Berlin-Leipzig-Halle-Magdeburg-Halle-Leipzig-Halle-Leipzig-Dresden-Leipzig-Berlin

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Ok so I got offered a days worth of work and needed to pick up a visa from Berlin, so I came back from Poland to work a day in Magdeburg. On passing through Berlin where I had hoped to pick up my passport with my Indian visa, courtesy of Cox and Kings, I was dissapointed to find that they still had not managed to process it. Cox and Kings for me really lived up to the first part of their namesake. The first problem I had with them was that my application had been filled out in blue pen. For some reason, even though it wasn't stated anywhere on the application form, the visa had to be filled out in black pen. This had meant I had had to send my application twice from Leipzig to Berlin to meet this extremely anal requirement. That was just the beginning of the fun however with the end result being that 7 working days after their stated maximum time period to process visas, I left Berlin without my visa.

So I got back to Leipzig, went out with some friends for drinks, then woke up and took the 5am train to Magdeburg, arriving with an hour to spare. I had bought the Sachsen Karte which is one good thing DB does - it basically allows you to travel for the day with a group of up to 5 people for a reasonable price. However I hadn't read the fine print on the ticket and halfway there when checked by the staff, was told that the ticket was not valid and i had to purchase another one. This was because right at the bottom of the ticket in fine print it says, the ticket is valid form 9am onwards.

So due to my mistake, my 2 hour trip to Magdeburg had become a 50 Euro ordeal. This kind of pissed me off, so I devised a way of making my money back. I got on to Mitfahrgelegenheit and advertised for people to come with me back to Leipzig. I did this at lunch at work and had 3 people coming back with me 2 hours later. Once at Leipzig, I thought why not continue with this and I found a bunch of people who wanted to go to Halle. I did the same thing going back to Leipzig. Then I thought, why not go to Dresden one more time, there is still time and there are always alot of people doing that trip and I found 4 people to come with me there and on the way back. The end result was I got to finish of a good book I had been reading, visit most of the cities I have seen in Saxony over the last 6 months and gain 40 Euro after taking out the cost of both tickets purchased doing so. It was a long day though!!!!

The next day i visited the Cox in Berlin and picked up my visa, after which I auf wiedersehened Deutschland and headed off to Wroclaw to catch up with some friends there. A busy few days!!!!

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