Clean train bathrooms are important

One of the many things we enjoyed eating at the outdoor Christmas markets in Cologne were these delicious potato pancakes. They were like hash browns deep fried in enormous flat troughs of oil, so the resulting "food" contained a minimum 30% pure fat content (note: I am making up the exact number, but you get the idea). Just in case we wanted to deceive ourselves into thinking that the oil was sliding off the potato pancake back into the frying vat, employees would periodically carve off another chunk of solid white lard from a big bucket and drop it into the vat to melt, presumably replacing all the greasy goodness that was making its way into the potato pancakes and from there, into our stomachs.

I wouldn't describe these 'lard cakes' in so much detail except that I hold them entirely responsible for the crippling stomach infection I came down with on the day we tried to leave Cologne. Sure, Aaron got sick too, but not nearly as badly so this story is all about my misery and pain (sorry, hon).

The key aspect was that the 4.5 hour train ride from Cologne to Berlin is now known as "the worst travel experience of my life". I threw up four times in the first 90 minutes, which is why I cannot stress enough how critically important it is to ensure that there are clean bathrooms on any long train ride when you think you might be really terribly ill. Fortunately, Deutsche Bahn came through for me, but given the misery of the overall ride this was really a small upside.

The remaining three hours of the ride were spent moaning periodically in a fever-induced pain haze (which might have discomfited the other passengers somewhat, but as should be clear from this description, I truly did not give a damn) and wishing that the train would go a lot faster. Though as you can see, it was going pretty darn fast already.



The end of this story is that I ended up in the emergency room at the excellent Charite hospital in Berlin, with an IV jutting out of my arm to provide both saline and some kind of painkiller. Two days later I was able to eat again, which put a dent into our sightseeing plans but did manage to save us a little on the food budget. It's all about the silver linings.