Travel Log: On a Train Platform in Germany

October, 2011

It was a brisk but wholly sunny day in October in Germany, and Lynn and I are standing on a train platform in Nuremburg. We were traveling between Munich and Frankfurt, at the end of a 10-day trip across much of southern Germany, on our way to the airport to head home. We're standing on the platform because the super-fast, super-fancy high-speed train that shoots between the capitol of Bavaria and the capitol of the Euro is quite expensive. The local trains, that connect all the smaller towns and cities in between, are slow but much more affordable. We're switching from one local train to another.

When I was in high school, I took classes in the German language. My school offered four languages: Spanish, French, German, and Russian. Many of my friends took Spanish. One in particular tried in vain to get me to take Spanish as well. It's the most widely-spoken language on the planet, she would say, it will certainly be the most useful to you in the future. Ah, but German, I would invariably reply, is so much more fun--and then proceed to shout something in the language just to demonstrate how intimidating it could sound.

When I finally did travel abroad for the first time (Canada doesn't count), it was to Mexico. Then another trip to Mexico. Then my first inter-continental jaunt took me to Chile. In more recent trips, I've gone back to Mexico, then Peru and Bolivia. My next big trip takes me through Argentina. Seeing a pattern? My friend was right about Spanish being more useful.

Nonetheless, I took German in school, and loved it. It was a language that made sense to me; every sentence part had its place. There are rules, and those rules are not broken. The German language is so very...well, German. It was great. I thoroughly enjoyed learning and speaking the language, and my few friends who ventured into those classes with me kept me practicing often.

For a while, at least. In college I was too wrapped up in classes for my major to play with languages. And though I did have a close friend who also spoke German, we found that we did so less and less. So it was nearly eleven years after my last German class that I finally made it to Germany. I found that the rules still made sense, and I could still build basic sentences. My vocabulary, however, left much to be desired. Perhaps not too surprisingly, I met an alarmingly small number of Germans who sounded like my teacher, or my high-school native-English-speaking classmates. I struggled through the trip, being able to make simple sentences, and to understand more than I could speak--but not able to have very meaningful conversations. Sure, I got my general point across, but the person I was speaking with tended to mercifully switched to English when, if not before, I exhausted my abilities.

But on this beautiful, sunny, and only a little chilly in the shade day, my need for German language skills was nearly at an end. In 24 hours' time I'd be back on a plane home. I was standing on the platform, luggage in hand, with all the other people who were waiting for the next train.

Then, the train pulled up the platform, and we all shuffled with our luggage and families over toward the doors. "Sorry," said a middle-aged woman near me who must have bumped into me or my bag, though I didn't feel it. "No problem," I replied. Germans are so polite, I love that too. The doors of the train cars didn't open. Instead, the train started to back up slowly. "Strange!" the woman next to me remarked, as we all started chasing the doors down the platform a ways. The train stopped, we arranged ourselves in front of the doors, and I said to her, "This spot is better anyway!" Then the train pulled forward again, just a little. "Here we go again," she said to me, laughing. "We must go back and forth a few times so they know we really want it," I joked, and we both laughed and boarded the train.

It was about this time that Lynn asked me what we were talking about. I realized, only then, that our entire exchange had not been in English. I had a little conversation,  shared a joke and laughter with someone in their language, and she never felt the need to switch to mine. And I couldn't have been happier for this simple, light-hearted exchange. I could have hugged that woman right in doorway of the train car. Ah, but that would not have been very German at all.

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(Note: This isn't current, but I find I'm just not writing as much as I used to--and I'd like to change that. So while I often sit with a blank page and ponder what to write about only to give up and go surf Facebook, I am instead going to try and get myself to recount past stories. Just to, as they say, get the juices flowing.)