Returning Nemo, day one: Gröbenzell - Brussels

After a lovely week of doing very little in what was unashamedly just an excuse to go somewhere to use up all four days of my Interrail pass rather than waste two on an Angoulême-Basel-Angoulême loop, it was time to head homewards.

My stay in Gröbenzell was fun and I mostly took time to catch up with Hostess in between bouts of working or, in her case, toothache, which conveniently gave me an opportunity to brush up on my schadenfreude while she liquidised her food. There were no excursions this time, although I did walk to the supermarket unattended one day to stock up on creamy puddings to be consumed without chewing.

Hostess made sure I left Gröbenzell in plenty of time to get to Munich central station and have time to buy stamps for my Eurovision postcards. My first joy of the day was watching the man on the S-Bahn having to admit defeat as a dozen or so of young schoolchildren on a trip to München-Pasing demonstrated they had no shits to give about the phone call he had, until that point, been obnoxiously sharing with the rest of us. Is this schadenfreude?

I could've stayed away from home for longer, if I'm honest, and on arrival in Munich I had time to look at the departures board and in the app and dream of exotic distant lands of reveries such as Prague, Bologna, or even München-Pasing, but sadly the real world beckons and therefore, like last time, I simply have no choice in the matter. Hey ho, let's go. As they say in Moldova.

Die Post (no really, please do) does not accept Visa or Mastercard payments for some unfathomable reason, something I learned after some back-and-forths with the person behind the counter who was determined not to speak English and remained resolutely unimpressed that I can count as far as sieben in German. I had interwoven this into an adventurous second sentence I can now use when the situation arises: "Ich habe sieben Postkarten für Europe, bitte." I even smiled, hopefully, for the bitte.

They wanted to sell me a carnet of one-seven-and-three stamps, something I resisted because I fortuitously had come to the post office brandishing only one-seven-and-none postcards, a configuration quickly determined to be most inefficient. Evidently nobody in the Bundesministerium für Briefmarkewesen, Postkartenangelegenheiten und Unbezahlbare Freundlichkeit had ever had the foresight to anticipate a situation in which a tourist might need just one stamp per postcard per destination. As I wandered, muttering, to a cash point ("you hef van minute"), my over-worked interlocutor counted out two-sevens-and-none stamps and, to their credit, then stuck them on my postcards for me by the time I returned, gleefully waving two-sevens-and-six euros denominated into two one-seven-and-three euro notes.

Back in the station, far from the tendrils of the Office for Philatelic Enforcement, there was a shiny ICE waiting on platform three-sevens-and-one which was not the ICE 626 to Frankfurt am Main as advertised on the platform screens but a differently-numbered ICE of not enough carriages that someone had carelessly left lying around unattended. It was now full of people who'd neglected to read the information display on the door and had recklessly boarded anyway.

Many increasingly angry announcements later, some Deutsche Bahn staff were released to chase people off the train and herd them back onto the platforms, so that it could leave and be replaced with the correct train. When, exactly, this last part was going to happen was uncertain even to the actual Germans on the platform. As we were in Germany, the Germans were very rudely announcing things only in German, so I resorted to befriending some soldiers through a flirty smile and a knowing nod while unleashing my other killer sentence in German – Sänk ju for träweling wis Deutsche Bahn – to guarantee regular updates on the wo ist mein ICE situation until such time as they became unnecessary.

There was Vegane Currywurst.

Waiting for it was really hard but I managed to hold out until about one o'clock before heading to the dining car. Hostess had found it very strange that I might forgo breakfast "to leave room", as I put it, for "food on a train", as she put it, but eating hot food from a proper plate with a proper knife and fork while supping Bitburger from a proper glass and watching lovely scenery whoosh past the window is somehow a most satisfying travel experience. There are many other distractions on the menu, but it has to be Vegane Currywurst. It's the law. I told her this and she still didn't understand.

I got back from the dining car to discover that the reservation indicator for my seat had been cleared and that someone's bag was now occupying it. Given that I wasn't ready to communicate my displeasure at finding someone in seat seven-sevens-and-six in German, it seemed somewhat churlish to be rude to someone in English without establishing if they spoke English first – at which point things would become even more uncomfortable – so I just put their bag somewhere else and sat down. When questioned, I showed my reservation in DB Navigator and smiled, before putting my earbuds in and tuning out for some more chefs-d'œuvre de l'Eurovision.

About half-way between the end of lunch and our scheduled arrival in Frankfurt, it became apparent that something was not going quite to plan. I'd missed the important bits by listening to bouncy pop to cover the noise of being in a Handybereich, but the screen announced our train with a late arrival at Frankfurt followed by a two-hour delay arriving in Cologne. This was thanks to some tunnel lights failing somewhere and subsequent diversion through the Rhine valley which meant that my connecting train from Frankfurt to Brussels, on which I was to arrive in Brussels at 19:35 with time for falafel-hunting and beer, was cancelled.

As were all trains. For an indefinite period. DB's emphasis, not mine.

And then it wasn't.

I got to the head of the queue at the information desk just in time for the woman to tell me go back to the train I'd just got off and change in Cologne, which would have been all fine and well had she previously not told many sevens of people the same thing. I got back on the train to discover bodies everywhere but seat 55 still empty, yet with a woman guarding it for someone who went to the toilet and never returned. I talked her round by saying I'd been sitting in it when the train arrived in Frankfurt and rolling my eyes and tutting before saying Deutsche Bahn. In Frankfurt airport, the train manager refused to go any further until some people got off to wait for another train four-sevens-and-two minutes later. I slid down the seat and turned the music up.

In Cologne, I had an hour and a half to wait for the 19:42 ICE to Brussels (on which I made a reservation from my phone) which I killed with a mixture of cathedral and street art. In hindsight I would probably have been better off exploring in Frankfurt and getting a train from there as, on leaving Cologne for Brussels, the people in the dining car announced they were only staying open until Liège and so we'd need to be quick. I had been contemplating the lentil curry but ended up settling for an unsatisfactory falafel wrap and another Bitburger. It was a type of ICE I've not been on before, with wooden bits, and the dining car was a bit rubbish.

Back in the specifically-booked quiet compartment, some French speakers were struggling with the concept of the quiet compartment, despite being right under a picture of a person with a finger to their lips above the word "psst!" writ large. I cancelled them out with some Eurovision dancefloor bangers until Brussels Noord, where I changed onto a Belgian train headed for Brussels Centraal.

On the way to my hostel, I learned that it's Brussels Jazz Weekend (...nice). I had a cornet of chips from a stall round the corner followed by a pint from a nearby cosy pub, all for just under one-seven-and-two.