Bahn Bad

I don't feel very good today. If you look a the time you might notice one of the reasons. Woke up at this ungodly hour sneezing as my cold flared up again. I blame public transportation. Went to my Mom's birthday elebration yesterday. Maybe you remember: my car was being serviced, so I had to go by train. It went something like this:

18:42. Subway leaves at my home station.

18:46. Subway arrives at Hauptbahnhof.

18:47. Beating my way through throngs of people waiting for the S-Bahn.

18:48. Thinking: "Uh-oh." People are aimlessly milling about, trying to listen to the loudspeaker ("garblegarble S5 garble Starnberger Flügelbahnhof garble"). Tourists are trying to find the mysterious "Starnberger Flügelbahnhof". The expensive-as-heck display panel at the platform says: "If you want to take the S-Bahn, sorry, you're screwed. Please listen to the speaker announcements." Which I do. And if I wasn't so cheap I'd be on my way back by now. (I paid a bucketload of money for the ticket, heck, I am going to my parents' now.)

19:00."Garblegarble s4 Pasing garble". I hop (figuratively speaking, as everybody crams into it) into the next train, listen to the conversation of a screaming couple, smell diverse antiperspirants and not-so-antiperspirants and exit at Pasing.

19:10.The Pasing platform is also brimming with people. And I know they all want to go where I want to go, because when it's announced that my S-Bahn has been cancelled, everybody whips out a mobile and calls somebody or other.

19:11. Installing myself on the platform floor, trying to read Espedair Street. Thinking of renaming Pasing to "Windy City". Regretting I did not put on a decent jacket and supposing this will come back to haunt me later in the light of my just receding cold.

19:42. S-Bahn finally arrives. Everybody else seems to have brought a bike and/or a stroller including/not including a child (why would you take one if you don't have a child with you, but I digress). Trying to concentrate on my book, but the lady next to me strikes up a conversation with everybody else. Since she is too short to hold the handrails, she also clutches the guy next to me everytime the train swerves and shrieks.

20:05. Arrive at my final destination and take a solemn oath never to use public transportation again.

Other than that, I am feeling downcast and tired. Need to go to work today while everybody else (at least in my neck of the woods) is off due to a holiday. I won't make the deadline for my paper, I'm not sure if I'll finish my paper at all (certainly doesn't look like it now). My taxes are due but doomed (I have no idea how to do them). My money has officially run out (the vet took the last of it, sort of, I still have €2 in my pocket). Hopefully, work will soon pay me or the bank will give me the money for my savings thing, which, sadly, will then disappear into thin air as it just covers my debts. The apartment looks like it would be a good idea to tear it down with a bulldozer and salt the place.

*cough, cough, sneeze, sneeze* Are you pitying me yet or do I need to lay it on thicker? blows nose sounding like an elephant