The Deutsche Bahn ate my pride for lunch

Allow me to completely contradict my previous post and tell you a short snippet of the last day at language camp to set up the story of my first adventure in Germany.

We were all together for our final meeting of language camp, and the teamers (counselors) decided to close the meeting with their wishes for us. Most of their wishes can be summed up as follows: “Yes, I wish you all the best and plenty of happiness and good luck, but what I really wish for you are some of the most awkward, uncomfortable, and confusing moments of your life.”

Remember that wish. It’s important.

Most of the students (myself included) were taking the Deutsche Bahn (train) to their host families. I was lucky enough to be riding with another student all the way to our final destination, so I didn’t have to worry about working the German train system completely on my own.

Our train schedule was Bad Laasphe to Marburg, Marburg to Hannover, and Hannover to Minden. Simple enough, right? Well, we had exactly 13 minutes to switch trains in Hannover, which actually wasn’t that problematic. 13 minutes is more than enough time to make it from platform 8 to platform 11.

Unfortunately, our train from Marburg to Hannover was running late. We stood on the platform in Marburg watching our 13 minute layover become a 10 minute layover, then a 5 minute layover.

We took the news as tastefully as possible. The Deutsche Bahn seemed to be mocking us poor Memphian girls, but we replied with a resilient “Challenge accepted.”

As soon as our stop in Hannover was announced on our train, we sprang from our seats, grabbed our bags, and bolted to the nearest exit. We were born ready for this.

The train came to a halt, the doors opened, and we darted out, taking exactly half a second to orient ourselves. Down the stairs into the depths of the crowded train station we went, power walking so fast we could have won Olympic gold medals. We emerged on platform 11 just in time!

Just in time to see our train leaving the station, that is.

We could practically hear the Deutsche Bahn laughing at us.

Fortunately, we were prepared for this exact situation. We successfully got our tickets switched to a train that was only 20 minutes later than the first one (read: we had 20 minutes to catch our next train).

We also needed to call Experiment and our host families to let them know of our small snafu so as not to create mass panic when we didn’t show up on time. Unfortunately, neither of us had functioning phones. Thus, the hunt for a payphone began.

We asked the lady who changed our tickets where a payphone was and took off with purpose and confidence in the general direction she pointed us. That confidence quickly faded to mild confusion, which quickly faded to desperation, so we decided to ask someone else.

Time to break out our extremely elementary German.

“Wo sind die Telefone?”

Success! We were promptly pointed to the payphones.

Face palm. They were 20 feet away from where we were standing.

We arrived at the payphone with 10 minutes until our train left, which shouldn’t have been a problem. We just popped some money in, dialed the number we were given for Experiment, and felt our hearts shatter when the payphone informed us this was an invalid number.

It wasn't that bad, though. We had many other numbers we could try: host parents, local coordinators, teamers from language camp. Really, the list never ends.

Invalid number. Invalid number. Invalid number.

Our never-ending list of phone numbers was getting much shorter. We were beginning to question the entire infrastructure of the German phone system. Then one number went through.

“Hallo?”

“You’re a person! Hello! Is this Experiment?”

“Was?”

“Uhhh sprechen Sie Englisch?”

“A little”

“We’re from the exchange program with Experiment. CBYX. Is this Experiment?”

“What experiment? I don’t know what that is.”

*Internal crying because our success turned out to be a rather spectacular failure*

“Entschuldigung. Wrong number”

Time check: 5 minutes until the train leaves. We stayed at the payphone and tried a few more numbers, got “invalid number” several more times, called the same wrong number a second time, and ultimately decided to try borrowing someone’s phone on the train.

Thankfully, we didn’t miss this train. We decided to target the woman sitting opposite us for a phone. Time to break out that Deutsch again. We carefully planned our phrasing, and I practiced several times: “Entschuldigung. Können wir Ihr Handy leihen?”

I nervously stood up and walked over to her. Show time.

“Entschuldigugn. Können wir Ihr…”

“I speak English”

She was very nice and let us borrow her phone from which we successfully called our local coordinators and let them know what was happening.

We spent the rest of the train ride participating in Germany’s favorite pastime: complaining about the Deutsche Bahn. I quietly surrendered the tiny shreds of my pride I was hanging on to. It took just a few hours for the teamers’ wishes for us to come true, and I’m sure the year has plenty more awkward, uncomfortable, and confusing moments in store.

*Note: We arrived in Minden just fine, and both of our host families were waiting for us there. My host family is extremely nice, and I think I am settling in nicely.