One night after class, I was riding the tram to the train station and running late. The tram and the train share a platform at Berlin Hauptbahnhof. As the tram pulled into the station, I saw my Dresden-bound train sitting on the tracks. I was freaking out because I was afraid of either having to wait for hours on a dark, lonely platform for the next train or getting stuck in Berlin all night alone.
In Berlin, young Berliners pry the tram doors open as the train enters the station and gracefully step off, taking a quick step or two and then walking away. Today, any attempt on my part to replicate this kind of maneuver would go very poorly, but it did then too.
In desperation, I pried the doors apart and stepped off. This practice looks deceptively easy. Apparently, there is a certain time when it is safe to step off the train, a sweet spot. I did not step off at that time. I stepped off far too soon. I missed the mark.
In white jeans, I slid about 30 feet in a Superman position, flat on my face. No one, absolutely no one, asked me if I was okay. I guess they thought if I was stupid enough to try it, I deserved what I got, and maybe I did. I cried for two hours on the ride back to Dresden.
If I hadn’t been at the main terminal, joining the tram and the train, the platform would have been narrower. I might have slid face down onto the tracks to my death, or into a train on the other side of the platform to my death, or into a brick wall to my death. While I want to go out in an odd, funny way, like getting eaten by a whale and spit out the blow hole while sailing, a death my daughter does not find the least bit funny, dying from jumping out of a moving train seems dumb, not even Darwin Awards dumb, just stupid.
When I finally exited the train in Dresden, I walked to my bicycle only to find that my front wheel and seat had been stolen. I’d love to tell you that I walked home in a Zen-like state, hoping that the person who stole my wheel put it to good use. Instead, I screamed and yelled my way down a deserted road, telling the country of Germany and its inhabitants where it could stick my wheel.