We had looked up the trains the night before and told my friend the time we planned on being there. We had to take 3 different trains (Montreux-Lausanne, Lausanne-Zurich, Zurich-Stuttgart). The first 2 were fine, but the second was a little later than we expected. Then we got to Zurich. We had planned on only having a 30 minute break between trains. We went to the closest ticket machine and realized that it was only for within Switzerland. We asked someone and he pointed us to another ticket machine (honestly may have been a language issue). Still nothing. We asked another person, who pointed us to the information booth. They told us to go to a window with “one woman” to purchase these tickets. We found the window (many windows where you can buy tickets) and talked to a man. We were already well past the time we had planned on leaving, so I knew we were going to be late.
We found out that the next train to Stuttgart left in 2 hours, so during that time, we needed to find WiFi so I could message my friend to let her know we would be 2 hours later than expected. This was surprisingly difficult. The train station has WiFi, but they have to text you a code, and we couldn’t do that because we couldn’t receive texts. That’s where the language barrier got in the way again. We tried to ask for an internet café and at least 4 people told me “there’s internet everywhere, on your phone.” Finally, after going to the information window a few times and asking many different people, we found out that they have an internet café at western union, which we had to find. After asking a few people (many of them thought there wasn’t one there), we finally found it! I paid for 15 minutes and then realized that keyboards there are different. Y and Z are switched and I had to ask someone where the @ symbol was. But I finally messaged my friend and we had a little less stress at that point.
When we got into Stuttgart, my friend was running a little late. The thing is, again, there was WiFi at the station but you had to text, so I didn’t get her message. I walked around to find her and we decided to wait by the gate we came into. That worked well, and she said they ran to get there, and they had beer for us!
We went back to their house and stayed in for a home cooked dinner, then went to their local bar, an Irish pub down the road. We learned that in every country we’ve been to, the Irish pubs are where the Americans tend to hang out, and it can get crazy!
