I think I'm turning German.

I'm on a train to Berlin right now - it's the third time in just over a week that I've gone someplace far away by train. The first time was Frankfurt for the car show, and the second time was the following Monday morning when I went to Berlin the first time.

But the most JvM thing ever happened on that trip. Friday evening I got word that I was going to Berlin on Monday because the Berlin office needed an English speaking writer (that's me). So we panicked a bit, then figured out tickets and times and places, and then I went to Frankfurt for the car show. Monday morning I would meet Sebastian, account planner extraordinaire, at the train station and we would head to Berlin together. He'd do the briefing, and I'd stay and work for the week.

We met at Central Station at 7:45am, got our tickets and sat down (more on the sitting down part in a minute). The Hamburg to Berlin express train does it's thing in an hour and forty five minutes. And half way through, as Sebastian was telling me all about the brief, he got a phone call. The trip was cancelled, the meeting was cancelled, me working there all week long was cancelled, all as we hurtled towards Berlin at 250 km/h. Apparently they were busy with something, don't come in, we have no time for you, go back home, thanks anyways, bye.

The thing about an express train is, it doesn't stop. So we went to Berlin. I was all for taking a few hours off and having a fun day (they've got a zoo!) but Sebastian really needed to get back to the office and get some work done. We asked information when the next train back to Hamburg was. There was a train leaving in ten minutes, but we decided that that would be absurd. So we signed up for the train fifteen minutes after that. So last week I was in Berlin for twenty six minutes. And had a meeting at over 200 km/h.

Anyways, the whole point of this is that I think I'm turning German. As I walked down the aisle of the train looking for my seat this morning, it occurred to me that on the last two trips I took, both times we had reserved seats, but we didn't sit in them. And that for a few seconds each time, it really got my goat.

See, the deal is that when you book a train ticket, reserving a seat is optional, and like two Euros extra. Then you board the train and each pair of seats has a little digital display above them. If the label says something like "Hamburg-Berlin", that means it's reserved from Hamburg to Berlin. If the label is blank, the seat is free and anyone can sit there. On an early morning (yaaaaaaaaawn) train like the ones I've been taking (cheap!), there are always plenty of seats free. But on a busy every-body-commutes-home-at-that-time train it's a good idea to reserve a seat so you don't end up sitting in the aisle. So I always book a seat, because it's practically free, and I like the peace of mind, and fuck it, the company is paying. And when I train it all by my lonesome, I dutifully find my reserved seat, and I sit in it because that's the way it works, right?

Well, apparently not. The last two times I've been on early trains with Germans (okay, Julia is Austrian, but close enough), we've boarded the train and then the German says "Oh whatever, let's just sit here" all willy nilly like. WELL! How un-German is that? Both Julia and Sebastian are perfectly respectable people, so this came right outta left field. Up is down and soft is prickly and nothing is right when the Germans are shunning their assigned seats. And each time I had a microscopic panic attack as I visualized two seats with our names on it just sitting there, empty, while we took up two unreserved seats. That's FOUR WASTED EUROS and TWO WASTED SEATS! The universe falls out of balance and an adorable baby seal PLUMMETS off the edge of the planet into an abyss of burning fire. That is just not right. Around here, you can get deported for shit like that.

So when I return to The States, I'm sure I'm going to have to be broken of my newfound Germanic ways and re-integrated back into society. Or maybe I should just fly RyanAir a few times because it's one of the only airlines on the planet that (gasp!) doesn't have assigned seating. So when they open the doors, everyone RUSHES ON BOARD as if they're trying to find the one seat that hasn't been peed on by a crackhead. Now that's American.