Our little boat was arriving in Zurich at ten in the evening, and I still had to get to the train station, and from there it's half an hour to Baar. Would be nice to do it faster! I got off the boat at nine and some change in Horgen. Google Maps seemed to tell me that it's quick and easy to get home from there. My phone was dying, I was hungry and tired, and my brain wasn't really working. I went to a store to buy some snacks, but nothing appealed to me. In the end, I grabbed an equivalent of Garik's sawdust, only in liquid form straight away, in a bottle. It's called "This is food", which is pretty logical overall and in the spirit of Artemy Lebedev (God forbid his name be mentioned before nightfall). But the taste was so-so, a bit boring.
When I got back to the station, I realized my phone had died, and it would be a good idea to check the route. For a long time I stared blankly at the paper map on the station wall. Just as I was starting to figure things out, I heard a familiar noise. I looked back and saw my train hauling ass full steam ahead towards Baar high, high up on the hill. It flashed its windows, and it was as if it were never there. It reminded me of the TV show "Snowpiercer", where some characters also screwed up and missed their train, and ended up dying on the frozen earth because of it. Luckily, nothing of the sort threatened me.
Turned out, either Google or I made a mistake, and in reality I first had to catch a local train, get to Thalwil, and from there transfer to Baar. Or drag myself a couple hundred meters up the hill, there's a stop there too. While I was wrapping my head around this, a local train heading in the right direction pulled up right on cue. I jumped into it, still not really understanding if I was doing the right thing. When traveling, you have to know when these kinds of stunts work and when they don't, and that comes with experience. Ultimately, half an hour later I was already trudging home through Baar, for now still taking the long way, and not through the cemetery like I did at the end of our stay.
Only later did I find out that Google doesn't always update train schedules on time, and it's better to use the app from the SBB transport corporation. The app actually works decently enough, although not entirely intuitively. You can buy tickets in it, and there's even an "automatic journey" mode where they'll charge you exactly for the distance you traveled. I don't know how this magic works, didn't have the need, but it sounds futuristic. There are similar local apps for tourists (SwissTopo) and for checking the weather (MeteoSwiss).
Handy.