Adventures with Deutsche Bahn: Part I, Punctuality

It was nearing 1 o'clock. The train to Munich was leaving at 1:04. Alicia and I were waiting for Brandis, and starting to panic. The train arrived at 1:02. Two minutes to go. We got a call from Brandis a minute later, at 1:03. She was on another train which was currently pulling into the station. 1:04. The conductor told me to board. I stood stubbornly on the steps and shouted to Brandis into the phone to get her ass over to track 8!!! She made it at 1:06, to witness conductor trying to force me onto the train. Disaster avoided. Train delayed by two minutes, which it would easily regain going 300 kilometers per hour on the tracks to Frankfurt. The world is that much more exciting when you have to deal with German punctuality.

Voting in Germany

I was already living in Germany during the whole re-election process. I stayed up late watching the votes pour in like everybody else. I obsessed over the Merkel vs. Schroeder debate along with the best of them. But that's not what this post is about. This is about voting in everyday life, and how the Germans do it.

It was my second day at the University when I was first exposed to the German obsession with voting. I was sitting in on the planning seminar for the working group I'm a part of here. As would be expected, the planning seminar's purpose was to plan what we would cover in the seminar itself.

Five choices or so were written on the board.

"I'll read the choices and raise your hand if you agree with the choice read,"
"But how many votes do we get?"
"Each person will vote as many times as he wants."
Mumbles of approval.

So we all voted for as many choices as we wanted. The choice with the smallest votes was erased, and the we voted again on the remaining ones. We proceeded four times, until only one was left standing. Good, that's managed, no we know what we're going to talk about for the semester.

"Now we need to decide when we are going to go for lunch."

The following choices were written on the board.

11:00
11:15
11:30
11:45
12:00
12:15
12:30
12:45
1:00
1:15
1:30
1:45
2:00

Much to my dismay, the process repeated itself. "Who wants 11:00? who wants 11:15?...who wants 2?" Votes counted, one choice erased. Repeat.

Ok, I thought to myself, this has lasted almost an hour, now it must be over.

"Now we need to decide where we are going to eat, EG Nord, EG Sud, MG Nord, MG Sud, OG Nord, or OG Sud."

I don't need to tell you what happened next. After more than an hour, we had decided to read and give talks on a book by Kleshchev, and to eat at 12:15 in OG Sud. We did it. It was decided.

************************

Two weeks later the dictatorial powers at be (namely the two professors) changed the lunchtime to 11:50.

Adventures with Deutsche Bahn: Part II, Irishmen and First Class

I did a very typical "American tourist thing" this year and went to Oktober Fest. Despite appearances, Oktoberfest happens in September.

Oktoberfest was one thing, but the train ride may have been the real (un)adventure, since it ended with us sitting in first class. It all started with the Irishmen. The Drunken Irishmen to be more precise. After boarding the train (having delayed it by two mintues) there were no seats to be found. They were all reserved or full, or both. No only were there no seats, there was no remaining space in the aisles either. Bummer. We parked ourselves outside the six-person compartments and made everybody jump over us. We didn't want to stand for five hours. We stood occasionally when we were just to bored of being a nuissance to everyone.

Then the Irishmen arrived. The may have been cussing up a storm. It was hard to tell. They were piss-drunk and unintelligable. It may have had less to do with their lack of sobriety, and more to do with their accents. They placed themselves next to us (on our luggage) and started to talk. And Oh could they talk. We heard about the color green; how they missed 3 flights to Germany (due to drunkeness) before deciding to take the train; why Americans suck; how it is to be homeless in San Francisco; why milk should cost more than water, which in turn should cost more than beer, which in turn should cost more than milk; why their girlfriends stayed at home; sheep; beer; and a lot more. They became progressively drunker. We were progressively pushed off of our luggage, which had been a lot more comfortable than the floor was proving to be. They stank of sweat, cigarettes, and most of all, beer. We could only understand every other word they said. Finally, after propositioning Brandis, one of them fell asleep, splayed across our luggage. The other two took their cue and left. Was this what we had to look forward to at Oktoberfest?

The conductor came through, or at least tried to, but was stopped by the snoring, besoffen body of a drunken Irishman. He got little irate. The Zug was full, to the brim. And amidst the chaos he was still trying to provide beverage service. He asked us to move our friend.

