#interrail 2025: Day 9 - it had to go wrong eventually, didn't it...

The day dawned bright and sunny and it was time to take a stroll through Mainz, the birthplace of Gutenberg and the seat of the Archbishop-Elector, a key figure in the Holy Roman Empire. There's a nice statue of Friedrich Schiller, which stirred me to hum "Ode to Joy", and the walk past the cathedral down towards the River Rhine is quite nice.

Time was short(ish) as my day's fixed point was the Eurostar back to St Pancras, and I wasn't intending to miss it. But what could be the harm in a short stop in Koblenz on the way? The train to Cologne stopped there anyway, right?

Koblenz is where the Moselle flows into the Rhine, and it attracts plenty of tourists, many of whom are on river cruises or wine tours. The city centre is modestly picturesque, although I merely intended to visit the confluence of the two rivers and head back to the station as a means of getting some more of my daily 10,000 steps.

It was when I got back to Koblenz Hauptbahnhof that things went wrong. The 14.16 to Cologne was on the platform, ready to go. We even had a driver. 14.16 came. 14.16 went. The train stood. My eighteen minute connection began to weigh heavy on my mind but, eventually, we pulled away, only to stop a mile or so further on. An announcement in German didn't really help but I eventually managed to establish that a signal failure at Andernach was to blame. I wasn't going to make that connection and, thus, my Eurostar back to London.

We eventually limped into Cologne, nearly an hour late. Finding the Deutsche Bahn ticket office, a piece of photocopied paper was thrust into my hand, and instructions given to catch the Eurostar (ex-Thalys) service to Brussels. What I was supposed to do about the train to London was left for me to discover at some point. The Eurostar pulled into the platform whereupon chaos ensued. I clearly wasn't the only person whose connection had failed due to Deutsche Bahn's general decrepitude. The train manager dealt with the horde with a degree of sangfroid and I found myself in a fairly comfortable standard class seat.

It was at this point that I realised that I could change my reservation to London using the Eurostar app and, whilst it cost €20, it meant that I could be much more relaxed about missing my original train. The consequences weren't entirely pleasant, but I could deal with that later. There are worse places to be stuck than Brussels Gare du Midi. You can grab a decent meal, drink some really good beer, and do some light shopping for the most important people in your life - beer and fine chocolates never go amiss.

The journey back to St Pancras International was blessedly uneventful, leaving me only with the task of getting back to Ipswich. Greater Anglia's contribution to my trip was to offer a rail replacement bus service from Billericay to Colchester but, despite their best efforts, I made it back to my own bed, walking through the front door just after midnight.

It was good to be home...