Fun and responsibility: The rail strike

I love strikes! Once, years ago, I was stranded in Frankfurt am Main. I’m going to the art school’s Christmas party, it’s an internal Christmas party for the support group. A catwalk is set up in the middle of the room. Two painting classes have printed silk scarves; the professors look like catwalk models. The sponsors buy the scarves (which cost hundreds of euros) and promise to buy the painting during the tour. All students are dressed as angels. I sit behind the coat rack all evening accepting fur coats.

At the beginning of January I’m stuck in Munich, coming from Florence. Having fallen out of the world, I had completely forgotten to listen to the news, escaping the world, in guilty passivity. Everyone else knew about the strike, the train station was deserted, the scoreboard was empty. Three nice men argue for two hours about whether or not I get a hotel room for one night. I sleep in the Best Western. The ICE the next morning is, surprisingly, almost empty.

I had completely forgotten about the hickey on my neck and am surprised that the man in the seat opposite is looking at my neck so strangely. He holds out two paper bags full of baked goods to his colleague and says: “Croissant or pain au chocolat?” The man next to him says: “If you ask like that: pain au chocolat.” The way the man says the sentence, it seems as if there couldn’t be anything more German.

I check, it also seems incredibly German to me, for the third time the connection, the transfer time, the tracks, the route in between. I’m wondering whether I’ll have enough time to buy another (better) coffee. I’m undecided. A few minutes later the thought movement repeats itself.

The best thing about the on-board bistro is the Coca Cola in a glass bottle. The worst of coffee: Dallmayr prodomo. Nevertheless: When the coffee machine breaks down, I, in shared suffering, join forces directly with the strange man sitting across from me. At a train station, the on-board bistro employees rush outside, run into the train opposite and get a huge thermos flask of filter coffee. We watch the spectacle from the window.

When it beeps, we can’t tell exactly whether the employee wearing the dark red vest has managed to get back on or, with lots of filter coffee at least, has remained standing on the platform. Shortly afterwards: relief. We hurry to be first in line. The on-board bistro employee still has red cheeks from the adventure. The coffee tastes okay today for a change.

The Deutsche Bahn’s rest area is a shrine to civility. An alarming number of “Germies” (in the sense of “German People”, but also “Germs”, i.e. germs) in partner looks who are looking for reasons to reprimand others: Don’t type so loudly!

Even if I don’t want to, I take up too much space, at least my manicured fingernails on the keyboard. In need of harmony, I change places and sit next to another alien – in this case a guy who listens to music very loudly, stretches out his elbows wide and turns red every now and then, howls in annoyance and shows his middle finger to the laptop screen. He tries to order new flooring online and fails.

In front of me are two young women who are employed by the railway to travel back and forth all day and play with children. I’m sitting in the family area now. Parents come by every few minutes and drop off their small children there. The recent high school graduates open their little suitcases and pull out various games, coloring pictures and crayons. “I’m Leonie,” one of them always says as a greeting. She says to me: “There are also coloring pages that were designed especially for adults!” A child says: “Everything is colorful, except gray and black.”

Another time, due to the strike, I take the Flixbus instead of the ICE. Whenever I ride the bus, I think of the school trip to Rome, a “windmill” smoking in front of the Colosseum. A windmill is a cardboard funnel with six joints in it. My classmate screams loudly as we try to give him water: “Water is for animals!”

“The train drivers’ strike is the only strike that people notice anything about in Germany,” says P. last night in the “Würgeengel.” And I, again: “I love strikes.” Then he says: “Blockades are there to make the wrong people come late to work.” And I think: There is nothing more German than complaining about the dysfunctionality of Deutsche Bahn speak. And to bond over it.