Experience in Austria - III

Another suspense packed and an enthralling experience. Hope you remember we had taken a bus from the Salzburg bust stop to reach the train station. Yes, we reached the station and started hunting for the train that would take us to Linz. We referred the time table and confirmed that the train was expected to start at 1844 hrs from platform 4. We were at platform 1 and it was already 1842 hrs. The time indicated that we had to hurry, and we did, but the effort was in vain. Even before reaching the platform, we could see the train had already started and there was no facility of catching a speeding Eurail unlike in India. So we had to suspend our endeavor and had to resort to other options available. Time table once again came in handy and some responses from the fellow passengers helped us find out that there was a train at 1902 hrs directly to Linz and it took almost 45 minutes less than the train we were thinking of taking for our return journey. It was still around 10-15 minutes before we could board the train, at platform 2 this time round. We were relaxed and soon distracted by some Austrian butterflies (titlies) and didn’t realize the time until 1900 hrs. We raced to the platform, saw the train, confirmed it was headed for Linz and boarded it. While on the train we could appreciate the fact that the coaches seemed to be different than some of them we had earlier travelled in. First, we thought it was a first class, so we walked towards other coaches. But to our surprise, all the coaches looked similar. We spoke to some of the passengers and understood it was an ICE (Inter City Express) coming from Munich, Germany. It was called an intercity train as it was connecting two cities but of different countries. We were kind of stuck. In familiar terms “hamari toh phat gayee thi..” , wondering whether we had boarded the train that suited our ticket or not. We couldn’t have done much about it because stopping the train was not an available option. Top of that, we had not got any place to seat as it was a packed train with maximum people wanting to go to Vienna for work after a nice weekend out. Some had already found people whom they wanted to go out with the next weekendJ. Between this, we were tensed and preparing our excuses that we could give to the Ticket Checker for wrongly boarding the train. We didn’t want to ask our co-passengers as this would have created more panic. Also, who knows, if the TC didn’t come before we could arrive at Linz, we would be saved!! So we settled ourselves near the exit in the first coach of the train thinking it would take some time for the checker to reach there and till such time we would have reached Linz. We also discussed that we won’t sign any stuff if were caught and put into jail. Also we were trying to gauge the money we had with us for paying the fine, if any. All these ideas, I need not tell, were form our very own, good old, Bollywood films. Soon, the checker arrived and I could notice him at the rear end of the coach. We stood up, while some of the frequent and native travelers chose to sit on the floor, just to give an impression that we were sophisticated people and not used to breaking laws like this. The checker came, started checking our tickets. My heart started beating with the speed like never before. The tag of an international criminal wasn’t too far and not too good considering our past records. Terrified, horrified, worried, N number of synonyms would be difficult to explain our situation. We were simply trying to look innocent. The checker checked the tickets, punched them and said “Thank you sir” and was gone. It took us some moments to come to grips with the situation. “Hurray! Yipee!!” we wanted to shout, but that was not possible, rather plausible. (Between, have you thought of the contexts where probable, plausible, possible could suit?? I feel these three words are in increasing degree of certainty. Let me know if you think otherwise). We felt relieved, as if someone had managed to help us and we had eschewed a dangerous and an unthinkable situation. Out came our cameras and click and click was a thing everyone could hear.