To get to Vienna’s central station from my apartment required two trains. The first ran late. I was in danger of missing my train to Frankfurt.
On the second train, I asked the person next to me if she could find out which platform the Frankfurt train was leaving from. One of the few transport bits of information that I’ve not been able to always find is live departure times. She looked in an Austrian app and told me it was platform seven.
From my seat on the second train, I could see a screen telling me when the train was going to arrive at the central station. It was updating in real-time and telling me the train was late. I would have ten minutes to find the platform in a massive station. My neighbour said it would take four minutes to walk there. As the clock ticked and we were further delayed, I could see my neighbour was getting nervous too. When we arrived, she said goodbye and added encouragingly, “It should be fine!”
I ran up the stairs and saw signs for platforms 2-12. When I got close to platform seven, there were no stairs to go up to it. I’d missed them. I then saw a lift. Fortunately it came quickly and I was soon on the platform. The train was waiting. I got on to the train with about four minutes to spare. I settled down for the seven hour journey. It was long ride but at least it was direct.
I had reserved a seat. Opposite me, across the table, was an elderly couple. My neighbour and I exchanged a few pleasantries since she could speak English. Later she asked me to watch her laptop when she went to get breakfast.
I wrote my blog on my laptop and finished reading my history of the Habsburgs.
At one point, my neighbour and I found ourselves stretching our legs. The seats were fairly hard and not comfortable.
It turned out that she was originally from New York and had moved to Berlin. She worked in the field of corruption, occasionally lecturing on it. I’d seen “corruption” on her laptop as she typed and it had piqued my interest. She was preparing a course on it. Having studied German at university, she eventually did her German citizenship test. It required knowledge of German history and a certain level of language proficiency. Now, she was a German citizen!
She was becoming somewhat disenchanted with her area of expertise because she was finding it depressing. I suggested that she should look at corruption in India. I told her that I’d heard a lot about Indian corruption but didn’t encounter it when I was there in 2017/2018 and 2025/2026.
In the book, Billionaire Raj (a play on the “British Raj” period), the author mentioned how Indian politicians are beholden to the billionaires in India. This is partly because the billions of dollars spent in Indian elections is now second to the USA. The people who contribute to campaign funds expect something in return.
My fellow traveller said that as countries develop, petty, everyday corruption is replaced by higher level corruption. This is happening in India.
At the next stop, my neighbour got off to get the connecting train to Berlin. I settled down for the rest of the journey.
In Frankfurt, my hotel was a five-minute walk from the station. After I checked in, I went for an evening stroll around the old town. The initial part of the walk was not pretty. It looked a bit ropey. But maybe it was just the number of homeless people that made it look that way.
The old town is quite nice. I sat in the main square for a bit then continued to wander around. At one point I spoke to a young woman walking her very cute, friendly dog.
After a while, I found myself on the riverside. I checked where my hotel was. It was only 20 minutes away. So I stayed on the riverside as long as possible before turning onto the road that led to my hotel.
