Sunday 3rd August, 2008

Bristol, Cambridge, Athens, Trieste, Venice, …
The list of places I have been, each with their own memories. Each special in its own way. But like all voyages it is time for this one to end. I am finally heading home.

It is odd to think about home. I have spent the last ten hours thinking about it while sitting around in Frankfurt airport. I am a little embarrassed to say at this point in my journey I was too exhausted to actually go out and look at the city, and missed my first chance to visit a city in Germany if only for a day. One reason was that when I mentioned I was going to Frankfurt the reception I got was almost universally dismissive; the second reason was that when I had arrived in Frankfurt it was midnight on a Sunday, and I had to leave by noon. What could I really see at 3 am in the city?

Well, let me back up just a little. Saying that I arrived in Frankfurt at midnight is a little misleading. After a mad dash to the airport from Venice I landed at an airport called Frankfurt Hahn airport. The reason for this name confuses me, because the distance between Hahn and Frankfurt is 267 kilometres (166 miles). My first experience of Germany was a country-side bus trip that I (mostly) slept through. Once I had arrived at Frankfurt International Airport I decided that I was too tired to look at the town, and would instead take the opportunity to catch up on writing in this journal.

I have to admit, it was nice to take a break. I was a little bit stressed about my flight into the United States: I was flying into Washington D.C. and then catching a connecting flight 90 minutes later to San Francisco Airport (SFO). Even if simply transferring flights in the US you still need to clear customs, immigration, and an additional security screen so 90 minutes is not much time. I had book the two flights together on the same airline so if I missed the connecting flight I would simply be put on another flight, but after wandering through the streets of Venice on Saturday, rushing to the flight and wandering around Frankfurt airport for 12 hours all I really wanted to do was get into my bed as quickly as possible.

The flight was not off to a promising start. We started boarding our plane going to D.C. half an hour after we were supposed to take off. 60 minutes to clear customs, immigration and security. Not much I can do about it, I suppose. The flight crew seems disorganised and out of sorts too; they have not put enough immigration forms on the plane, they accidentally skip people during the meals and repeat one of the films they were playing. However, they come through when it counts — we arrive in D.C. at 3:00, our originally scheduled landing time.

We make our way off the plane and into the downstairs pen. The people transferring flights are directed off into a special area so they can get through quicker. Even so, the line contains roughly 200 visitors to the US — that is those of us that need the full fingerprint and picture taken as well as some fairly mild questioning. The area is concrete and painted with a white undercoat, and signs are posted apologising for the appearance of the pen during renovations. The line crawls along, slowly, slowly, slowly. Finally I get to the front. I guess about 30 minutes passed by in the line, and I get through immigration without incident. In the next big room the bags have been taken off the conveyer and arranged on the floor. I poke through looking for mine, and find it. Then it is time to join another big queue for customs. After customs we drop our bags off on a conveyer belt and make our way to go through yet another series of metal detectors. I suppose it makes sense; if you accept that we have to carry our bags past customs then it is possible we take an item from our suitcase and place it in our hand luggage. After security we were free to find our gate and board. In Germany I had asked the man behind the counter if they held the plane and he had told that they did not. I found one of the large departure boards and got onto my plane bound for SFO — with 6 minutes to spare!

I usually find it quite difficult to sleep on planes with all the noise and light, but on the flight westward I found it difficult to stay awake. I had not slept properly since I had woken up in Venice on Saturday morning and it was starting to take its toll. The five hour flight passed quickly; before I knew it I was back in San Francisco. Getting back to Davis meant an hour and a half on the light rail BART and then catching the train for an hour and a half back to Davis. I waited for my luggage and then went to change some money. Soon I would be snug and warm in my bed, and catch up on all the sleep I had missed.

I made one big mistake. I saw the BART at the airport, and I looked at the line it belonged to. Not where I want to go, I thought I’ll wait for the proper line. I only had a couple of minutes before the train pulled away, and when I checked the map I remembered that for the first part of the journey all the lines went the same way anyway. On the weekends only one of the lines ran, and you were supposed to take that one into town and transfer later. The next light rail was in 10 minutes, so it did not seem like a big mistake at the time. As it turns out, that mistake delayed my arrival back in Davis by eight hours.

Once the next light transit arrived, everything went smoothly. I have taken the BART many times now and have the transfers between lines worked out, and I can practically do it in my sleep. Which is just as well, because that is essentially what I did. The train pulled up to the station, and about eight people started making a mad dash toward the train platform. The train must be going soon! I joined in the mad dash, hugging my non-draggable luggage close so not to cause anyone injury. Down the stairs, back up the other side. All eight of us arrived roughly simultaneously, and we could touch the train as it started to pull away. People started complaining; this train was never on time, yet today it had left a minute early. That minute was all we needed to get on. “Well when is the next one?” I asked. After all, it was only 9:17 pm. I was told that was the last one for the night, and that the next one arrived at 4:50 am Monday morning. The other people grumbled and made their way back on the BART to San Francisco to spend the night with the friends, or to return to the places from whence they came.

