Sarah's [Mis]Adventures in BVG-Land

Today was...interesting. To say the least.

The original plan was to go visit another exchange student at his house, just across the border in Brandenburg. Then I got a call that the plan had been changed, and we were going to meet in Friedrichstraße, one of the big transit stations in Berlin. There are three different levels - the S Bahn on top, with about twelve tracks; the main level with all the shops and maps; and the U Bahn station in the basement. I stayed on the first two levels.

Well, I got to Friedrichstraße about ten minutes before we were going to meet up. Since I was hungry and thirsty, I went to a market and got some bread, water (bubbly, of course) and gummi bears because.....well...do I really need a reason to get gummi bears in Berlin? By the time I was out of the market, it was the time we were planning on meeting. So I wandered around the station. And I wandered around the station. And then I called one of them. But apparently I had the wrong number, because my phone yelled at me in German. And then I wandered some more. And a little bit more. And, just for the heck of it, I wandered around a bit longer.

Well, at about ten to three, I realized that I had probably missed them, and that they had probably had the good sense to leave without me. So I decided that I would just get the next train back to Spandau. All was good, except for the fact that the next train to Spandau left in twenty minutes, and that I had missed the last train by seven minutes. But it was alright, because I had my ipod and my German vocabulary quiz app on my touch. So I'm sitting on the platform, after looking five different times at the timetable to be absolutely sure that I would not miss the train.

Well, come five minutes before the train is scheduled to leave, I look at the departure board and it does not say Spandau. Needless to say, I was freaking out a little. Until I looked across the station and saw the Spandau train leaving from another platform. Now, I was cursing. In English. Under my breath. Since I didn't want to stay in Berlin, much less Friedrichstraße, much longer, I decided to ask one of the policemen to help me.

Now, this is where I'll mention that when I first got to the station and started my RYES-quest, I had seen a whole bunch of policemen in a huddle in front of the Berlin souvenir shop. This made me wonder a little, but I passed it off as nothing important. However, when I was searching, I passed the same place multiple times, and therefore the same policemen multiple times. On my fifth or so tour of the station, I was starting to worry that they were going to peg me as suspicious and start yelling at me in German. Luckily, that did not happen.

So I went down the stairs and was making my way to one of the policemen when I saw the BVG Service desk. This seemed a more logical place to ask a question about trains than policemen. "Sprechen Sie English?" "Ein bißchein." "I need to get to Spandau, and I think I just missed the train, but I don't know why, because I was at the right platform but the announcements were saying Spandau but they were in German and I don't know German and when I looked the train was on a different platform and I don't know why and I need to get to Spandau." *looks at departures board "Go up those stairs. The train to Nauen is the next train." *goes up the stairs that I just came down, muttering all the while

So I sit on a bench on the platform for five more minutes. At one point, I got up to look at the clock (the BVG time is different than the time on my ipod) and when I turned around, an old guy had taken my seat, and then patted the seat next to him....it was a little creepy. I sat down on the very very edge of the bench and held my purse very tightly.

Well, the train came. It was an Express, which means (for those of you in Sherman who don't know much about public transportation....oh wait...that's me...hmm.....) that it goes on the same track as the city trains, but it doesn't stop as often, so it goes faster. Well, I had no choice but that train, even though I remembered my host mom saying a few days ago, "Don't take the big trains, they are very expensive." Did I mention that the express trains have two levels? Yeah. They're bigger than the regular city trains. But I didn't want to look at the timetable again because of how it had turned out the last time I had done that, and I was not going to sit around in Friedrichstraße station for another hour, so I took the train. Lalalalalalalalala, sitting on the train going to Nauen via Hauptbanhof, Zoologischer Garten, Charlottenburg and SPANDAU. And then I look out the window and don't recognize anything. Cue heart attack. The fact that I had only been on the train for twenty minutes and even Expresses don't go to that fast. And then someone in a uniform came around and people were pulling out their tickets.....I told you about the whole don't-take-the-big-trains-they're-expensive thing, didn't I? Cue stroke. I pulled out my transit card with my unsmiling, ponytailed self glaring out and showed it to the uniformed woman, hoping and praying that she would smile and move on. She did. I don't think I can tell you how relieved I was to not have to pull out my wallet and hand over some exorbitant amount of money. But not, I don't think, as relieved as I was when I recognized Spandau station and that we were slowing down.

Off the train, down the stairs, past the Dunkin Donuts, across the street with the Rathaus on the other side, up to the bus stops, read the bus' doodad, read the bus' doodad, read the bus' doodad THAT'S MY BUS!!!, run, run, run Wait, why aren't people getting on? Oh, because it's not at an actual stop. lalalalalalala MY BUS IS LEAVING??? WHAT THE HECK??? NO!!!!! Oh. It's just pulling around that bus to an actual stop. Pull out card. Get on bus. Find seat. Sit in seat. Wait. Wait. Wait. Wait. Wait. Wait. Almost there. Wait. Wait. Push stop button. Get off bus. Walk down street. Home!!! Pull out key. Insert in door. Turn key. Turn key. Why isn't the door opening?? Turn key. Turn key. Still not opening.....ring doorbell. Carlo opens door. Thank everything.

I managed to make it home. And that's where I am now. It was a harrowing day. But now, looking back on it....best. freaking. day. This is why I wanted Berlin. So I could go to museums, see the Berlin Wall (which is what we were going to do today, that I did NOT get to do...haha), use public transportation (of course, when I was imagining this, I didn't think it was going to be quite so interesting.) and that's what I got to do today. Use public transportation. I might be complaining that I had lost an entire day to that trip to my house, but the way I'm choosing to look at it is as follows: I might as well get as much use out of that 27 euros as I can, right???