This will be my first storytime on here, I figured that it might be helpful to tell this story as well as my lessons learned so anyone that is preparing to travel through Europe can read this and not make the same mistakes I did. Think of it like I made the mistakes so you didn’t have to. Let me know what you guys think. It might be a long read, but hopefully it’s of some value.
It was a Saturday in April of 2022, and I was on a semester abroad studying at the Filmakademie in Ludwigsburg, Germany, just north of Stuttgart. As just about anyone that has visited or lived in Stuttgart may well know, there is an incredibly finite amount of things to do in Stuttgart. So, me and two of my friends decided to take a one-day excursion to Strasbourg, France, a town on the France/Germany border.
The trip was only about two hours by Flixbus and, having left around five or six o’clock in the morning, we arrived there around seven or eight o’clock in the morning. From then until about nine o’clock at night when we boarded our Flixbus to go home, we explored the beautiful city, had a grand time, ate good food, and everything in between. It was a great day.
The drama begins shortly after our returning Flixbus departs from Strasbourg. About twenty minutes after our bus starts moving, it pulls over into a German border outpost just inside the German border. German border patrol officers board the bus and, routinely, begin checking everyone’s passports and identification. They check my friends’ study visas and passports with no problem, but when they take mine, they ask me where my study visa is. I tell them, as was my understanding, that I was registered at my address in Stuttgart with the Ausländerbehörde (immigration office) and I did not have a visa because I had not yet been in Europe for 90 days as the travel agreements between the US and Europe allow. The officer said nothing, turned and checked the papers of the rest of the bus but held onto my passport.
Once finished checking everyone’s papers, the officer returns to me and tells me I need to follow him off the bus. I (respectfully) argue that this is my one ride home, it’s late at night, and I have all of my documents. A second officer joins him, and they refuse to let me continue on the bus. So, I’m escorted off and the bus takes off, my friends still on board. I have only my passport, wallet, and almost-dead phone.
The officers bring me into the station, where they inform me that I need a residence permit in order to study in Germany for the five-month program that I was enrolled in. In Germany, a residence permit is (as dramatic as Germans will be involving their paperwork and bureaucracy) vastly, vastly different from being registered at an address. It couldn’t be more different! Since they have so distinctly contrasting names, they could never, ever be considered the same thing. So, because I had begun my five-month program without attempting to contact the immigration office regarding a residence permit, which I was unaware I needed, it showed the officers that I had the intention of illegally staying in Germany longer than the 90-day period allowed. Thus, they read me my rights and told me I might need a lawyer.
After about 30-45 minutes of making a mountain out of a molehill, the officers finally decided to let me go, but not without first stressing the importance of contacting the immigration office. One of the officers printed off directions on which trains to take for me to get home, since I didn’t have cellular connection and my phone was almost dead, and they released me back into the wild. However, this story is only beginning…
After about an hour of waiting at the nearest train station, at around 11 o’clock a single train car rolled out of the remote German darkness and picked me up. Less than 30 minutes later I switched trains for a northbound ICE train headed north to Frankfurt. According to the papers the officer printed off for me, I had to take the train north for about an hour and a half before getting off in Mannheim and jumping on a southbound train back to Stuttgart. So, north I went.
Luckily I was able to borrow a phone charger from a drunk German man on the train, but this is prior to the super-fast chargers that are now available, so my phone was charging at a snail’s pace.
As I used the train’s Wi-Fi and my phone’s maps app to watch when to get off, the train stopped about 15 minutes south of Mannheim, at a station called Rheinhausen. Since this was the first stop in 30-45 minutes, I wondered if the train would stop again in Mannheim or if this was my stop. The printed directions told me to switch trains in Mannheim, with no mention of Rheinhausen or anything similar, and the train’s map screens showed no sign of a stop called Mannheim. BUT, a paper on one of the train’s doors did mention a stop in Mannheim. Why would the train’s map screens and the paper on the door contrast each other?
