I recently returned from a 2 week vacation to Europe, which was awesome! I promised to post some stories from my trip, so I think I'll basically just start at the beginning and tell ya what stands out.
The thing that stands out in my mind most of all are the people that God sent to make sure were safely on the right path. Or train.
Okay, first of all, getting to know the train system is difficult. It probably wouldn't be quite so difficult if I had been around trains more often, but come on! I was born in Texas! We don't use a train system there. Because Texas is awesome. And waaaay too big. Anyway, we had no clue what we were doing.
We decided to do what all ignorant tourists should do and headed to information. Behind the information desk was a young man. He was about 23 or so, (the work force over there seems a lot younger. I don't know if it's true, but it definitely seems that way,) and had blue eyes and blonde hair. He was wearing a faux-hawk, an earring and a very bored expression.
Josh asked the guy if he spoke English, to which he replied that he did. Josh told him that we needed to get to Garmisch, so he printed a piece of paper, handed it to us and waved us away. Okay... The piece of paper was a train schedule, so that was cool, but we didn't know where to get tickets.
Josh decided to hail a person about our age since most of them speak English. He found a guy and asked if he could help us. The guy took the paper, looked at it and said, "Hmmm..." and started walking toward a gate. He found the gate, looked at the paper, shook his head, walked to another gate, shook his head, walked back to the first gate... After a little bit of fiddling with a machine and a lot of head shaking he pointed us back to information. We told him thank you for trying and got back in line.
At this point I must add that in front of us this time there was a man with... um... a rather large hole in the seat of his trousers. It was kind of hard not to laugh. Surely he knew it was there... It was quite cold and drafty. Why didn't he go home and change? Or buy a different pair of pants? I'm not sure.
Anyway, back in line we were kind of hoping for a different information guy this time. No such luck. We came back up to the counter and he rolled his eyes. We told him that we didn't quite understand and tried to explain exactly what we needed. He sighed, took the train schedule, scribbled a 9 in a blank spot and handed it back to us. Yeah. Thanks, guy.
We went back out to look for the gate that we needed. While we were searching we overheard some people speaking good English. Josh went up to a lady and asked her if she could help us. She was so helpful! First, she took us to information again and explained in German that we were trying to get Eurail passes. The apathetic young man looked at us like we were stupid and told us to go to a different place.
The lady took us to the new place, where there was a lady who spoke pretty good English as well. After making sure that we were in good hands she went her own way. The lady that she left us with was extremely helpful and resourceful. She answered all our questions and told us a whole bunch of stuff we needed to know. She sold us Eurail passes, (expensive, but invaluable if you don't know what you're doing) gave us a map, gave us a timetable of the European train system and wished us luck. What a nice lady!
After we finally had our tickets we hopped on a train. (I guess that 9 helped after all!) Once we got on the train the attendant came and asked us for our tickets. We showed him our Eurail passes and he took them, nodded his head, smiled and handed them back to us.
We traveled on that train for quite a while before we got to our stop. Every time we would stop the train guy would come through the car, ask the new boarders for their tickets, serve some people some tea, and eye us carefully as we walked by. This unnerved me at first, but I got used to it.
When we got to the stop marked on our train schedule we got off the train. Before the train pulled away the train guy hopped off and called us back. I was thinking, "Uh oh... did we forget something? Were we supposed to do something?" He said, "Are you sure this is your stop?" We showed him our schedule. He looked at it and nodded, made sure we knew exactly where we were going and where the correct platform was, hopped on the train and rode away. Once again God was watching us, using the careful eyes of a kind and helpful train attendant.
The next train that we got on was... not so nice. Actually, it was kind of ghetto. You're not allowed to smoke on trains, but on this train everyone was smoking in the gaps between cars. This is kind of dumb, because all of the smoke comes in the car anyway. I'm sure all of you know my opinion this, but I think that having a "smoking section" is kind of like having a peeing section in a pool. Sounds nasty, but it's true.
So here we are in our smoky, smoky little train when this guy boards. He kind of looked like a homeless guy. He was smoking a hand rolled cigarette and carrying this huge backpack. He was talking to himself. I thought this was kind of weird, but Josh looked at me with this knowing grin and said, "I'd bet he's listening to an MP3." He was right. It was kind of funny because the guy would all the sudden break out in song while dramatically pumping his arm, rocking out on his air guitar.
All of a sudden he notices us staring at him. It wasn't the fact that we were staring that caught his attention because everyone was doing that. It was Josh's fatigues. The guy had apparently been in the German military and recognized Josh's duffel and jacket as American.
He immediately asked about it and launched his story. And goodness me, this guy was a total nut case! He told Josh that he had been in the special forces for 13 years. Yeah right. He was probably in the service, but 13 years, but SF? Probably not. Josh later said that perhaps the guy had some serious post traumatic stress issues. Maybe that was it. I don't know. Anyway, he was very apologetic that Josh had to be in Iraq. He was convinced that President Bush is evil. He would solemnly shake his head and tell us how sorry he is that we have to put up with the guy. I refrained from telling him that he could keep his apologies and I'll keep President Bush. Thanks very much.
He also had this thing with the word, "Loco." For example:
"Have you ever heard of ______?" (some little German band)
No, we haven't.
"Oh, well, if you like metal you'll love them. They are really great." *starts dramatically playing air guitar again* "Oh, man. It's loco."
He repeated this routine several times.
I'm not sure if it was his really strange behavior or his empty bottle, but something gave me the impression that the strange man on the train was intoxicated.
When we finally arrived at Garmisch, we were still pretty confused. The guys at the USO had given us directions from the train station to Edelwiess, but after one attempt we gave up. The directions were just not clear enough.
We walked over to a group of guys standing around and asked if they spoke English. "Yes, we do." Uh oh... This guys English is a little too good. "Do know where Edelweiss is?" He grinned smugly and said, "It's too far to walk." Oops. Next thing we knew we were in his cab, racing to our destination. Lesson learned. Never ask a cab driver for directions unless you are willing to pay his fee.
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