ist das frei?

The train ride back was not a comfortable one. I spent awhile just standing in a holding area with a least 30 other people. I could explain every one of them to you, thats how unsettled I was. I kept waiting for someone to move and say, "Just kidding there are open seats in the other car." But no one said anything. So I stood, and stood and stood.

I spent most of the trip listening to my ipod and observing everyone around me. There was a mother and her little girl, they were playing a magnetic board game, such a good idea. Then there was a kid next to me dressed in all green, from his glasses to his backpack. He was nice, I asked him a question one time and his English was not bad. He even managed to mutter, "Hope you have a very pleasant rest of travels," when he got off at his stop.

The rest of the car was filled with unshowered vagabonds with tattered scarfs and cantines filled with who knows what. The main leader slept most of the ride with his long ponytail sandwiched between a teddy bear and the corner of his suitcase.

I was so hungry.

You really have to be careful when you are catching such close trains, because the full ones do not have food or room for you at the dining car.

I caught my old train with no problem, at least two minutes to spare. But this train greeted me with a similar problem: no seats. It's odd to me that people don't give up their seats for women or the elderly. I guess if you did that every time you would never have a seat.I couldn't help but give an encouraging glare to every young kid who was seated, but it didn't do much. I finally managed to squeeze into the car that held bicycles, and a family of 7+dog, yep that's right. They were so interesting. The mother couldn't have been more than 7 years older than me. She was tough, oh my goodness was she tough. One look from her and the little girls would stop their clapping game and sit on their hands. If you thought that was bad, the enormous tatted up counterpart to her left would make you quiver. His head was shaved on both sides to reveal a freshly crafted skull tattoo..or maybe it was just bleeding for other reasons..then the rest of his hair was in a pony.His hands held on to the most well behaved dog I have ever seen. The brown chained pup had about two feet to move around, but he didn't even bother. He sat me still than I did the entire ride.

I felt so bad for the people standing with their bicycles, it looked so uncomfortable and awkward, every dip they would stumble to either side of the train. I offered the girl the seat next to me but she said she would look after the bike and stand. Finally she switched places with a friend and I offered him the spot with allowed the big man to speak for once and offer to move his huge baby stroller out of the way so they could stack up their bikes in the corner. Within 5 minutes everyone had a seat.

Really... after two hours of trying I was the only one who spoke up to help these people( and I can't even speak German) and one word from him and the whole room clears?! Well at least I started the revolution but it took Mr. Gruff to clear the floor. Unbelievable, so incredibly uncomfortable. He had a mild sweetness to him though. And so did she. Although they looked absolutely terrifying, I caught her a few times tenderly scratching her dogs neck or holding hands with her littlest girl. He also didn't mind being squished in a seat behind the stroller for an hour.

Oh my goodness they had so much stuff. At the next stop the big man got out of the car and picked up the dog, the stroller, and the bags one by one with his right hand and threw them off the car..then when we pulled away I saw them both leaning out the next train with a cigarette in hand.

Such an odd perfectly matched absolutely terrifying power couple.