Mistakes you don’t want to make: train from Bacharach to Munich, Germany

 I pre-booked online our train ride from Bacharach to Munich a while ago, back in Bangkok. I remembered that the train ride requires two changes of train. 

But, I overlooked short transit time for our first leg. We needed to get our first train from Bacharach to Mainz Hbf. At Mainz Hbf, we needed to get into our connecting train to Karlsruhe Hbf, within five minutes!

 I was already worry about the five minutes transit time. And when we were in Bacharach, I received an e-mail alert of train delay, which added on to my anxiety.

 At Bacharach train station, their ticket machine  allowed us to check on alternative routes, and also to print out the schedules. I did that, just in case if we do get into problem for missing our connecting train.

Bacharach is a small station, with only two platforms. We were overjoyed when a train came into the platform exactly at 13:36, and indicated as heading towards Mainz. We did ‘t see any train number nor info board, so assumed that was our train. No delay, so we just had to make sure we catch our connecting train to Karlsruhe.

But the train was taking forever, and we arrived at Mainz Hbf at 14:26 (instead of 14:08). Our connecting train at 14:13 already left by then.

We went to their info / ticket booth .. got lectured a little bit, and only then that I realized that we got into a wrong train at Bacharach. I suspected we got into a Regionalbahn (RB) train, which stopped at all stations, instead of a Regional Express (RE) train.

 No harm done, the not-so-pleasant ticketing staff issued us a new schedule, and also scribbled some notes on my original ticket. All in German with one exclamation mark … hopefully, nothing sarsasctic written.

We arrived one hour later than our intended arrival time, sans extra payment. Lesson learnt, so please becareful at small train stations in Germany.