, who kept pointing to a weird metal thing, and refused
to take the 2 euro note I was offering. I still do not know what he meant, but being
frustrated at my inability to understand him, he snatched the bread from my
hand, scanned it, jabbed a couple of buttons on his computer, and help out 2
fingers. I paid him two quid, and hurriedly left the shop.
I then hiked all the way to my hostel, following vague directions
of Google Maps, and stumbled into the lobby. The receptionist seemed to be a
pleasant lady, but she, too, didn’t speak any sort of comprehensible English,
and we stood, facing each other sheepishly. After what felt to be an eternity, an
absolute angel of a hosteller approached us. She acted as a translator, and I finally
got the keys to my lodging. I dropped my luggage, freshened up, made a sandwich
for myself, and went out to explore.
Despite my linguistic limitations, I explored every part of
this pretty little German town and could see why this was ‘a hidden gem.’ The
weather was brilliant. It had a crystal clear river, hordes of bridges, a magnificent
town hall and a well-articulated museum. It was filled with chirpy locals, and
a few backpackers like me, but was not infested by loads of tourists. There was a rustic charm around this
underrated place.
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