Day 5

Yesterday we went to Berlin by train. I am not that fond of trains. They stop for no apparent reason (to me anyway) out in the middle of nowhere and just sit there. Yesterday, we sat for over half an hour in one spot..but we found out that someone accidentally pulled the emergency brake cord. This sort of thing happens when you are with around 2000 OLD people. There were 12 people in our section. Going to Berlin worked out fairly well. It only took 3 hours and not too many stops. Coming home though wasn’t quite so uneventful. Firstly, we were all pretty tired, really thirsty, too hot and somewhat hungry.

There are two large windows that open from the top to circulate air in the car. A very large and quite lovely woman of about sixty years, sweating profusely, stated in a loud american twang that she was going to open those dang windows raht away….which was fine with me…so we helped her and got the windows open. The train started off and blessed cool air started to gently swirl around the car, cooling us off.

A few miles down the road, due to the time of day, many trains were whistling past us, going the other direction. About a half hour into the trip a woman of about 45, with a truly poor me look upon her face got up, went over and slammed the windows shut. After sitting down the large woman said it was still awfully hot in here. No answer. So, after about 15 min, the large lady stated, quite nicely, that it was just too hot in there and she was going to open the windows again. We all agreed and hopped up to help. After about four trains whistled by, the poor me lady got up again, stated quite loudly that it hurt her ears and slammed the windows shut. So, large lady hopped up, said “Excuse me, but we all agreed the windows should be open” and proceeded over to open them. Nasty lady jumped up and flew over and physically kept her from opening them all the while yelling in Farsi, which none of us understood….but I think we got the message. This went on for a little while when the conductor came and shhhhhed them down and said that he would open the window at our end and close the one at her end. But even then after another fifteen minutes or so, she got up and shut it. Quite loudly I stated to Bill that someone is sure used to getting her way. Large lady, quite loudly, agreed.

When we disembarked, long after dark, the line of people snaked all the way along the narrow sidewalk from the train to the ship. It was a solid very slow moving line. A woman a little way ahead would stop for a few seconds to take a picture of the ship and then keep moving. Well, nasty lady, right behind Bill and I , started yelling…”PICTURES!!1 OH MY GOD!!! THIS ISN’T THE TIME TO BE TAKING PICTURES!!!1 KEEEP MOVING!!! WHAT THE HELL IS SHE DOING???” So finally Bill turned around and quite forcefully said “She is taking a picture!!” And I said “The line goes all the way to the ship. THERE IS A LINE UP!!! She isn’t slowing us down. She can take all the pictures she wants and we will still get there at the same time.” At which point she shoved past me by stepping into the weeds beside the sidewalk. But she didn’t get far and ended up just ahead of us until we made our way onto the ship and to an elevator. When we got onto the crowded elevator she happened to end up right beside me. So I said “See? She didn’t slow us down at all, now did she?” And she just gave me a nasty glare. So I continued, “If you had spent more time helping those that have trouble walking, or have canes or even if you had joined in the fun we were all having in that line up, you wouldn”t now have such an ugly look on your face.” At this point Bill elbowed me and suddenly a familiar voice piped up from behind people on the other side of the elevator….”Yeah, your face is getting that permanent scowly look you know!” It was large lady!!! I laughed and agreed that at “our” age those lines and scowls become your permanent look! She got angry, shoved to the front of the elevator and got off at the next floor. Stupid woman. Large lady called over to me that she would high five me but couldn’t reach!! I hope I see her again!