Short Stories @shortshortstori · Sep
14, 2017… Who needs coffee? 6 am, watching one commuter after another rush down
the stairs racing to train's closing doors. Guaranteed adrenaline rush.
So, I was riding on one of the new local trains this afternoon. I noticed two unique aspects of these new trains. First, the funny and often confusing announcements from the train personnel over the intercom system are gone. Now there is a calm slow-speaking male voice that sounds somewhat like a smart robot announcing all the information. (Or, maybe it is just someone who no longer speaks like a normal human being.) Secondly, if you try to open the bathroom door when someone else is in the bathroom, there is a loud voice coming over the intercom for all to hear (!), stating the toilet is occupied and please come back when it is free. You have never seen someone disappear so quickly. It was hilarious to see how people raised their faces from their cell phones to see who dared touch the bathroom door. This might be a good way of scaring off passengers considering using their toilet facilities.
Who hasn't been an unwitting listener to a fellow passenger's phone conversation? I am quite a prude when overhearing private phone conversations or seeing someone behave inappropriately (e.g. talking on the phone in a quiet zone department). I really don't feel comfortable, and often I am annoyed. There is a quote from Phyllis Bottome that goes... "There are two ways of meeting difficulties: you alter the difficulties, or you alter yourself meeting them." Since it is impossible to make passengers talking loudly on phones disappear, I devised a mindfulness exercise to use in those situations. Here it goes: Acknowledge how the person is annoying me. Figure out more clearly what it is I am feeling. Is it anger because this is a quiet zone, embarrassment because the information being conveyed is too personal, or righteousness because I judge the person as being stupid? Tap into my sense of humour and imagine three Goldilocks scenarios (wrong, okay, and good) that wo...
I would like to recount an experience I had travelling many, many years ago*. I was travelling from Wuerzburg to Erlangen (just outside of Nuremberg). This is one of the many experiences that I've had with the Deutsche Bundesbahn (DB, national railway), which made me a great fan of this company. I just came off a Zen sesshin, or week’s retreat, at a Benedictine monastery situated in the hills of Wuerzburg (a wine-making region of Germany). The sesshin ends with an early breakfast on Easter Sunday. I walk down to the train station with my head in a fuzzy state of mind and my rather ragged backpack full of dirty laundry . Once at the station, without checking the train schedule, I step onto the first train heading south. Ten minutes out of the station, the conductor comes and asks for my train ticket. This fellow is a stereotype Bavarian: wide-of-girth, grumpy disposition, and speaks loudly in a broad Bavarian dialect. Something only the Bavarian employees of the DB dare...
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