Sunday, September 21, 2014

Trip to the Pützchens Markt, Indiana Jones style

The weekend began with a haircut that had been postponed for about two weeks. I wouldn't really consider getting a haircut to be important or noteworthy enough for the blog, but I decided my first haircut story warranted a paragraph. I had been dreading going to the barber for a while, mostly because I was scared I was going to say the wrong thing in German and end up with something ridiculous and unwanted. I asked my host family for some tips and decided I would commit the necessary phrases to memory, just to be safe. I rode my bike around the village until I came across the shop my family told me about. I locked up my bike, headed inside, and took a seat. I was the fourth person in line so I took up a newspaper to read and patiently sat to be called. About 20 minutes later I got the nod. Heart racing, palms sweating, I muttered my phrase, "Alles kurzer"  (everything shorter). I could see she (obviously) knew what I was talking about, and I finally relaxed. But just to make sure she didn't ask me anything funny about the haircut, I closed my eyes, hoping to break any conversational commitments, until she finished. If I was going to be surprised with a weird cut, I was going to learn of it all in one, sweeping moment. 10 minutes later she was done. I opened my eyes, and everything looked fine. My anxiety in something so trivial was rooted in nothing once I (after-the-fact) realized she does this all day everyday and of course would know what I meant and wanted. It gave me a good laugh on my ride back to the house.

Later that day I met up with some of my classmates; we were heading to Bonn, a city about 20 minutes away by train, for the Pützchens Markt. This was essentially a big carnival (some could argue it a "State Fair" atmosphere) with rides, food, and games. Alan, Synthia, and I met with Madiha in Bonn about an hour before the sunset. This gave us the chance to see the carnival before all of the lights came on. We spent a good amount of time wandering around looking at all of the dinner possibilities including typical German sausages, smoked salmon, Chinese noodles, pizza, and more. After perusing the assortment of food stands, we made our way over to the rides, deciding that it would probably be best to eat after being thrown around by the rides.

Swinging carousel, 100 feet above the Markt
All four of us rode the swings, pictured above. We were able to look over the Ferris Wheel into the distance, seeing the city of Bonn. It was really nice. This ride also gave us the chance to see what other parts of the Markt we wanted to visit. We decided after this ride, though, to get some food. We decided on the typical German food, selecting bratwurst, currywurst, and reibekuchen. It was of course, all very delicious. The reibekuchen (essentially a large hashbrown) was served with apfelmuss (applesauce). I had never tried this combination of foods before, but it was very good!

Alan, myself, Synthia, and Madiha

Around 11 pm we decided to head back to the train station in order to catch our ride back to Cologne. Madiha parted ways with us, leaving the group to three. As Alan, Synthia, and I were approaching the ticket kiosk at the station, a fairly drunken man walked up to us, offering to sell us his last 3 train tickets back to Cologne for a reduced price. Alan and Synthia seemed skeptical of the deal, but for better or worse, I lent the man my attention. He showed us the tickets, which were oddly shaped and a bit torn at the top. I told him that these tickets were of an irregular format for a train ticket, but he explained to me that they were part of a ticket package with the Beethoven Music Festival, which had just ended an hour before. He lent me the ticket to validate, and sure enough, in what I could discern from reading the ticket, it appeared that this ticket offered the user admittance to the festival as well as a two-way train ticket to/from anywhere in the state. Alan and Synthia still seemed skeptical, but in my haste to save a few euros and save time before the train approached, I bought 3 tickets for the group. As soon as I paid, the man rushed away. Not a good sign, we thought. We saw him moments later on the other side of the station approaching travelers with what we thought to be the same spiel. 

"Didn't he just sell us his last 3 tickets?" 
"It's too late now, here comes the train, let's just get on."

We hopped on the train and immediately started thinking the worst. Sometimes in Germany you can get lucky on the trains by not having your ticket checked. Not every ride will have a "Controller" who walks around validating tickets. This is nice in the seldom moments when you have to take a train, but don't have the money or forgot your ticket at home (I will admit to 'free-riding' on a few occasions thus far). This was not one of those times. As soon as we stepped on we saw the Controller down at the other end of the cab. We started thinking about all that was wrong from that situation in the station: why was the man dressed in casual clothes if he said he came from a Beethoven concert, why did the man appear fairly drunken, and why was he talking to more people if we bought his last three tickets? If we were caught 'free-riding' we'd get stamped with a 40 euro fine and might get thrown out at some random station! 

It was the longest 20 minutes of my life.

We were frantically keeping tabs on the Controller's position. The Controller made it about halfway through the cab in 5 minutes (we are never gonna make it at this rate!) but then stopped in the mid-section for 10 minutes trying to herd a group of drunken men. With only 5 minutes left in the ride, Synthia decided she couldn't take it anymore and that we were all going to get out at the next stop, no matter where that might be. We left our seats and stood in front of the doors, ready to burst through them as soon as we stopped. The "Next Stop" sign lit up above our heads (We're gonna make it! We're gonna make it!) indicating West Cologne. We waited about 10 more seconds, but then we saw West Cologne wizzing by......NOOOO! Are you kidding me?! I think Synthia's heart just about leapt out of her chest at that one, but we were stuck, we were goners for sure, the Controller was making her way down the aisle now!  But wait! The "Next Stop" sign just lit up again...it was our stop! Only 20-30 more seconds 'til we are home free! But the Controller is three people away....two people.....no wait now there is only one person in between Synthia and the Controller!

-ding-ding-ding-

We might as well have kissed the ground at the train station for making it out alive. We joked later that the train ride alone was the biggest adrenaline rush of the night, more so than any of the rides from the Markt! Funny enough, by the time we made if out of the train we had absolutely no idea whether our tickets were valid or not; we never asked any of the fellow passengers to validate our tickets! I guess we were too scared to possibly hear bad news. We parted ways at the station, promising to bring our tickets to class the next day to see if our teacher could tell us if we were crazy or not. It was an action packed day and night and a story I won't be forgetting soon!

No comments:

Post a Comment