A (somewhat chaotic) train journey to Edinburgh and back via Cap Gris-Nez

In the last week of May 2023 I suddenly realized that I had a week of vacation ahead of me. Somehow I forgot this week and hadn't planned anything. So there I sat, thinking about where to go. First the german islands came to my mind, but locking at pictures of picturesque frisian cottages, I already saw myself sitting among german pensioners, slowly adapting to their manners, and such ageing faster. Clearly this wasn't the best solution for my problem, and suddenly it appeared to me that I've never been to Scotland. So why not taking the train to Edinburgh?

A quick inquiry on bahn.de showed me that I'd best combine this with a short visit to London. Great! Did I order tickets? Of course not, why should I?! I didn't try to do so, until the very day before I wanted to start my journey. Unfortunately I had to find that international.bahn.de threw an error at me as soon as I tried to pay. The error being 100 percent reproducible, I decided to get the ticket at the train station.

So came Monday and I wanted to take a train to London. In order to do so, I first had a little walk from Cölbe Schönstadt to Cölbe Bürgeln and took the train to Marburg from there. At the Marburg train station I walked into the "DB Reisezentrum" and proclaimed my intention to buy a train ticket to London. This started slow two-finger typing by the clerk. After a long time of hitting keys I got the answer. The connection via Brüssel was booked out. "Well", I said, "isn't there another connection via Paris?" After yet another sequence of slow key strokes I got the answer: "Also sold out!". To my luck the DB clerk was rather motivated and searched further. He didn't find any connection which wasn't sold out, but he offered me a ticket to Brüssel and told me that I still might get a ticket to London on the internet, as DB only has a small contingent of tickets for the Eurostar. Thus I bought the ticket to Brüssel and started my journey.

And indeed, while ridding the first train of the journey, I was able to buy a ticket to London. And thus I didn't stay long in Brüssel. Taking the Eurostar from Brüssel to London is quite tedious for a train journey, as one first has to got through an airport-like security check. Well, it acts as if it is an airport-quality security check, but actually I think they didn't even look at the xray images of my backpack. At least they didn't complain about the Leatherman, despite the fact that at this security check, travelers are being greeted by signs, warning one that it is illegal to take knives on the train and to the United Kingdom.

But the actual journey with the Eurostar is a blessing for any train traveler used to the german ICE trains, which call themselves high-speed trains, but are tamed by rails which they've got to share with regular trains. Running through Belgium with more than 300km/h, one can imagine what the ICE could offer, if let free.

In London I took a little walk to a hostel which I had noted down when still in Germany. Did I book a room in advance? Why should I?! So of course there was only an expensive private room left, which I took anyway. But I accepted that I maybe should book somethings in ahead and bought the train tickets to Edinburgh for the next day. After that I spend an evening strolling through London, fish and chips included.

Taking the lesson further, I booked two beds in an Edinburgh hostel on the train next day. Two beds for one person? Well, as I was rather late with booking, I couldn't book one bed, in one room, for the three nights which I indented to stay. But Edinburgh greeted me with two surprises. Firstly, when I got out of the train station, I was greeted by a large poster, announcing that the Edinburgh science festival was going on this week. Secondly the guy at the reception of the hostel, shifted some reservations, in order to spare me from having to move beds during my stay.

So the next few days I strolled Edinburgh. It's a magnificent beautiful city and I have yet not seen anything and I'll definitely return one day, to explore it further. The science festival offered me quite a lot to see. There were multiple exhibitions (one on "Dr. Who" in the national museum of Scotland), and many interesting talks. So the science festival is definitely worth a visit too.

Of course I applied my lessons about in-advance-booking further and tried to book my train tickets for the journey back home in advance. My initial plan was to take a night train on Friday night to Dover, so that I could take a ferry to Calais on Saturday morning, visiting my parents, who were staying near Calais, at the Cap Gris-Nez, at the time.

But when I tried to book the train tickets on Wednesday, I had to find that the night trains were already sold out. So after some search for alternatives, I finally decided to take the train on Saturday morning. This left me with a new problem, however, as I had only booked the hostel until Friday. The reception had dire news for me, as the hostel was sold out for the night from Friday to Saturday. So I started to search for a hostel which wasn't yet booked out and, after quite some searching, I found a hostel which was rather far away from Edinburgh centre, still having a bed for me.

