And of course, mere minutes after the weeknotes at Worldbuilding Agency were published, with their optimistic claim that this trip had been blessed by the infrastructure gods, my train from Hamburg to Copenhagen was cancelled mere minutes before it was due to depart.

It’s not like I’ve not learned the risk of jinxing it, many times over. But here we are.

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There are two more trains running the same route today, but they’re both likely to be sardine simulators, thanks to everyone from my (fully booked, cancelled) train trying to cram into the next (also fully booked) train… so I’ve gambled on booking a seat reservation on the later of the two, because while it will still likely be hell on wheels and not get me home much before midnight, it will at least be hell on wheels in which I have the right to sit down for the full five hours. (If the DB app is to believed, I secured the last available free seat, so, yeah.)

So we’ll see how it goes, I guess? Looking at patterns in the other cancellations in the network around Hamburg today—which are alarmingly plentiful—I wouldn’t want to rule out further mishaps. My hope is that word of them will reach me while I’m still here, rather than halfway back; I’ve been obliged previously to overnight in Flensburg, the last town before the German-Danish border, and it’s not an experience I’m keen to repeat. If DB end up having to cough up for a hotel, I want to make sure they end up coughing pretty hard.

In the meantime, there’s a big public library just five minutes by foot from the station: comfy seats, free wifi, and largely devoid of the hassle outside. They opened just as I turned up; I’m hoping Sunday hours will last until I need to leave.