Kleinostheim

I looked for Kleinostheim on my map of Germany - couldn't find it. But I spent just over two hours there this morning. I can tell you it's somewhere between Hanau and Wurzburg, but nowhere near Amberg (my intended destination). I left Oberursel at 6:30 this morning, intending to take the train to Amberg to visit my sister-in-law, Michelle. It's about a five-hour trip, one-way. Before I even got out of Oberursel, I had that sinking feeling you get when you fear you may have left the coffee pot on. (For good reason; more than once I've left the coffee pot on all day, only to return home to the smell of burning coffee - including the last time I saw Michelle.) My trip was downhill from there. I tried to suppress images of my apartment building burning down and decided I'd try to call my friends (and authorize a break-in) when I got to the train station in Frankfurt. Of course, then the phone there wouldn't accept coins; "no problem," I thought, "I'll call when I get to Wurzburg, since I have a 35-minute wait for the train to Nürnberg." When I got into Frankfurt Südbahnhof shortly after 7:00, a freak thunderstorm blew through Frankfurt (apparently it hit England pretty hard yesterday). When I boarded my train, we were informed that a tree had blown down over the tracks, but that it didn't sound like it would be a problem. Well, apparently it was. By the time we stopped in Kleinostheim at 8:19, they realized we weren't going to make it to Wurzburg that way. Let me rephrase that - after sitting in Kleinostheim for two hours, they realized they weren't going to make it that way and turned the train around. This drove four strangely costumed German girls to hysterics, as they weren't going to make it to München that afternoon. (One girl was wearing a bathrobe and had strange eye makeup; another was wearing a homemade cheerleading outfit and platform shoes with a pink wig; the others were also strangely attired, with unnaturally colored hair, but not quite as unusual as the other two.) The attitudes of the rest of my fellow passengers ranged from apathy to anger. As the conductor worked his way through the train, he instructed us that the train was going back to Frankfurt, but that we couldn't sit on the train while he turned it around. There was a Japanese couple in my car who apparently didn't speak German. But they did speak enough English that I was able to (clumsily) translate for them. The conductor didn't speak English, but asked if I could help them off the train. I was reasonably sure I was able to tell them what was going on, so I stepped off the train and waited for them. They had a lot of luggage and were able to gather all their belongings just in time to see the doors close before they could climb off the train. As the train pulled away from the platform while the Japanese couple now trapped inside unsuccessfully pressed the button to open the door, I could only whisper to myself that I hoped the train didn't have far to go to turn around. Thankfully, less than five minutes later the train was back and my new Japanese friends were still there. When we got back to the Frankfurt Hauptbahnhof, I was able to direct them to the travel office - where I learned that I couldn't get a refund, but the next train to Amberg was leaving in ten minutes. I quickly did the math and decided that 15 hours on trains (with about 10 connections for the day) was not worth the 45 minutes I'd get to see Michelle (five hours after we were supposed to meet) (and, I was still worried about my coffee pot). Yet even then, as I took the S-Bahn back to Oberursel, I thought, what else am I going to do today? But by then it was too late. I consoled myself with the knowledge that I might make it back in time to prevent my building from becoming a raging inferno. Almost exactly six hours after I left, I was back in my apartment. The coffee pot was, in fact, safely unplugged. And, in case you were wondering, "Kleinostheim" means, appropriately enough, "Little East Place."