Moral: Don't take the trains on Easter Monday!

Picture this - one German on my left, one German on my right, a German directly across from me, and another German literally squeezing his way through to get to the bathroom. Keep in mind that Germans eat lots of cheese, sausage, and garlic and they usually don't shower daily. That was the scene for six hours on Easter Monday!

The first train was the worst. The only place to stand was by the bathrooms and there was a constant steam of people trying to squeeze through to get to the bathroom. While we were enroute, one bathroom got plugged. Mmmmm, that was pleasant. Let me tell you, the air was laden with all kinds of smells and the sound of "Entschuldigung, Entschuldigung" (excuse me) every where, as people fell all over each other whenever the train stopped, sped up, slowed down, turned a corner, etc.

The next train started out not so bad. There were still lots of people standing and sitting in the aisles, but at least we had a place where we could sit on the floor with our backpacks in our laps - pretty posh! Well, that luxury only lasted for about 30 minutes. After that, we no longer had space to sit, but had to stand once again. Every time the train stopped more people piled in, and no one ever seemed to get off! Before long, the second train was almost as packed as the first. After six hours of being jammed between people and luggage, all the while trying to stay upright, we finally arrived in Leipzig. Unfortunately, our train was 40 minutes late. Therefore, we had missed our connection in Wittenberg. Hmmm, that's lovely.

After standing in the solid, unmoving wall of people for awhile, we finally found a train schedule. We found a train that went to Halle. It was a little out of the way, but from there we could catch a train to Wittenberg. We looked at the platform number. . . 15. Then we looked at the time. . . the train left in two minutes. We darted as quickly as we could through the mobs of people over to platform 15. The train was still there! We frantically pushed the button to open the door, found a seat, and breathed a sigh of relief. The relief didn't last long, as we soon realized that we were the only people on the train. Ummm? We did find a lady in another car and asked her if this train went to Halle. She said, "No, but the train that just left from platform 14 was going to Halle." So, there we were, sitting on an empty train, while our train pulled away! O.K. on to plan C. As we were going back to look at the train schedule we saw a strassenbahn that was going to Halle. We ran over there and stepped on just as it was pulling away. Whew! The only problem with the strassenbahn is that it is very slow and stops at every single little dinky train stop. Because of the snail like pace, we missed the train that we were planning on taking from Halle to Wittenberg. When we got to Halle we found yet another train schedule and found a train that was leaving . . . in 30 seconds!!!! Fortunately, the Halle train station was not nearly as crowed, so we were able to break into a full run towards platform 4. As we ran up the stairs to the platform we were excited to see that the train was still there. I pushed the button to open the door and . . . the train pulled away! Nooooo!!!

O.K. back to the train schedule. The next train to Wittenberg left in one hour, so we decided to get some supper and chill in Halle. Three hours after our expected arrival, we finally arrived in Wittenberg. That is why you should never take the trains on Easter Monday!