Rammed in a tram

The Munich public transport system has long since lost its good reputation. Even if you check the schedule, you may wind up standing for an hour on a platform when your train is canceled. But being stuck on a crowded tram offers a close-up view of a random sampling of its diverse inhabitants.

Transcript

How is it that Munich is the richest city in Germany but has the worst public transportation system?

I admit, neither of these statements is true. But Munich does have the reputation of being pretty much “the” place to live. And on visits to Berlin and other major German cities, I have never experienced as many hassles on the train system as I have in Munich.

Today was another of those days. Getting from the Donnersbergerbruecke station to the Pasing station where I live is only four stops and should be only about 10 minutes on the S-Bahn train (“S” standing for, ironically, schnell or fast). After attending a day-long seminar, at the end of the afternoon I headed for the train. But after waiting for 20 minutes and listening to the same announcement five times that there was a yet another “disturbance” in the system (and Munich residents know all too well what such disturbances can be: people on the tracks, a medical emergency, a cat loitering nearby, or perhaps a few dry leaves or snowflakes) the S-Bahn wasn’t running, I decided to cut my losses. I walked over the bridge to the nearby Landsbergerstrasse, knowing that I could just as well take tram #19 to Pasing.

Me and about 300 others. 

One of the guys waiting at the tram stop I recognized from the train platform. He was a young, strawberry blond bearded guy who I had seen running along the train platform, clearly pretty ticked, blasting away at his cell phone in some foreign language. 

Russian, I wondered? Or another Slavic language. Hmm, what could it be? 

He was at the tram stop for the same reason I was. While we stood there, eyes fixated on the sign claiming that the tram would arrive in one minute, he struck up a conversation in broken German with the guy next to him. 

“They always talk about environment, but they can’t get trains to run on time. It’s much quicker for me to take car!”

Intriguingly, it sounded like he had a French accent. How could that be? Is there a Slavic language that sounds like French? 

“Ja,” the other guy agreed.

 Luckily they kept talking so I could continue my analysis.

“I am only student and paying for trains costs a lot of money, and then not running on time!”

“True,” the other guy agreed.

“Oh look! Here she comes. I mean he...”

“She,” said the other guy. “The word ‘tram’ is feminine in German.” “This is greatest problem for me. Genders of words in German.”

Ah yes. It’s nice to hear that others suffer from that same annoying feature of the German language: three genders and no clear rule why the word for “girl” is neutral and the word for “worm” is masculine. If you figure out the logic behind that, please let me know. 

Finally, she, the tram, arrived. And she was packed to the rafters with all of the other people who had given up waiting for the train.

We managed to squeeze on. I took my backpack off and held it near my knees since there was more room down there. I was also carrying a heavy tote bag full of seminar materials; my arm was slowly but surely getting longer and longer. I was also regretting wearing my new high-heeled boots. They’ll be fine, I told myself. I ride my bike to the station, then it’s just a short walk at the other end. It’s a good day to wear heels, I figured. Ha! The price of vanity! I hadn’t reckoned on standing for an hour on a packed tram.

There was a lady standing in front of me who was practically in my face. She was holding something brown and furry in her arms and clutching part of the brown furry thing in one hand.

It was a little dog. A miniature dachshund. She was afraid he would get trampled so she was holding him close to her body in her arms and keeping his muzzle in her hand, presumably so he wouldn’t bite. He looked up at me with inquisitive little long-lashed doggy eyes.

“Is he afraid?” I asked.

“No. Are you?” 

“No.” 

I continued having a staredown with the dog. He was irresistibly cute. Besides, I couldn’t help staring because he was six inches from my face.

I could also see the guy with the French accent who wasn’t French down at the far end of the tram. Next to me, two Spaniards had gotten on. I peered over the shoulder of a lady who was watching some YouTube video of a woman demonstrating some kind of face sander. I looked at her skin and wondered if she used that sander thingy, too. Should I be sanding my face, I wondered. Her hair was very beautiful – very shiny. I started wishing she would watch another YouTube video so I could find out how to make my hair look that way, too.

Suddenly, the tram started turning a corner. Trams in Germany consist of two separate cars, adjoined with what looks like corrugated rubber and a round plate on the floor of one car that interlocks with the floor of the other car but is not fixed, allowing the tram to bend in the middle so it can turn. When the tram takes a turn, the round plate turns with the first car and the floor of the second car stays in place.

It just so happened that I was standing at the exact spot where the cars met. I had one foot on the round plate and the other on the fixed floor of the second car. When it turned, my left foot stayed in place while my right one moved backwards. 

Slowly, through no fault of my own, I felt myself being propelled into doing the splits. 

Great. Now I’m going to fall backwards onto the guy behind me, I thought. Instead, I managed to keep my balance by taking tiny little steps to compensate for the turning floor circle. Step, step, step, step. It was like the motion you do when you ride a scooter: one foot stays and the other one moves. Or when you are forced to turn in the other direction while windsurfing and you are terrified of moving your feet at all for fear of falling into the water, so you take teeny-weeny little baby steps – and then only because your windsurfing instructor is telling you to do so through his megaphone (not that this ever happened to me). The tram car cleared the turn and straightened out. Made it! We clicked along for a couple of more stops. 

Then came another turn. Step, step, step. I was getting the hang of this.

We pulled up to a stop and a woman pressed the button to get out. 

“Hey, the door’s not opening!” someone yelled. But the driver was too far away and didn’t hear.

He kept on going. She missed her stop.

I looked back again over the lady’s shoulder in front of me who was busy with her smartphone. Now she was chatting with a friend on WhatsApp. Unfortunately, I was unable to read what she was writing and sorely regretted not being able to reach my glasses. She was probably complaining about the lousy train system. Or maybe she was telling her friend about the face sander.

The dog and I were fast friends by now. He was so cute and cuddly and I was dying to pet him – and I’m not normally a dog person at all, which truly vouches for his adorableness. I would have petted him, too, except there was no room for me to lift my hands. So I just smiled and winked. I figured what works for a baby must work for a little dog, too. I’m sure I saw him return my smile.

Finally, we pulled into Pasing station. My stop. I was sorely tempted to belt out the refrain of Händel’s Messiah – “Hallelujah!” But I didn’t.

It took way longer than it should have, but in the end, it turned out to be a kind of adventure. There is something to be said for that.