"Wir kennen ihn nicht! Wir haben nichts mit ihm zu tun," we said in our defense. The plump, but apparently strong conductor, picked up the man under the arms and dragged him the length of the car to the bathroom area. In the process the Irishman didn't wake up, but in his sleep managed to knock his remaining beer all over us. The conductor was gone, and the floor was wet, as were Brandis and our luggage. I got up to bring the empty bottle up to the bar. The conductor thanked me. On second thought I asked for some napkins as well; this was turning out to be the ride from hell, and now Brandis' single set of clothes for the weekend would smell of beer. He gave the most pained look of exhaustion imaginable and said, "Just go sit in first class, just go sit in first class."

I ran, a new spring in my step, before he had time to change his mind. I jumped the sleeping Irishman, who was now coming to. "First class! We can go sit in first class!" I yelled to Brandis and Alicia down the hall. The no longer sleeping Irishman glared at me. Too bad for him. We gathered up our stuff and got to sit our the remaining 2 hours in first class comfort. All thanks to the Irishmen.

Lost in a Museum

A perfect beginning to my unadventures in Europe: I can explain how I got lost in a fine arts museum. I was enjoying a leisurely visit to my dancing/circusing friend Charlotte, who currently resides in Brussels. I needed to amuse myself for the morning, so I set off, map in hand, to find the Palais de Beax Arts, home to numerable masterpieces from the last 700 years-- Flemish and otherwise. I was particularly keen to see Rubens, Breugel the Elder, and Magritte.

My first little unadventure was simply not being able to find the museum. I looked at the map, saw where it was, and walked there. What I didn't know, was that this part of the museum is actually underground, and I would have been (and was) hard pressed to find an entrance. I walked into the most likely candidate, a miniscule assymetric glass pyramid building, and accidentally masqueraded as part of a Dutch tourgroup. I was counted off and shoved into a queue to wait for the tour to start. I thought this might be my lucky day, a free ride into the museum. But as it wasn't actually the museum and I don't speak Dutch. I made my exit. After some more wanderings I found it. At last. Step one completed.

Two hours later, after having seen my fill of Belgian masterpieces, the real task became getting back out. Sounds simple, but wasn't. I had wandered my way from the 15th century to the 20th. I was now five deep stories underground, leaving the Magritte wing, and reeling from Surrealistic cleverness. But how do I get back out? Where were the stairs I'd come down? A sign with a little green man looked suspiciously like an exit sign, so I followed his accompanying little white arrow. I followed another, and another, until they lead me to an ominous black door. This didn't look right, but maybe I hadn't been paying such close attention on the way down. I tried the door. Unlocked. That's a reassuring sign. The stairwell behind it looked, well, a bit empty. I convinced myself I was just taking the fast way, to avoid walking back up through 5 floors of galleries. I walked up, and up. Thus far, not a single door. Then came a door, or, at least half of a door. Another, slighlty less ominous, black door lay before me, standing only 2.5 feet tall, bearing a number 3, and seemed to be my only option. I'm not totally stupid, and realized this probably wasn't right, but still had high hopes of making it work out. This door too was unlocked.

Inside looked like some crawl space from Star Trek. And of course I couldn't help simultaneously thinking of "Being John Malkovic". I hesitated a couple seconds on the brink before taking the plunge. It had grey walls, black linoleum floors, and long naked florescent tubes along the ceilings and walls. It crossed my mind that it was an abandoned installation. Or maybe even not abandoned...hmm... only the elite museum maniacs take the time to find it.

I could tell you I found buried treasure. I could tell you I evesdropped over an office and heard juicy gossip. I could tell you the floor collapsed plunging me into the cafeteria and onto a freshly baked Belgian dessert. But please do not get excited, after all, these are un-adventures. After several paces, sort of squating-crawling, the unadventurous soul in me took over. It occured to me that this really might not lead anywhere; if it did, I might be in trouble; and most importantly, I might very well be locked out of the museum proper, and to avoid spending the night in this tunnel (and maybe even the rest of my life), I should start pounding on the back of the (full-sized) black door as soon as possible.

I retraced my steps, out of the tunnel, down the stairs. It wasn't locked. I got out fine. I walked around and around a few more times in the gallery, found the real exit. It went up a large staircase (but to my defense was unmarked, other than its largeness). I exited the museum safe and sound, having surved my close call with adventure completely unscathed. The only evidence was the dirt on the knees of my pants.