A Tale of Two Cities

I was at the airport’s regional train station the day before yesterday, waiting for the subway home. When it entered the station, I heard a short discussion behind me. A somewhat older man, slightly Indian-looking, asked a woman for directions. She pointed to the ticket vending machine, and turned to enter the subway.

The man looked still lost.

“Where do you want to go,” I asked him.

He showed me a piece of paper he was holding. “To this hotel,” he said.

I looked at the paper and it listed an address in Frankfurt.

“I don’t know this hotel-” I began. Then I noted something.

“Wait a second,” I said. “This hotel is in Frankfurt on Oder. That’s in East Germany. You are in Frankfurt on Main. It’s the wrong Frankfurt.”

“But I have to get to this hotel, is it far?”

“Well, it’s in East Germany, near the Polish border. Very far I’d say – at least seven or eight hours with the train.”

“But I must go to this hotel, because I already paid for six nights.”

I didn’t really want to argue with him. After all, what do I know about other people’s plans? By now my subway had left, too.

“Well, this station is just for the regional trains, the subways. There is a long distance train station too; just follow those signs.” I pointed them out to him. “But follow me.”

I led him up the stairs, and brought him to the ticket office of the German train company.

“You can inquire about the train schedules here, and also buy tickets,” I told him. “They’ll be able to show you where to go and so on.”

“Very good, thank you,” the man said.

“No problem, Sir, you’re welcome.”

I went back down the stairs, just in time to find out that the next subway would have ten minutes delay.

### Two Frankfurts ###

Just remember, people: When and if you go to Germany, and you want to go to Frankfurt, make sure you get the **right** one.

* Frankfurt/Main (Main is the name of the river, not the English word “main”) is in western/central Germany
* Frankfurt/Oder (Oder is a river, too) is in eastern Germany, on the Polish border.

With apologies to Dickens for abusive use of his book title. :-)

About Nils

By day, Nils Jeppe is a 37 years old service- and project manager in the IT industry. By night, his secret identity as a world builder, writer, and cartographer is revealed and his feverish imagination roams the multiverse in search of interesting worlds that he then documents on his blog, Enderra.com. You can follow Nils on Twitter.
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One Response to A Tale of Two Cities

  1. wenny says:

    ohh..i got the correct one :)

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