bretzelitos

Next day, next surprises. I didn’t see a lot of thunderstorms that night, but in some parts of Germany, they have been super massive and produced a lot of damage.

In my particular case, there were two issues. Blocked tracks between Nuremberg and Wuerzburg as well as no electrical alimentation between Uelzen and Lueneburg – just before reaching Hamburg.

Up to Wuerzburg, due to the deviation via Ansbach and Ochsenfurt, we gathered a delay of around 15 minutes.

Up to reaching Kassel, it was not clear if we had the chance to pass through towards Hamburg and further on to Kiel. But finally, we got the OK as first passenger ICE train. Result for sure was… all stranded passengers tried to get into my train in Hannover. This led to the situation that Class 2 and Class 1 were both jam packed with people and their suitcases.

Some passengers were very worried as they took this particular train to reach their cruise ship in Kiel harbour area – and when going on a cruise, you also need to have a lot of luggage. Hence the train was very very busy even up to Kiel. Loads of people left the train in Hamburg and it was still having a more than average passenger load.

Luckily, I met two nice Bavarian girls who just sat down in the aisle next to my seat. They invited me to join in a dice game – see the picture. I played twice with them and lost twice good graciously. But it was a lot of fun and shortened the wait time until arrival.

At the end, I arrived in Kiel with a delay of 58 minutes.

So I took my room in the ATLANTIC hotel just opposite of the train station and went on a little walk around. Later I took my dinner in the VAPIANO restaurant close by and a last one in DECK 8 bar in my hotel – an absolutely excellent venue.