Bad Luck in Berlin

I saw him get onto the train. But I didn’t pay attention. Why would I? Just another stranger in a city of strangers, riding the metro for reasons that would remain to me forever opaque.

It wasn’t until the doors closed and the train started moving again that he produced his badge and spoke. Other passengers began showing their tickets. I did the same. As far as I knew, I had nothing to worry about. I had bought tickets for the ride, after all. It was only as the inspector held onto my tickets while checking those of the other passengers that I started to think something was wrong.

“Sprechen Sie Englisch, bitte?” I asked in response to his comment in German. It remains a wonder to me that my German is better than my Italian, even after living in Italy for a year and spending approximately one weekend in Germany. But I studied German in high school, and the brain is so much more malleable at that age. The things we learn as children outlast everything else, like my senile grandfather thinking he was back on the farm in Ireland while he lay in an English hospital. Besides, English is so similar to German, at least at a superficial level. That doesn’t mean I speak German, by any means.

“Your ticket is incorrect.” He didn’t look like a ticket inspector. He was a large man, with a scruffy blond beard and a wool hat pulled down over his head. He had a badge. But I learned in Paris that badges can be forged.

“It is?”

“Yes. This is only for three stops. You have traveled for ten.”

“Oh. OK.”

“Please step off the train.”

I was excited to go to Berlin. It wasn’t just the history, either, though of course, that was part of it. David Bowie. Nick Cave. Lou Reed. Einsturzende Neubauten. Since I was a teenager, Berlin had always seemed like one of the coolest, most fascinating cities in Europe.

But our trip got off to an inauspicious start. Our first flight, from Nice, was cancelled. We had to take a flight from Marseille the following day instead.

So far, so bad. But our plane arrived on time at Marseille airport. When we boarded, the pilot explained that there was a problem with the plane’s electronics that would need to be fixed. Some time passed. An hour, in fact. Finally, the engineers showed up and couldn’t find the problem. So fuck it. We took off anyway.

English is the language of the aviation industry. Maybe that explains why no one else on this flight from France to Germany seemed as concerned as us when the pilot, towards the end of the flight, announced that there was another problem in the cockpit. We wouldn’t be the only English speakers on board, of course. But it might take a native speaker to read between the lines of what was being said, and what wasn’t.

But they couldn’t have missed the way the plane lurched as we began our descent. You learn things about yourself in moments like this. A and I said nothing to each other. I reflected that it didn’t matter. Maybe we were about to die, and that wouldn’t be ideal. But nothing I could say or do would change the facts. And I didn’t want to panic her. If you’re going to drop out of the sky like a stone and splatter all over the tarmac, you may as well do it with some dignity.

Spoiler alert: We didn’t die.

As we came in to land, the runway was lit by floodlights, and fire trucks with blue lights blazing raced our plane to the runway. The airport was ready for catastrophe, but in the end, it was simply a bumpy landing. We were elated as we climbed off the plane, glad to simply be alive while our fellow passengers seemed oblivious. That was how our Berlin trip began.

As the train slowed into the next station, we rose to our feet. We had our suitcases with us, en route to the airport. We weren’t playing the clueless tourist card; we were genuinely clueless. So we did as we were told and got off the train at the next stop, accompanied by the ticket inspector. I saw him signal from the platform, and two other people got off the train from different cars. Another large man and a woman with stars tattooed at the corners of her eyes. None of these people looked in the least bit like government officials.

“There is a fine,” said the blond man. “60 Euros.”

“Ok,” I said, trying to hide my annoyance at my own stupidity. When I bought the ticket, the train had been arriving. I had hurried through the process, clearly misunderstanding what I was buying. But we had a plane to catch. I retrieved my credit card from my wallet.

The man grimaced.

“Cash only,” he said.

“I don’t have that much cash,” I said. It was a lie. But now I smelled a rat. With our suitcases in tow, we couldn’t have looked more like tourists. Easy prey for a team of wily European scam artists.

“Then I will have to call the police,” he said.

“Ok,” I replied. A brief pause, while we stared each other down. I dare you to call them, I thought to myself. Get the Berlin police down here. See what they have to say about all this.

“I really don’t want to do that,” the man said, a pale smile forming on his thin lips. “Do you have enough cash to pay one fine?”

“I think we -”

“No,” I said firmly, cutting A off. I was convinced we were being scammed now. What kind of ticket inspector settles for half the fine in cash? I could see the man’s associates glancing at one another.

“Do you have identification?” the blond man asked.

“Of course,” I said, and handed over my Canadian driver’s license. Easy enough to replace if I needed to. The man grimaced again and began to write down my address.

“Canada,” he said. “It is difficult. If we have to send the fine to your address.”

“So what do you want to do?” I asked.

A long moment passed in silence. I could feel A’s discomfort as she waited. She’s a good girl at heart, a child of the peaceful Canadian suburbs where authority figures are to be trusted. But she trusts me more. She said nothing.

“OK,” the man said at last. Only then did he produce a handheld device from his jacket and begin typing on it while the machine spat out a receipt. “We will send you a fine. Purchase a ticket from the machine to continue your journey.”

He was a ticket inspector. It was no scam. When we got home — France, not Canada — I emailed the Berlin metro and got confirmation that the fines were valid.

And I have trouble extrapolating a lesson from all this. Because in Germany, credit cards are rarely used. It’s common to pay cash. But the undercover inspectors, rough-looking as they were, had all the hallmarks of scammers. Working in groups. Demanding cash. Being reluctant to call the police. I stand by my caution, even if I was wrong in this instance. When traveling, you need to keep your guard up. The world is full of crooks, and some of the worst of them carry badges.

But take your time buying your ticket from the Berlin metro machines. Because they will check. And, as we discovered when we finally returned to Canada, they will send fines across the world if they have to.

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