Unlike planes, wherein passengers are compelled to please fasten their
seatbelts, and wherein the privilege of sitting in an exit row is not the
luxury of following crew member instructions in the event of an emergency, but
rather, the extra leg room, trains grant you that mysterious quality of
anonymity only achieved by the steady ebb and flow of embarking and
disembarking travelers scrambling for a choice seat. Not to mention the
vastness of Alpine landscape that engulfs your journey.
That’s right. The purchase of a train ticket does not include an
assigned seat. You can cough up
another few euros for a reservation (which can be worth forgoing penny-pinching
on a busy travel day, I assure you, having once been among the sardine-packed seatless
individuals on the luggage-end of a lopsided wagon), but for whatever reason,
most people don’t. My German teacher
in Erfurt was affronted by the idea of paying €4.50 each way (“That’s €9.00!”).
Even the Austrian Railway employee at the ticket counter advised me against
getting a reservation (“You won’t need it”).
This inevitably leads to madness on the platform.
Perhaps thanks to German Ordnung,
even before the train pulls in you can look up the very section of the platform
your 2nd-class wagon (because who travels 1st?) will stop.
Approximately 1.013 minutes before the train approaches, an announcement saying
so is made over the loud speakers. This triggers the mobilization of the sitting/smoking/texting
masses to the ridged yellow line of demarcation.
Personal space and chivalry become relics of antiquity as everyone
around you hovers by the doors, anxious to board as soon as the flow of those exiting
ceases. Once aboard, your eyes survey the status of occupied and free seats in either
adjacent wagon, like a hawk on the hunt, and the field mouse is seat 102, window,
with table, silent wagon, facing the direction of travel, no small children and
therefore no potential temper tantrums in a wagon-wide radius.
At exactly 13:54 the train departs (but if there’s a 5-minute delay, that’s
barely forgivable; 15 minutes and you have the right to remain silent and
pissed; 1 hour or more and you’ll never make your connection). You curl into
fetal position and settle in for a cat nap, but not before setting an alarm so
you don’t miss your stop (a misstep virtually impossible by flight).
When you awake, you peek surreptitiously and curiously at who you’ve won
in the transient-neighbor lottery. Sometimes you feel like talking, sometimes
you don’t. (Most of the time you don’t.)
Last Thursday I woke up to see another young woman across the table from
me, also catching some Z’s. When we made eye contact, I said a polite hello,
and that was that. Unable to sleep further and at a loss for how to occupy my
time, I began to make a stack of redundant receipts that had accumulated in my
wallet. Being a good world citizen, I made my way to the end of the wagon where
the trash cans for sorting (but not Sorting, as in Gryffindor, Ravenclaw,
Hufflepuff, or Slytherin) may be found. Just as I made my way past three rowdy
pre-teen boys, I heard an unmistakable “Ni hao,” spoken sideward with the lilt
of mockery and followed by an echo of not-quite-low-pitched-because-they’re-still-going-through-puberty
guffaws from his goonies (let’s call them Crabbe and Goyle).
“Oh, yeah, that’s hi-lar-i-ous!”
I rounded on him.
Goyle looked over to “Malfoy” with an expression that read, “Tee hee,
she’s actually talking to you, dude.”
Cooling off enough to revert to German, I continued, “So, you see
someone who happens to look Asian – ”
“Uh huh…”
“ – and you think to yourself, oh, she must come from China! And with
this presumption you say, ‘Ni hao,’ like it’s some clever joke. But guess what?
It’s NOT funny.”
He apologized with a sincerity I had trouble believing, but it was
probably the best I was going to get.
I marched on to the end of the wagon only to discover that there weren’t
any recycling bins after all and felt foolish making an about face, returning
to my seat, receipts still in hand, a bit unsure if it had been such a good
idea to raise my voice in the train. I then made eye contact for the second
time with my neighbor.
She nodded, “Gut.”
Though we only exchanged three words during the entire three-hour
journey (“Hallo – Gut – Ciao”) that affirmation meant everything to me. That a
perfect stranger had acknowledged my right to defend myself and teach those
boys a sugar-free lesson. When would they otherwise ever get that chance? When bullying
a shy foreign-exchange student still struggling with asking for directions in
German? Or worse yet, after reaching adulthood?
Catching something along the lines of, “Man, she’s totally gonna whip
out some kung fu!” I only wished I could
muster up some kind of Jedi mind trick or send them a slew of Howlers by post –
anything devious and devoid of
a strictly Asian association.
Why did he think it’d be funny?
Why didn’t his “friends” call him out?
Why is it that people try so hard to be “cool,” even when it isn’t “right”?
I should say that this has happened to me before in Europe. But it must
also be said that this scenario could just as likely have happened back in the States.
Putting on airs and calling it “cool” at the expense of putting down others is
an international problem. A problem that makes me very angry.
Slipping back under the blanket of anonymity I focused very hard on a
round of Sudoku* in order to put my mind elsewhere. And I mused that perhaps it
was best that this had happened on the train, where I could go back to doing my
thing, and they could go back to their banter. Maybe the lesson wouldn’t sink
in right away, but at least the boy wasn’t entirely losing face either, able to
brush it off for now. Maybe he went home that day and reconsidered his actions.
Or not.
*Actually,
now that I think about it, this is somewhat ironic. I don’t have any martial arts
skills, but I can play some mean Sudoku and Ken-Ken!
But maybe the next time he thinks about telling this same old joke, he’ll
think twice. And not.
At the very least, I’ve realized that in comparing the trio to Malfoy,
Crabbe, and Goyle, that must make me Hermione.
Which is nothing but awesome.
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| Violence is not the answer. |
