The signage at Cologne Bonn airport was broadly pretty poor and the only other airport that I’ve experienced this is at Berlin Brandenburg. Between the plane and arrivals, I was following other passengers and they, including different people, went wrong on three occasions. Now, I go wrong a lot when I get muddled up, but there was mass confusion here. Well, maybe I exaggerate mass, but it adds to the drama. I suspect that people don’t tend to much think about good signage that’s been well thought out, because they just naturally follow it and get to where they want.
Either way, things didn’t much improve after getting into the arrivals area. In the above photo, there is a very difficult to see sign for the S-Bahn but you’d never walk down that bit as there are barriers, the passenger route is to the right where there is no signage. But, I’m an experienced walking route navigator, so I had a plan to just keep going and I was confident I’d end up somewhere. Maybe not where I wanted, but I’d end up somewhere.
Fortunately, I managed to find the railway station without going wrong, although it was further away than I had anticipated.
And finally nearly there….
There’s the one that I want, the 22:54.
The platforms were longer than I had anticipated when I saw the trains in the distance.
That’s the 22:32 train to Koblenz on the right and by this time, it was 22:39. I realised I could get that delayed train, so I decided to get on it.
It all looked mostly clean, there were power points and I thought this was working out. The train evidently wasn’t going anywhere fast, but I am a very patient person. For two or three minutes anyway. Then there was an announcement at 22:54, some angry faces and 90% of people got off and boarded another train.
They boarded this train, the one I was originally meant to be on originally, so I joined them as part of the passenger stampede. Of course, the train we were all on then promptly left and there were some angry German words used by a few passengers that I didn’t entirely understand.
I can’t remember the last time I saw anyone with their feet on the seats in Poland. In the UK and Germany, it’s a different matter. Not that I go on about these things.
For added excitement for passengers, some of the doors didn’t work. But, all was well, I was able to get off at Köln Messe/Deutz railway station and walk to the hotel.
In terms of the ticket, there were two ticket machines at the airport railway station that I saw, but both were in use. That didn’t impact me as I had decided to buy my ticket online as there was a small discount, so I paid €3.68 on the KVB app. It was relatively easy to purchase as most sections of the process, although not all, were in English.