To be really fun, I'm going to narrate in third person. Let's begin.
It's late evening on some day during the week. The narrator can't remember. It's been a while.
Anyway, Jordan is travelling to visit her friend in the idyllic city of Heidelberg, a city that's been described to her as quaint, charming, and probably a lot like the place Belle from "Beauty and the Beast" lived in, if Belle had been cool and German, instead of French. Whatevs.
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| What I should have seen. |
A nervous adventurer, Jordan begins questioning her decision to embark at night, since now it's dark which makes her uneasy. Having already made her 4 scheduled connections, she clutches her over-packed suitcase tightly as she waits to make the 5th and final transfer, since European trains are confusing; Jordan surmises this is just for spite.
Upon hearing "blahioehah;jakj;dfHEIDELBERGjiohaiheaoha" Jordan promptly gets off the train, visions of pigeons singing as bakers break out some freshly baked night bread dancing through her head, when she is met with.....darkness. And scary youths leaning against what looks to be an abandoned barn that is ACTUALLY a ticket stand in the light of day because that's not creepy.
Not wanting to linger and see what the German teens who linger by dark train tracks do to viel spass at night, she promptly heads up to the main street.....and there is nothing. She knows now that something is terribly wrong, because this town was supposed to be cute, and this place is dark and shady and probably full of meth-heads. She surmises. It's dark out. She can't really see.
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| What I actually saw....not really....but maybe |
She decides to pick a direction and walk. There's light to the left, so off she goes. Don't worry though, the source of the light is not a musical Disney town, but instead, a factory. Of what Jordan did not discover, as she had to collapse on her suitcase and sob for a moment. It might be a good time to let you, the reader know, that at this point she discovers her phone doesn't work, since it was Swiss, and well, she wasn't in Switzerland. Moron.
Her sob-fest is soon interrupted by footsteps, and she looks up to see a man walking on the other side of the road, towards her. He is clearly a serial killer and she begins speed-walking towards the train station while resigning herself to either a short life in white-slavery (she'll never make it long who are we kidding), or a roadside death.
Salvation appears in the form of a phone booth, and Jordan quickly steps inside, only to discover that all the windows have been broken out, since this is clearly a really swanky part of town. She hastily pulls out the 10 euros she has in her name, several of them coins, and deposits them into the coin slot. While trying to punch her friend's number (which she later learns was changed prior to this evening; we're really great at planning) she calls the Steiner family twice. Does she know them? Of course not. She considers, briefly, asking them where they are, where she is, and if they could maybe pick her up. But the second time she accidentally calls, they sound angry (well, angrier than normal German already sounds) so she decides against it.
She despondently makes her way to the bench by the train station, determined to wait either for dawn or her kidnapping, when a Rastafarian girl with dreadlocks comes into view. Leaping up with the morale of Amanda Bynes' agent, Jordan runs over and asks her if there is a hotel or hostel anywhere near there. Boho German chick responds that indeed there is....in Heidelberg.
Jordan then learns she got off at (rough translation) "Heidelberg outskirts" and not "Heidelberg Main Town".
She'd just like you to know that the fault here is obviously Germany's gross deficit of creativity and not, in fact, her poor planning and shoddy German skills. I mean, that's basically the same name....for two towns within 10 miles of each other. I think I know what we're all thinking: Go home city planner. You're drunk.
