So the other day I was reading this post by Brian in Munich about how he is having to extract elderly Germans from his reserved train seats all the time. And while I found the post amusing, a part of my brain was protesting: surely he doth exaggerate about the frequency of such occurrences. Oder?*
Flash forward a few days to my first train trip since moving back to Germany. Ticket and reservation in hand, I board the correct car to find… an adorable little gray-haired German lady in my reserved seat. In my politest High German (have I mentioned that I speak High German? Because two years in Zurich made me almost forget that fact.) I told her that I believed that was my seat she was occupying. She happily produced her ticket so I could inspect it and compare it to my own. The seat and the car were correct. As I was beginning to doubt my own sanity, I asked to see her ticket again… and noticed that it was for a train that ran a week ago.
As she apologetically moved to an unreserved seat across the aisle, it was all I could do to keep myself from giggling and telling her about this blog post I had read…
To be fair, my seat for my return trip was empty when I boarded the train, bringing the statistical prevalence of confused-elderly-German-in-train-seat to a mere 50%. This is on the Munich-Zurich route; statistics for other routes may vary.
* “oder” is the German word for “or”. It is often used as a tag question, with a similar meaning to “isn’t it?” or “right?”
Good Lord! I have been on German trains a limited number of times. But I have twice had to ask older passengers to please remove themselves from my assigned seat.
Is it an epidemic?
it wasn’t until i got to the part in your post about her being in your seat that i understood you weren’t talking about old people being physically stuck in seats and needing assistance to get out.
that is quite sneaky with the expired ticket!
🙂
I am a frequent train rider and from my expirience usually I get along very well without a reservation. Usually in the cars at the top of a train they have enough unreserved seats available. Also there are enough no-shows, so when a reserved seat is not taken about 10 minutes after departure I would go for it. In all cases I found a seat. Another option in heavily used trains would be to sit on a seat that is reserved beginning with a station that comes later and wait what will be available until the reservation is in effect and other people disembark. In that way you also save Euros and can spend them for a coffee and cake in the restaurant car of the train.
Although it’s annoying to have to boot someone, the behavior of the person in your seat is reasonable if the train is ful-ish. I ride a busy train everyday and many, many reserved seats are never filled (like the seat next to me today).
I generally don’t do it, but then I am not as feisty as most German seniors.
GL – I’ll have to do more research, but it is indeed possible that this has reached epidemic proportions.
Sara – LOL @ them being physically stuck. How many times do I have to tell old people to stop using super glue on trains?
twerner – I find that the extra couple euros is completely worth it to me to have a reserved seat on longer train trips. I’d much rather be assured I’ll have a seat than risk having to play musical chairs for the whole trip. Plus when traveling with others, it’s nice to know we’ll all be able to sit together even without getting to the train station early.
Ann – I agree – no reason to let a perfectly good seat go to waste. All 3 of the ‘reserved’ seats around me were no-shows on my trip to Zurich, and naturally they got filled by other folks along the way. But the woman I told the story about wasn’t in my seat because she was hoping I wouldn’t show up; she was in my seat because she mistakenly thought she had reserved it for herself. I’d call it more senility than feistiness. 🙂
Oh, how I miss trains.