Booking of the bed for the night from Friday to Saturday went smooth, and I had to enter my credit card details, for the usual zero euro posting for reservation. So I went to get breakfast and was happy, until after breakfast, when I found an SMS from my bank on my phone, telling me that my credit card had been restricted due to suspicious activities, and a mail from the hostel telling me that they could not debit my credit card. So I phoned my bank and was amazed to find that I didn't get trapped in an endless waiting queue. Instead I soon was greeted by an actual person, telling me, that the Hostel had tried to debit my credit card for the stay in advance. After I told my bank to unblock my credit card I phoned the Hostel, telling them that I'd rather pay by debit card at check in, which they accepted. I then went on further explorations of Edinburgh, being happy about all the problems being solved.

In the next days I went to more exhibitions, museums (did you know that entry to public museums is free in Scotland?), and ate quite some good food (best meal was when I had mussels and fries, some white wine and as dessert "Sticky toffee pudding" and a fourteen year old Whisky).

Time flew buy and I checked out of the first Hostel on Friday morning and got some breakfast, after which I scrolled through my mail and found one of the other hostel, stating that my reservation had been canceled.

So I walked to the Hostel in order to hopefully resolve the cancellation. After quite a walk I arrived at the hostel, where I've been told, that the person I spoke with on the phone had his first day when I called, and didn't knew better. I would have had to go through the email process, in order to save my reservation, and now the hostel was already sold out.

So I again started to search a bed for that very night, and decided that maybe I had to go with a hotel instead of a hostel. The hotel which was closest to the hostel was also sold out, and after some further searching I gave up and booked a room for one night in a Holiday Inn, to which I then walked for check in (and which added more to my travel expenditure than the three nights in the hostel).

The hotel was a quarter-hour walk away from the city, and after a little rest I went there for some food, some more city exploration and an Edinburgh science festival talk in the evening, after which I walked back to the Hotel in order to sleep for four hours.

After the (definitely not enough) four hours of sleep, I walked back to the city center and the train station. At the station i quickly found the right platform and waited for the train to London. After a while I looked at the platform's announcement-screen again, where suddenly a different train was being announced. Another announcement-screen told me that all connections to London had been canceled, but mine, which was delayed. Strange!

After half an hour of waiting, I decided to get some breakfast. Doing so I found a large waiting room with a larger announcement screen, again telling me that all connections to London had been cancelled, but mine. But here another screen gave a reason for the cancellations: "due to a person being hit by a train". A lady working for one of the british train companies was a bit more blunt, saying that "Someone jumped in front of the train".

Post-Thatcher England, I had to find out, is abundant with train companies. Unfortunately I had bought a ticket of a cheapish company, which doesn't offer any service whatsoever. After some time trying and failing to get information via a hotline which (I guess) was operated in India, I bought another ticket from a different train company and after three hours of delay, I finally left Edinburgh for London.

I also had booked my ferry ticket in advance, so I tried to change it to a different time. The website of P&O Ferries did offer me to do so for 25 pounds, but only gave me an error when I tried to take this generous (cough) offer. So I phoned them and after a rather short time in the queue I've been told that "Yes, they can change the time of my ticket for the fee of 25 pounds, but I can also use any other ferry up to 4 hours later".

After changing trains in London, and taking a cab from Dover station, I finally arrived at the Dover ferry Terminal. At the ferry check in reception, I then was told that I'll be picked up by bus in quarter an hour. I strolled away from the reception and then it struck me. Quarter an hour? Back at the reception I asked about the ferry which should leave in like 10 minutes, just to be told that there isn't one. So I opened the timetable, which I had downloaded from P&O Ferries website just some hours ago, which as I've got told then, was an old one.

I arrived in Calais, after a nice ferry ride, at 8pm. 3 hours later then planned after I found that the night trains were sold out, and 12 hours later than planned initially. But I had a nice evening with my parents and the next day we took a little walk on the beach, after which my parents drove me back to Calais station from where I took the train back home.

While it was quite the ride, and it might have been a bit less chaotic, had I planned in advance, I still enjoyed the journey quite a lot, and I wouldn't do it different now. But if you're the kind of person which gets stressed out by such adventures: Book in advance.