So, for the five minutes that the train was stopped, my mind was racing. It should also be mentioned that, looking out the window, the Rheinhausen train station seemed to be a lone station surrounded by fields in the middle of nowhere. So, it seemed I had two options:
A) Get off the train, risk this being the wrong station and potentially be stranded in the middle of nowhere at night with no Wi-Fi.
B) Stay on the train, hope that the train will make another stop at the station in Mannheim, or risk staying on the wrong train and making my situation even worse.
Well, it was quite the predicament I had found myself in. Both options seemed to have the same level of risk, and I had no way of telling which option had a higher probability of being the correct choice. Even the drunk German shrugged when I gave him the rundown of my situation.
The horn was sounding, and the doors were about to close. I had to make a choice. So…
I stayed on the train.
I figured it was the safest option, since very few people were getting off at the stop anyway, so I decided to take option B.
The train continued north and, as I watched the train’s path slowly curve to the northeast on my phone’s map, I realized we were going completely around Mannheim, and my hopes of getting home that night faded away. About an hour of self-loathing and irritated disenchantment later, the ICE train reached its final destination of the Frankfurt Hauptbahnhof (main train station) – around one o’clock in the morning.
For those of you who have never been to the Frankfurt hauptbahnhof, I will say this: avoid it at all costs. The train station and the surrounding area is unwelcoming, poverty-stricken and very dirty, that is, unless some miracle of political action has taken place in the time since the events of this story. But, since this is Germany we’re talking about, there is a borderline 0% chance that that is the case.
So, I started looking for hotels nearby, but either their lobbies were closed, or they were booked out due to some conference that was happening in the city that weekend. But then again, it seems as though even if the world were to have an infinite number of hotels, the world would find a way to produce an infinite number of conferences to fill every room of those hotels, every weekend, forever. I’m pretty sure that’s Newton’s third law or something.
So, defeated, I returned to the train station. I bought the earliest train ticket back to Stuttgart – departing at 7am – and sat down on a bench and tried to sleep. For the next five hours or so, I was constantly awoken by homeless people fighting, strange foreigners sitting down next to me, and, a few hours later, the morning sun shining perfectly into my eyes.
And, alas, the time arrived. I got on the train to Stuttgart and slept the whole way home. After the longest night of my life, I collapsed on my bed and fell into the deepest and most satisfying slumber I have ever experienced.
From this experience, I learned 3 key lessons that I will never forget when I travel:
Always do your research. Especially in Germany. Any German that has a rule to enforce will never, ever give you any kind of wiggle room or show you any mercy. So, do your research and know what documents you need. For U.S. citizens – you are legally able to stay and travel within Europe for 90 days before you need to either return to the U.S. or obtain a residence permit of some sort in whichever country you are staying in long term. And if you’re studying abroad in Europe and you begin your studies without attempting to secure a residence permit of some kind (My knowledge on this is specific to Germany but I’d assume it’s relatively similar to all other European nations) you could technically be considered having the intention of illegally staying in Europe. In my opinion, it would be much more effective for the officers I dealt with to just tell me that I needed to contact the immigration office again for a residence permit, but of course that wasn’t enough for them.
Never leave your wingman. If something like this happens to you and you are traveling with other people, do not leave them or let them leave you alone. This story could’ve been much worse, but it also could’ve been much better if I had someone with me. For safety as well as making smart decisions, it’s good to have as many people with you as possible.
Ask for help. The locals are the best people to ask for help or directions, and you shouldn’t be afraid to ask for help when you need it. While asking for help wasn’t super beneficial in my decision to stay on the train, looking back on it, I wish I asked a conductor for help. Simply speaking up could’ve saved me from a night in that dreaded Frankfurt Hauptbahnhof.
Anyway, I usually say that is one of my best dad-lore stories. I hope you guys learned at least something from it, even if it’s just to avoid Germany in its entirety (I’m just kidding, Germany is an amazing country as long as you don’t have to deal with police, documentation, or anything in between). Thank you for reading until the end and let me know if you’d like me to post more of these stories!
Safe travels!
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