Diese böse kleine Deutscher(innen)
Those evil little German women
So as I mentioned before, the deal in Stuttgart fell through. I had first class tickets to go there from Cologne on Friday, and then another to head to Munich on Monday. So I decided to stay in Cologne for the weekend instead, since at least I knew people there, then use the Cologne to Stuttgart ticket on Monday and then get on the Stuttgart to Munich
So on the Friday of depature of this full-fare first-class ticket, I go to the Hauptbahnhof to go change my ticket Cologne to Stuttgart from Friday to Monday. I walk up to the window and ask in German that I need to change this ticket from Friday to Monday. The woman looks at the ticket and looks very shocked. She asks "Why did you not get on your train today?" (in German). I answer back simply "Well, my plans changed." I had not formulated an excuse more than that, let alone translate it in my head for public consumption. "Moment mal," she says. She stands up and goes over to her supervisor.
She comes back and says "I'm sorry, there's nothing I can do. If you had come yesterday, I could have done something for you, but it is too late."
"What?" I pause. "This ticket is worthless?" I continue in now stammered German. I shocked. I didn't know what to do, again, in English let alone in German. We bantered back and forth a little bit. I'm sure I looked completely perplexed and visibly disturbed. "I had no idea. I didn't know. I'm here on vacation and this is my first time on Deutsche Bahn and this is a full-fare, first class ticket," I finally stammer out in German.
And then she starts to do something I couldn't understand. She grabbed her stamp thing, starts fiddling with it, stamps my ticket and starts to write something. As she's doing this, and I'm not understanding what she's doing, I'm asking "Was kann ich tun? Was soll ich machen?" What can I do? What should I do? over and over.
"Gar nichts" she keeps saying. Totally nothing. To which I interpret as "you're f'd." Now I'm getting mad. Not wanting to cause a scene, she hands me my tickets and I walk out. I figure I'll blow off some steam, catch my cool, and then figure things out.
So I walk out mad. I'm furious. 134 Euros (about $170 US) down the Toilette. So what do I do now? Do I buy another ticket? Do I just try and get a flight direct to Munich? And then I think, why didn't she try and just sell me another ticket?
So I take a walk down the Rhein towards my hotel. And I think. Think Joe, think. It's what you do, it's what you're good at. It's a beautiful day, unseasonably nice and sunny for Cologne, walking along the Rhein. I need just to clear my head, get a good walk in and then figure it out.
So I walk along the Rhein and go back into my room. I grab the tickets out and start to see if there's a phone number for a central office I can call. My plan now is just call them up, pray to Jesus and give them my sand story of the American who's German vacation went very awry. The Reader's Digest version of course, they don't need to know every detail. My story was that my friend in Stuttgart's aunt died and he wasn't to be there. Rack it up to artistic license.
So I pull out the tickets and I read what she wrote. I had to read it like four times to really comprehend what it meant. I understood the words the first time, but made no sense the first time I read it. It had a little stamp with the ReiseCentrum with the date 07.09.06 and the words "aus [unreadable] gründen gültig am Montag den 11.9.06 zu einfachen Fahrt".
Translation: For whatever reasons, valid on Monday, the 11th of September for one-way travel.
That pesky little German woman. It's a freakin' valid ticket.
I couldn't believe it. What she was doing with the stamp was changing the date on the stamp to the day's before date, and allowing the ticket to be used on Monday, and then wrote that it was valid.
Everything she was saying to me was you're f'd. Everything she was doing was saying I was good to go. That's why I had no idea what was happening. Her actions made no correlation to her words. I was confused as all hell and now I finally figured it all out.
But what she was trying to say wasn't "There's nothing you can do." She was trying to say "Don't do anything, you're good to go, now get the hell out of here before I get in trouble with my supervisor."
And so here I sit, on a train in first class going across Germany at 300 km/hr, just waiting to be served my sandwich and Warsteiner. And all because of that pesky German woman. I oughta kiss her. But that would be very un-German of me. But then again it was very un-German of her to bend the rules for me. And man am I glad she did.
