An Inadvertent Adventure of My Own Making

Sounds a little oxymoronic. At the very least, it was moronic, and the star of the Moron Show is moi. Oh wait, I’m not to the French speaking area of Europe yet. The star is Mich. A post-mortem root cause analysis would immediately and unequivocally determine that said adventure was completely my fault.

First off the bat was deciding to take the overnight train to Vaduz (actually Buchs, but it’s pretty much the same — just a couple of miles apart) from Linz. I’d taken the bus from Cesky to Linz to catch the train. Why the overnighter? At this point, I couldn’t tell you. Perhaps it was for the adventure of it all, since I’d not done an overnighter in Europe. My only smart decision in this whole fiasco was to book a hotel for the ten hours between bus arrival and train departure instead of hanging out in the train station. I figured it’d be nice to have a pleasant place to relax before the 0030 departure. A heated room. A nice shower. Maybe even a bit of sleep. As the loaf of meat will attest, two out of three ain’t bad. In fact, it was a great shower.

With my printed ticket in hand off I went.

Printed, you ask? Yeah. When I’d made the train reservation, I was advised that in crossing the border, an electronic tickey wasn’t sufficient; I’d need a printed one. Funny thing is that no one ever checked my ticket. Yeah, ever. I could have (potentially) traveled the entire way without one at all.

Anyway, back to the story.

Leaving a hotel at midnight is weird, but I did it and boarded the train finding my carriage and my assigned compartment. Unfortunately, it wasn’t simply a seat I’m a row. I was in a closed off compartment of six seats: three facing each other across an aisle. Uh oh. This is reminiscent of my trip from Romania to Budapest. Is it any surprise that the train originated in Budapest?

The seats don’t recline. At all. They have little to no padding. This is swell. To add just a little more spice to it, was the fact there were four already in the compartment. A mom with two kids under two years old, and her mom. Grandma was stretched out across three seats, and I had to rouse her to get mine. A seat for which I shared the armrest with either her feet or head depending on which way she tumbled after dealing with one or the other crying baby when mom was busy with the other. If one or the other baby wasn’t crying, Grandma was snoring. Like a chainsaw.

I didn’t sleep.

I arrived in Buchs at 0700 in a dense, cold fog. Yay. I had asked for an early checkin where I was staying, and they said it’d be possible. Just send a message and they’d get back to me when it was ready. There was no way it’d be ready at 0700, so I pulled into a convenience store at the train station for a coffee. They had a table, so I sat, read and sipped for an hour. I figured sending a message at 0800 was okay. Open up the phone.

Battery at 25%. Huh. I’d charged it before boarding. Something’s eaten it. I blame PolarSteps or the cell services constantly casting about for service as I travel. One or the other. Or both. Going to have to change those settings.

Signal strength: four bars.

Cell service protocol: Edge. Hmm. Less than optimal. And seriously? This is Western Europe, and I’m getting Edge in 2024? I gamely try to open up messaging on Booking, and watch the spinner spin endlessly while the battery drops more. This isn’t going to work. I restart the phone in a futile gesture of hope.

Maybe I’ll just go to the hotel and see how things are.

Open Google Maps. No map. Edge strikes again. Apple Maps. Same shit. This is, as one might say, ungood. In less developed places I always would screen-cap critical info to my phone, so I wouldn’t be reliant on getting cell service where it might not be available. But in western Europe? Seriously?

Okay. Maybe it’s my global E-SIM that’s not playing. I have a two-holster SIM rig, much like an old west desperado with six-shooters on both hips and crossed bandoliers. But with electrons. Not even the teeny-weenie physical cards. I’ll switch to my US number E-SIM. T-Mobile is strong everywhere, right?

Nope. Same sitch.¹

I also hadn’t downloaded local maps, which is something else I often do. Someone had gotten complacent. Someone had taken his eye off the ball. Someone had gotten lazy. Someone had a bit of a problem.

That someone was me.

No panic. Just anxiety. I’d looked at a map pretty extensively before I’d booked anything, just to check proximities of things and places. And I like maps. Despite there being no details showing on the map app, I’d flagged the hotel (I do that regardless of where I am) and the screen showed one dot where I was, and another where the hotel was.

I had relative positioning. I can work with this. I dead-reckoned my way to the hotel with a bit of to-ing and fro-ing on empty Sunday morning streets.

With that half of the battle won, I now needed to find a WiFi, any Wifi!, to get the self-checkin info off Booking’s messages. In a stroke of luck, a person was opening his kebab shop right next to the hotel. Somehow, I communicated my need (he didn’t have English, and as anyone knows, I have nothing but), and he granted me access to his WiFi. Guess where I’m having dinner tonight and possibly tomorrow as well?

I got into the hotel, but my self-checkin wasn’t available yet. Hell, it was only 0900. BUT, there was a working outlet in the hallway. Good thing, since my battery was in the Red Zone at this point.

Plugging in, my status changed from red to golden. I had the ability to charge my phone, I had Wifi from the hotel (after getting the info from Booking from using the kebaber’s WiFi to get it) and I was indoors out of the cold, cold fog.

I sat on the tile floor for a couple of hours until after my third try checking in at noon, I was successful. It’s a lot nicer to sit in a chair than on a tile floor, let me tell ya. BTW, it’s a cool self-service system for checking in. A touch screen to put in your info, a credit card reader to take payment and a slot that kicks out your key card.

I feel like I need a nap, but of course, once I checked in, the sun broke through and called me to get out. I’m not one to ignore the call.

It’s a cautionary tale for anyone who decides to heed it. Always get a local download to your phone for critical info and maps. Always. Apparently even in Western Europe cell service can suck eggs. Will I heed my own advice? Definitely. At least for the next few weeks, after which I’ll probably get complacent and lazy again. At least it makes for interesting stories, amirite

Be kind and take care of yourselves. If you can, care for someone else, too.

Slang, out.

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1. After a couple of hours, the Edge service was finally replaced by 5G, and everything started working as it should have. I have no idea why it was delayed.