I decided to jump down to Geneva. I got online to book a train ticket from Mainz south to Switzerland and it was a bit overwhelming. All the trains that allowed bikes were going to take over 9 hours and with a bunch of transfers. I decided to do it in two chunks and so booked a ticket to Freiburg and then booked one for the next morning from there to Geneva. 

Luckily I got to the station early in Mainz because immediately there was some problems. Bikes are allowed on most trains but rules are different depending on your train. Local city trains you just throw them on top of each other and you’re good to go, but longer ones that go from city to city (and country to country) you have to book your bike a place in the bike car. Basically a numbered bike parking spot. The tickets I booked online didn’t show my parking spot for my first leg. I waited in the DMV like train ticketing office for 20 minutes. Then, at the counter it was another 30 minutes of comical drama. There was multiple managers leaning over my agents shoulder, long phone calls between the agent and HQ and lots of frantic typing on his computer. They carried my phone with my digital ticket around to all the different agents and all of them were confused. It was eventually explained to me that there is a new ticketing system that is being brought online but it had an error for bikes and so didn’t show my parking spot. They also couldn’t pull up my ticket with the new system’s order number. 

Eventually they got it sorted out. I felt bad for the poor agent who looked completely frazzled and apologized for making his day hard. He laughed it off with a shrug and assured me it wasn’t my fault. 

American’s take note, if you’re going to wander Europe by train (and you should, it’s fun) give yourself some extra time. At first is it mystifying but the ticket agents most always speak English. I was meant to take my bike to train car 1 (they call it train wagon) at platform 5b. Train car 1 parks at platform A on 5b but there is also a platform 5a with a B location. Also, when the train did arrive car 1 was inside a car with a gigantic 2 painted on the side of it! All part of the adventure! 

The train was almost completely empty by the way and all the bike parking spaces were free (and no one ever checked my ticket anyway).

Made it Freiburg in the evening and rode the couple miles to my hotel. Checking my emails I had a notice that my train for the next morning to Geneva was canceled. I hopped back on my bike and went straight back to the train station to get things sorted out before the morning rush. The same scenario played out again, they couldn’t verify that I had paid for my bike ticket even though I had an assigned parking place for it. More mangers and calls to HQ to get that sorted out. Then they set about rerouting my ticket. They offered me one that had two 1 hour layovers and I declined. They searched around some more and found the same exact train that had been canceled but an hour later. That one only had one transfer so all good. New tickets printed and back to the hotel. 

In the morning I woke up with a feeling. I hopped on the train website and tried to book a ticket on the train my new ticket was for. Sure enough, it was also canceled. Apparently a bridge was under repair. I gathered up my stuff and pedaled back to the station. I was starting to learn my way around Freiburg! At the station they again couldn’t verify my bike and the whole process started over. I had to laugh and I managed to keep the ticket agent in good spirits by joking around despite the fact that she was clearly tearing her hair out over this new system. Eventually it was all sorted and I had new tickets. It was the same as my original train but just one quick transfer around the closed bridge. Totally simple in the end except train number 2 did not have the correct number on it. I waffled whether I should hop on or not. It was the right time, it was going to the right place, the number was just not what my ticket said. At the last minute I hopped on and my intuition proved right. At the next stop I had 4 minutes to transfer to a new train and was ready to run but luckily enough the train and train wagon I was supposed to take was parked just across the platform so I was able to smoothly walk on. 

It’s good to be a passenger on this trip so that all of this is indeed a laugh. And I made it to Geneva, found a grocery store to get some food and had an easy pedal to my hotel.