Thursday morning: the delay
It was 5.30 in the morning; my husband and I were already sitting comfortably in the ICE train headed from Bahnhof Altona via Hauptbahnhof to Bremen. (From Bremen we need to change to Regional Express train to Leer, then change there to Nieuweschans, then finally change to Netherlands train to Groningen). Our appointment was at 10.30, so it was managable for us to be there on time.
Around 5.40 the train arrived at Hauptbahnhof. Aber, instead of stopped there for a while to let new passengers got in, the train stopped more than 30 minutes and then all the passengers were asked to get out of the train. Lho, kok?!?
There was an accident happened between Hamburg and Hamburg Harburg that caused all the train traffic that need to pass the route Harburg-Hamburg Harburg: delayed. That was the only information I could get, the announcement was in Deutsch, of course, and no further explanation, sorry.
“Ah, great! Here we are again and join the crowd at Hauptbahnhof “ I grumbled.
Waiting down there at the Gleis 14, with many people without any idea nor estimation for how long plus the very cold temperature, were not cool at all.
But what can we do? Leave that place for a warm cup of tea or coffee and let the possibility of missing the train happens? No. All the passengers choice were keep staying around the train.
Meanwhile, I overheard an English conversation of 2 passangers who were standing behind me. One of them with Indian accent and one of them with German accent.
I: “So, we are dumped from the train, waiting right beside the train, out side here for more than 15 minutes and still without any explanation. I didn’t expect this is happening in your country railway system, Germany”
G: “ yeah, rubbish isn’t it? You can go back to India and tell your people that German is no different than the others”
I: “O ya, ya.” (shaking his head and with very strong Indian accent) “I am very surprise. In India we can get information immediately while people share information and speak English. Here, we have to wait and nothing on the information board”
I smiled. That Indian passenger got a point here; “bitte nicht einsteigen” was the only information/statement on the information board at Gleis 14. My hubby complained about the same thing and about how difficult to get English information immediately. I learned one lesson here that in chaos or in anomalous condition, most Germans only available to speak in German otherwise they will give you a look, which possibly means “How dare you in this situation asking me to talk other language” and make you feel so guilty that you can not speak German.
Finally after some more minutes, the information board told us that the train would possibly be delayed about 80 minutes. (What a delay!).
Since we had 80 minutes I decided to get a cup of jasmine tea while my husband decided to get further information. While I was sipping my tea and watching the news on public tv about how Moskow’s Wednesday evening temperature dropped to –53 C, my hubby called and asked me to be ready at the same Gleis 14 with in 3 minutes!
Haaa?! 3 minutes?! Even the cashier let me free without any Euro cent to pay for my jasmine tea due to the rush. She said: “ it’s ok..just go catch your train!”
In less than 3 minutes I already at Gleis 14 and there was no train there. oh, great!
Uncategorized | Comment (0)Wednesday at Hauptbahnhof
The day before yesterday, Wednesday at noon, my cell phone rang, picked it up and:
“ Assalamualaikum Mi, besok kita ke Groningen ada janji lihat proof printnya besok.”
“Wa’alaikumsalam Bi…Lho ke Groningen? Kok mendadak gitu apa nggak bisa di kirim aja dan diskusiin lewat email?”
“Gak ada waktu lagi”
“Ya sudah, Abi sendiri aja ya?”
“Gak dong! maunya sih berdua”
“hmm..nggak mau ah!..abi aja ya? berdua kan gak worthed gitu…apa perlu ummi di sana? selain mahal, ngabisin waktu, juga tenaga. Lagi lemes nih bi “
“Tapi perlu ada ummi juga disana, lagian nggak kasihan Abi sendirian? ummi ikut ya? sore ini temani beli tiket ya? Please? Please?”
“ok, ok”
“Makasih sayang, assalamualaikum”
“Wa’alaikumsalam sayang sampai nanti”
If it’s not because I love him so much and want to be around him on his birthday**, I would not travel to Groningen back and forth in one day on my monthly “weakest time”. (**Actually, we don’t really care about birthday. But since 30 is a kind of sensitive number in counting that his “time” is getting 3 decades less, to be around him would be the most sensible choice I could pick)
So, Wednesday afternoon we went to Deutsche Bahn travel center, bought 25% Bahn Card for my husband (I’ve got one already), and 2 roundtrip train tickets with seat reservation for the ICE. Eventhough our 25% Bahn Cards did help, still, I felt like the price digit was too costly for a day trip, and that really knocked my head.. After that, my hubby decided to treat me sushi at Bahnhof. Unfortunately, less than a minute after we sat, the police officers told all of the people there to get out of the Bahnhof immediately caused by the emergency order for the shake of security. They were threatened and they suspected an unattended suitcase at the upper level of the Hauptbahnhof had a bomb in it. *sigh* Together with many others, we rushed out of the Hauptbahnhof.
Thankfully, nothing detrimental happened to our Hauptbahnhof.
I had no extra mood left and my stomach begged me to drag my feet home. Beside that, we had to be at Bahnhof Altona at 5 o clock in the morning on Thursday to catch ICE and to Bremen uber Hauptbahnhof. So there was no reason to delayed our hibernation. Bis morgen Bahnhof!
