Travelling Fletchers

Packing most things the night before meant we only had a few finishing touches in the morning. Oddly, it felt too easy – we all thought we must have forgotten something. Bags zipped up with space to spare, we decided it must just be experience paying off.

We headed for the 7.38 from Berlin to Kiel via Hamburg – no reservations needed. It felt a little strange, almost unsettling, not having a seat booked. But we needn’t have worried. Most of the seats did have reservations, but the slips are now digital, so they looked empty at first glance. We chanced it, sat down, and no one came to claim them.

We rolled into Hamburg with only a very quick turnaround to get the connecting train to Kiel – barely enough time to check the platform before hopping straight on. Good job the train app shows platform details or we might not have made it.

Tip for next time – always travel with a charging block. Tickets are checked on every train, and if you’re using a digital version, you need the battery to prove it. My haphazard-but-space-saving packing did fall down here – the charging block was with me, just buried somewhere deep in the bag.

We were making good progress… and then… we stopped. Sat staring out of the window for an hour. Then came the surprise – we reversed all the way back to Hamburg. And there we sat again. The problem? Firstly there was clothes on the line so we swapped trains and then a signalling issue further along.

Finally, we started to move again… only to the next station, mainly because there wasn’t enough space to keep us where we were.

We’d left Berlin early, worried we wouldn’t make it to the boat on time. After eight hours of travelling, we finally arrived in Kiel at 14:10…

Just in time to watch our 14:00 ferry sail out of the harbour!

This is where Booking.com came into its own. With the push of a few buttons, we booked into a local hotel so we could regroup and make a plan for what to do next. Sometimes travel goes smoothly, sometimes it throws in a curveball – but that’s half the fun. A missed ferry just means an extra chapter in the story.