Yesterday was not a good day to take the trains around Vienna. Not a good day at all. The morning was fine, though. I went to school, got there fine with the trains, and then at around 1:45, as I was making my way to Baden (a nearby town with thermal hot springs, where my friend Danielle teaches but is in the hospital with a horrible infection in her kidneys). As I got to the train station to catch the train to Baden, I looked and there were a lot of delays. I thought his was a good thing, because I wouldn't have missed a fast train going to Baden. I didn't have to wait long, but that was lucky. The train itself was delayed 30 minutes. After I got on, the conductor came over the loud speaker and said that the train was delayed 30 minutes because someone had jumped in front of a train (this happened at my train station, the one I use every day to go to school). It caused huge delays across the board. The train I was on in fact didn't go to Baden, and I had to change trains in some town where I have no idea where I was (turns out I was one stop from Baden).
I got to Baden, and asked for directions to the hospital. I was able to walk there within about 10 minutes, because Baden is so small. I got to the hospital and spent from about 3-6 talking with Danielle. She seems to be getting good care, for the most part, but I know that I would not like to have to be in the hospital in Austria...the standards are just not the same. For example, her IV was not placed in her arm properly, and it began to leak everywhere when the nurse brought some pain killer for her. Danielle said, "Wait! Wait! It's leaking everywhere!" and he said, "Well, here's some gauze. Push it under there if it gets wet and I'll change it next time." Ok, no. You don't change it next time, because she didn't even hardly get any of the pain killer in her arm because the needle wasn't going into the vein, it was going into her muscle (which we discovered when she began to get a rash and her arm started to swell, and began to burn). Turns out he was just a bad nurse I suppose...
I left when visiting hours were over. I made my way back to the train station, and waited a few minutes for the train. Once I got on, the conductor made an announcement that the train would have to wait at least 20 minutes at the next station due to someone jumping in front of a train at our next stop (after waiting). Great. Two in one day! That's awful...not a good day for people in Austria I suppose. Anyway, we sat on the train, and 20 minutes came and went. Then 40, then the conductor came on again and said that that train was ending there, and that if we wanted to get into Vienna, we had to change trains. So I changed to another train, and sat on that train for another 25 minutes. Then another train, a fast train, came on the other track, and I got up and got on that one. The conductor didn't even come on the loud speaker and tell us to get on that train, but good thing I did because it was the one going to Vienna. After another 30 minutes, we finally left. Due to the person jumping in front of the train and the police having to be called, they completely shut the next stop. Also, because of this fiasco, we were not going to be the fast train I was hoping for, but rather we stopped at all the little villages because this was the only train going in the direction of Vienna, and people had to get home. In the end, it turned out that we COULD in fact stop at the station where the person jumped in front of the train, and we were able to get to the station that I needed a bit quicker. All in all, it took about 3 hours to get home, when it should have only taken about 45mins max!!!! It was a crazy day, that's for sure!
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