Blogdatum: Montag, 11.09.2006
So as I mentioned before, the deal in Stuttgart fell through. I had first class tickets to go there from Cologne on Friday, and then another to head to Munich on Monday. So I decided to stay in Cologne for the weekend instead, since at least I knew people there, then use the Cologne to Stuttgart ticket on Monday and then get on the Stuttgart to Munich
So on the Friday of depature of this full-fare first-class ticket, I go to the Hauptbahnhof to go change my ticket Cologne to Stuttgart from Friday to Monday. I walk up to the window and ask in German that I need to change this ticket from Friday to Monday. The woman looks at the ticket and looks very shocked. She asks "Why did you not get on your train today?" (in German). I answer back simply "Well, my plans changed." I had not formulated an excuse more than that, let alone translate it in my head for public consumption. "Moment mal," she says. She stands up and goes over to her supervisor.
She comes back and says "I'm sorry, there's nothing I can do. If you had come yesterday, I could have done something for you, but it is too late."
"What?" I pause. "This ticket is worthless?" I continue in now stammered German. I shocked. I didn't know what to do, again, in English let alone in German. We bantered back and forth a little bit. I'm sure I looked completely perplexed and visibly disturbed. "I had no idea. I didn't know. I'm here on vacation and this is my first time on Deutsche Bahn and this is a full-fare, first class ticket," I finally stammer out in German.
And then she starts to do something I couldn't understand. She grabbed her stamp thing, starts fiddling with it, stamps my ticket and starts to write something. As she's doing this, and I'm not understanding what she's doing, I'm asking "Was kann ich tun? Was soll ich machen?" What can I do? What should I do? over and over.
"Gar nichts" she keeps saying. Totally nothing. To which I interpret as "you're f'd." Now I'm getting mad. Not wanting to cause a scene, she hands me my tickets and I walk out. I figure I'll blow off some steam, catch my cool, and then figure things out.
So I walk out mad. I'm furious. 134 Euros (about $170 US) down the Toilette. So what do I do now? Do I buy another ticket? Do I just try and get a flight direct to Munich? And then I think, why didn't she try and just sell me another ticket?
So I take a walk down the Rhein towards my hotel. And I think. Think Joe, think. It's what you do, it's what you're good at. It's a beautiful day, unseasonably nice and sunny for Cologne, walking along the Rhein. I need just to clear my head, get a good walk in and then figure it out.
So I walk along the Rhein and go back into my room. I grab the tickets out and start to see if there's a phone number for a central office I can call. My plan now is just call them up, pray to Jesus and give them my sand story of the American who's German vacation went very awry. The Reader's Digest version of course, they don't need to know every detail. My story was that my friend in Stuttgart's aunt died and he wasn't to be there. Rack it up to artistic license.
So I pull out the tickets and I read what she wrote. I had to read it like four times to really comprehend what it meant. I understood the words the first time, but made no sense the first time I read it. It had a little stamp with the ReiseCentrum with the date 07.09.06 and the words "aus [unreadable] gründen gültig am Montag den 11.9.06 zu einfachen Fahrt".
Translation: For whatever reasons, valid on Monday, the 11th of September for one-way travel.
That pesky little German woman. It's a freakin' valid ticket.
I couldn't believe it. What she was doing with the stamp was changing the date on the stamp to the day's before date, and allowing the ticket to be used on Monday, and then wrote that it was valid.
Everything she was saying to me was you're f'd. Everything she was doing was saying I was good to go. That's why I had no idea what was happening. Her actions made no correlation to her words. I was confused as all hell and now I finally figured it all out.
But what she was trying to say wasn't "There's nothing you can do." She was trying to say "Don't do anything, you're good to go, now get the hell out of here before I get in trouble with my supervisor."
And so here I sit, on a train in first class going across Germany at 300 km/hr, just waiting to be served my sandwich and Warsteiner. And all because of that pesky German woman. I oughta kiss her. But that would be very un-German of me. But then again it was very un-German of her to bend the rules for me. And man am I glad she did.
Blogdatum: Montag, 11.09.2006
posted by Joe Carlin at 3:52 PM
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