The Meltdown

After my last post I was starting to feel better. Just typing things out on the blog made me feel a little better and I decided to be more positive and adopt an "I can do this" attitude. I chatted with some nice people in the hostel and wrote in my journal some more. I invited my hostel roommates to accompany me to dinner, but they both had other plans. Darn! I really wanted someone to come with to figure out the subway with me. (Hi to Marie if you really did remember the blog address I gave you!)

With map in hand, I headed to the main train station. I waited in line forever to ask how to take the train to Sweitzer Platz where I was to meet my friend. The ever so friendly German train worker just pointed to a machine where I was to buy a ticket. I probably looked like an idiot trying to push buttons that weren´t really buttons to make my ticket come out. I finally figured it out and headed over to the trains. After a few minutes of staring blankly at the German sign I asked someone who appeared to work there where my train was. He didn´t speak english but managed to gesture that I was to go downstairs to the underground and take train 4. Seemed easy enough. But when I got downstairs there were a gazillion trains and no #4. I went down to train 104 (maybe he just didn´t know how to say "one hundred and") and tried to negotiate the map. I asked a few people but no one seemed to speak english. So I hopped on the train and listened for Sweitzer Platz. A few stations later, I started to get nervous. My friend said it was very close and I was getting too far away. I got off and studied the map again, but everything was in German and it was really confusing. I probably could have figured it out if I had had more than 2 hours of sleep in the last 32 hours. But all the sudden I just started to freak out. I was lost in a foreign country and I had no idea how to get to my friend. I started to get extremely emotional. How could my friend expect me to figure out how to take the train all by myself on my first day in Europe! I was all alone and I had never done trains before! I started hyperventilating and could not stop the tears. I tried to compose myself and asked a nice looking young lady if she could help me find my way to Schweitzer Platz. I showed her that I had written it down and had a ticket. She didn´t really speak English but gestured that I follow her and pointed to the sign to show me what train. When it arrived, she pointed to the train and then got on as well. I sat across from her but still had no idea where to get off or what to do and she didn´t really know how to explain it to me. That´s when the meltdown happened. I got out a kleenex and tried to hold in my sobs, but little squeaks kept coming out as my shoulders bounced up and down and I soaked the tears up with my kleenex. Everyone was looking at me like I was some psycho. Those emotional Americans you know. I´m sure they were thinking the little sheltered girl tried to come and hike through Europe on her own without her cell phone and English translator and she can´t do it. The train stopped and the nice lady that I had followed on tapped me on the shoulder and motioned for me to follow. We got off the train and went to a different platform where she showed me my destination on the map, pointed to which train to take, and motioned that it was the second stop. I understood and said danka shane a bunch of times. Then she waved goodbye and went over to a totally different platform. I don´t think she even had to get off at that stop, she was just helping the pathetic sobbing girl. I was so lucky to have run into her. I got off in two stops on the next train and found my friend waiting. It was obvious that I had been crying so I explained what happened and she felt terrible while I felt really stupid. The rest of the night was much more fun and my friend was more than hospitable. At the end of the night she suggested I take a cab back to the hostel. :) But I was determined to redeem myself. I asked that she just explain exactly what number trains I had to take, in which direction, and how many stops. She did this and also provided me with a map. I found everything just fine and got home with no problems whatsoever!!!! I was very proud of myself and after a good night´s sleep am pretty embarassed about what happened. But I blame it on exhaustion. Things have definitely been and will continue to be uphill from there. :)