petra, the girl on the train from berlin to dresden, is much put out to miss her connecting regional service (owing, we hear, to a signal failure resulting in a 'twelve minute delay') which would have taken her to the important meeting at the family planning centre. (i don't ask petra why the meeting is important or in what capacity she was meaning to attend it. being a complete stranger to her, i fear such a line of enquiry may be found unwelcome or intrusive, or possibly both.)
using her friend's mobile she phones her brother - at work, apparently - and asks him to google (she uses the verb 'google', in german) the number of the centre and then instructs him to ask sebastian (another sebastian, obviously, not me) to phone a certain man there to tell him that she won't be coming to the meeting because she can't make her train.
she's very cross. in a peculiarly restrained way. she doesn't shout or scream or use expletives. she just says 'this makes me very cross', and suggests she ought to complain. after all, she has made plans. 'when you plan things', she says. there is a righteousness in her voice. and rightly so, one feels: it makes one cross.
i tell her i live in england where you never make your connecting train and this sort of thing happens all the time and it's best not to make any plans at all but to just build in one or two hours slack and see what happens. this makes her laugh. she is in a much more cheerful mood now and finds this even more peculiar: 'this is peculiar', she says, not to me, to her friend, 'being angry and laughing at the same time'. i think she finds it good peculiar, rather than funny peculiar. or bad peculiar. i'm sure she does.
the elderly lady opposite me who'll be met by somebody at the station to then travel on to somewhere in the country smiles knowingly. she has seen it all, perhaps?
the train gets into dresden twelve minutes behind the original schedule, bang on the new one. petra smiles and wishes me a good time in dresden.
using her friend's mobile she phones her brother - at work, apparently - and asks him to google (she uses the verb 'google', in german) the number of the centre and then instructs him to ask sebastian (another sebastian, obviously, not me) to phone a certain man there to tell him that she won't be coming to the meeting because she can't make her train.
she's very cross. in a peculiarly restrained way. she doesn't shout or scream or use expletives. she just says 'this makes me very cross', and suggests she ought to complain. after all, she has made plans. 'when you plan things', she says. there is a righteousness in her voice. and rightly so, one feels: it makes one cross.
i tell her i live in england where you never make your connecting train and this sort of thing happens all the time and it's best not to make any plans at all but to just build in one or two hours slack and see what happens. this makes her laugh. she is in a much more cheerful mood now and finds this even more peculiar: 'this is peculiar', she says, not to me, to her friend, 'being angry and laughing at the same time'. i think she finds it good peculiar, rather than funny peculiar. or bad peculiar. i'm sure she does.
the elderly lady opposite me who'll be met by somebody at the station to then travel on to somewhere in the country smiles knowingly. she has seen it all, perhaps?
the train gets into dresden twelve minutes behind the original schedule, bang on the new one. petra smiles and wishes me a good time in dresden.
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