Uncategorized | Comment (0)Intermezzo
Today is a very interesting, challenging and compact day. So many things to write here, but I am too tired to write more. It almost 12 o clock and just got back home from The Netherlands. ..
and oh.. today is also my hubby’s birthday.. one of the Milestones for muhasabah ya Bi..
Uncategorized | Comments (4)DESY
A cousin of my husband, Arie, gave us a kind of short visit before he went back to The Netherlands. We were happy since we haven’t seen each other for quite a long time.
Since Arie and My husband have common interest about physic, naturally most of their conversation was around physic and their research. And so the family visit plotzlich became an effective science discussion.
The morning before Arie left, my husband took us to Deutsches Electronen-Synchrotron which also known as DESY. DESY is one of the main places where my husband works and does his research. That was Aries’ first time to DESY, my first time as well. It was an exciting trip.
I felt like visiting little Brookhaven Lab. The fact that the lab is not so far from the houses and the city was one of the differences. The giant pipe loaded with electron that accelerating even laid under the residential area. While as far as I can remember, Brookhaven lab was kind of isolated (hmm..or perhaps, it ist just part of the American style of security?). Well, according to my husband there is no significant dangerous radiation to be worried about. Na ja, dass weiss ich nicht so genau.
Well..let me stop talking about physics which is absolutely beyond my competency. So, here we go the pics at DESY, taken from the trip.
The Newsletter
Today was a sunny day. I went to Harburg and had a small meeting with Indrawan to talk about IASIs’ bulletin/newsletter. The bulletin/newsletter itself still in a conceptual stage and we still need more member to join the editorial team. I am lucky to have Indrawan as my friend and partner in this buletin/newsletter project. Although we have to face many obstacles, we are keeping our spirit up and optimistically go on with this project.
At the moment, we decided to call our friends for article submission especially for “knowledge corner” column, try to contact some people, so called "Tokoh Akademik", to be interviewed, and the most important thing is to get all significant IASIs’ board member to facilitate. (hihihi..hopefully they read this blog too, because I know they are FS-ers too).
Undangan mengisi Kolom Pengetahuan Buletin IASI
Rekan-rekan sekalian,
Sehubungan dengan rencana penerbitan
Bulletin/Newletter IASI, kami team redaksi
akan sangat gembira jika ada rekan-rekan IASI
dan/atau rekan-rekan mahasiswa di Jerman
tertarik dan bersedia menyumbangkan
ulasan/tulisan ilmiah popular sesuai dengan
kompetensi bidangnya masing masing.
Misalnya bidang Kesehatan, Biologi,
Lingkungan, Penerbangan, Komputer. Fisika,
Kimia, Arsitektur, Kuliner, Ekonomi, Hukum,
Musik, Politik… dsb.
Tulisan ini akan dimuat sebagai
kolom "pengetahuan dari kita untuk kita".
Bagi rekan-rekan yg berminat dapat
menghubungi Indrawan/Lessy (Hamburg)
untuk informasi lebih lanjut.
Terima Kasih.
I wish this epistle might help speeding up the progress of the Newsletter.
Ugh, to be honest, the first edition is freaking me out. I am curious whether this project will accomplish the objective….Na ja…
Uncategorized | Comments (2)New year, fireworks and fire crackers
This morning I was arranging some appointment and wrote them in my “Snoopy Kalender” agenda. Well, it is 2006 already. A new day in a new year is not really a big deal for me while I’m not an officer, nor a Banker. I don’t even have to buy a new agenda because my agenda works from Aug 2005 to December 2006. What making this New Year eve slightly different than other before was the fact that I risked my self to get closer to those fireworks and firecrackers (Petasan).
My husband took me out for a dinner (not for celebration..it was just because we were hungry and craving steak), then walked downtown for a while before we finally went home. By the time we walked, I realized how bad I dislike the noise and the anxiety of walking under the fireworks along with being aware of firecrackers attack. I felt like I’m in a war, under terrorist attack or something in between.
I’m a grown up and how could a grown up afraid of fire works? Well, I’m not being irrational here, I just demand a little understanding..
Previously, at high school, my teacher’s son lost his thumb because of firecrackers. When I was in the Netherlands there was a fireworks accident in Vollendam happened and killed number of peoples who were celebrating New Year in a café’. Then, during consultation to my dad’s cardiologist, I knew some patient with heart problem really had a bad time dealing with the shocking noise. Yet, the burning smells and the startling noise, alert my nerve system in an unpleasant way.
What triggers me to write about this was some kids behavior out there. They threw their firecrackers to any direction as they like without aware of other people. I even saw many of them threw their firecrackers to other peoples’ apartment especially to old peoples apartment. One even exploded in front of me when I walked between blocks of building. Oh!! so aggravating!!
However, I’m not against fire works; I admit that I also enjoy its charm from distance. What I’m trying to say here is that without proper security assistance it can be really bad. Since as human, we constantly tend to create errors and that’s how accident usually happened.
Na ja..another new year.
May our forthcoming achivement will be better..
Uncategorized | Comment (1)