I suppose in all fairness that I had no reason to complain. There were so many places that things could have gone wrong: I could have missed my connecting flight, the flight into SFO could have arrived late, my luggage could have been delayed coming off the conveyer belt or even lost altogether. Anyone of these things occurring would have meant I would miss this train. Instead everything had gone like clockwork and I had arrived on the platform only to be stopped at the last hurdle on my way home. Even worse was the knowledge that if I had only caught that previous light rail I would be on my way home instead of on the cold railway platform.

The easiest thing to do at this point was to put on some extra clothes and sleep at the Richmond train station. Before making this my plan for the evening I checked downstairs with the operator if the Richmond station would close tonight.
“Yep. We close everything at 1:30 am”
I would be willing to sleep on the concrete slab at Richmond train station, but I would not be willing to sleep on the streets of Richmond. I have nothing against streets or park benches, but Richmond can be a fairly scary place. My plans had to change to either finding a motel for the night or trying a last ditch effort to get back home. I asked the operator at the station if there was anyway of getting back to Sacramento tonight, the closest major town to Davis.
“There should be a 1:30 am bus leaving Oakland going to Sacramento. You can still catch the light rail back there and walk to the bus station from the station.”
Making my decision to try and get home, I purchased another train ticket to get me back to Oakland, giving my change to one of the people at the station who was spending her night in the station looking for handouts.

The attendants at the light rail station in Oakland gave me good directions to the bus station, and I arrived there around 11 pm. The bus for Sacramento left at 1:30 am, just as I had been told. Sacramento was the first stop the bus would make, but even so it would not arrive until 3 am. The bus was only stopping at really large cities, and its final destination was Salt Lake City in Utah.

Trying to sleep at the station was futile, as it was very bright and loud with no horizontal benches to lie on. My laptop battery was dead and I was too tired to read, so I spend my two and a half hours waiting trying to watch the television on the wall. The sounds in the station were too loud for me to hear the TV, so I got to make up the dialogue as I went along (and may I humbly add that I think I may have improved on the original shows!). On the bus sleeping was much easier, but the threat of waking up and finding out I was in Utah urged me to try my best to not drift off. The last part of the bus trip was depressing; from the highway I could practically see my house whizzing by as the bus made its way to the station in Sacramento.

Sure enough at 3 am we pulled into the Sacramento Bus Station. All I needed to do now was catch a 45 minute bus back to Davis, a mere 20 miles back the way I came. I triumphantly grabbed my luggage and lugged it through the quiet city streets until I reached one of the local bus stops [the bus station only services the large intercity routes, not the "local" routes I was interested in]. And I waited. And waited. Was I at the right stop? I thought this bus ran all night because it also serviced nearby Sacramento airport, but maybe it doesn’t? On the side of the bus stop is a tollfree number for Yolobus, which I make a note of and head back to the main bus station to call.

It turns out that yes, I was at the right bus station, but no there are no buses until 5:38 am. The clock now reads 3:30 am. So for the second time that night I am in a bus station, waiting for a couple of hours. Is it worth taking a taxi 20 miles to get home two hours earlier? I decide against it and settle in for the wait. I pull out the paper version of my journal and start making notes.

Around 4:20 one of the people at the station start going around all the customers and asking for money to get home. I had already given away all my loose change to the lady at the Richmond BART station last night, and she needed it more. At least inside the bus station it was warm and relatively secure. The man asking me for $6 to get home does not seem to agree.
“C’mon man. I only need $6 to get the train home.”
I politely tell him that I am simply trying to get home as well, and that we are all in the same boat. As the man walks away in a huff, I remember that the trains started running from Richmond at 4:50 am. When is the first train from Sacramento to Davis? If nothing else, finding out will at least kill some time. So I head out of the bus station, up a couple of blocks to the Sacramento train station.

At the Sacramento train station the main board announcing the departure times of trains is broken. I make my way to the counter (thankfully at this time of day there is no line!) and ask the attendant when the first train leaves.
“First capitol corridor to the West leaves at 4:30″ she tells me.
I look at my watch. 4:35 it helpfully replies.
“When is the next Westbound train?” I ask
“In about an hour at 5:30.”
So it is not going to make much difference one way or the other. In the end I decide to stay in the train station — the people there are less strange, the train takes only 15 minutes and not 45 to get me home, and finally it minimises the distance I have to drag my luggage.

The end of the story is slightly anti-climatic. I arrive home at 6:00 am at the break of dawn on Monday morning. A trip home that, including airport stopovers, has taken me almost two days. A trip that is a testament to the American public transportation system. The journey from SFO to my house, a distance of a mere 85 miles, has taken almost 10 hours from start to finish. That is an average speed of 8.5 miles/hours, or about twice as fast as walking speed. To put it a different way:
The trip from Germany to Washington D.C. was quicker than the trip from San Francisco to Davis
Still, I am finally home now.

A map of the trek home (at least the part in California)