I’m not normally one to complain (ahem) but today really took the piss. It actually started yesterday with monsoon-like rain all day, which instantly flooded the city causing major traffic delays, flooded U-Bahn stations, knee-deep water in some buses, building evacuations and, because it’s Berlin, people swimming down major streets and being pulled along in dinghies while drinking beer.
A storm in German is “Sturm” or “Gewitter” – a really bad storm is called “Unwetter” which, in English, would be unweather. Obviously this makes no sense at all as it’s actually ALL the weather in one go and not even remotely unweather. But hey, German…
This morning, expecting delays, I set off for my lesson a bit earlier than usual, grimly plodding through the drizzle. The bus showed up and dropped me off at the U-Bahn station. What should have been a simple ten-minute ride was made impossible by the fact that around six stations along the way were closed due to flooding. This was one of them.
So I travelled two stops, got off, got on the replacement bus and waited while another 100 people squeezed their soggy selves in. The problem with that is that the doors don’t close when people are in the way of the sensors so other passengers were yelling at people to get off at each stop; one man’s beer belly held us up for a good five minutes.
The BVG (Berlin Transport Company) representative had “reliably” informed me that the bus was going all the way to Zoo, one stop past where I had to go. But no, the driver stopped at another U-Bahn station along the way claiming that the U-Bahn was running again. She kicked us all off, down we went and no, stupid cow, the U-Bahn was not running.
By this time, I was already half an hour late so I had no choice but to cancel my lesson. I waded across the road and actually managed to squeeze into a replacement taxi. Yes, things were so bad that the BVG were transporting people using TAXIS. Then it was back on the U-Bahn, back on the bus and, finally, home. It had taken me almost 2.5 hours to achieve absolutely nothing and end up back where I started.
I wrote a scathing email to the BVG and consoled myself with the thought that I had a nice evening with my friend to look forward to – preferably with excess amounts of whiskey. Shortly afterwards, he messaged to say that he wasn’t feeling well and had to cancel. My opera singing neighbour started up and I contemplated justifiable homicide.
Still, I had to calm myself down as I had another lesson to go to this afternoon. I had carefully checked to make sure that the S-Bahn was running normally and set off. I got to the station right on time only to see the three words that every German dreads – Zug fällt aus. My train had “fallen out” and the next one wasn’t until 11 minutes later.
A torrent of swear words, a bit like the torrents of rain, ensued. I sent my student a message telling her I’d be a few minutes late. She was actually happy enough as she’d ordered cake and would now have time to eat it. Nothing makes a German happier than coffee and cake.
After walking up the stairs (because of a broken escalator) and being accosted by a rude beggar, I eventually made it to the lesson. While I spoke flawless German, the barista insisted on answering in English – which resulted in him receiving a von Grady growl. It started raining halfway through the lesson and by the time I left, it was more unweather.
The town that I’d left just a couple of hours earlier was now a swimming pool. My boots weren’t quite up to the challenge and I squelched my way home, as engulfed in misery and self-pity as my feet were in water.
Grrr.
Manfredas: Hey, do you fancy dinner at the Surf Inn?
Me: Yeah, sure.
Manfredas: As long as it isn’t flooded. But I guess then we could “surf in”.
Me: Too soon…
Great post! Have nice day ! 🙂 ltmut
LikeLiked by 1 person
Thank you very much! Today was much better 😉
LikeLike
You would think that in a country where it rains one every two days, things would be prepared to avoid floodings. By the way, nice to read that in Berlin you have buses or even taxis when the service “falls down”. Here you just get a rude woman yelling you that you can always walk… (true story)
LikeLiked by 1 person
Ha ha! Was she German? 😉 I love it when my students say things like “I have to fall out our lesson this week, sorry.” The chuckle makes up for the loss of money! Almost 😉
LikeLike
But of course she was!
LikeLiked by 1 person
JA WOHL!
LikeLike
Can’t believe how spoilt you are! Can’t imagine London Underground – or Southern Rail – offering buses, taxis …dream on!
LikeLiked by 1 person
Can’t imagine Dublin doing it either! Replacement buses are pretty standard when they’re working on the train lines but I’d never seen replacement taxis before – spoilt indeed! 😉
LikeLike
The flood was pretty shocking! I flew to the UK for 24 hours on the Wednesday, checked the weather for London, saw it was pretty alright, and decided that a coat wasn’t needed…! I flew back to Berlin the next day, on the Thursday! Imagine my horror that in just 24 hours, everything had changed. The flight was delayed by 2 hours, the airport was closed, I still didn’t have a coat, and there was no public transport so we all had to take taxis in order to actually leave the airport so that we could get home!
I probably should have checked the weather forecast in Berlin instead…!
LikeLiked by 1 person
It was a total disaster! Glad you made it home eventually!
LikeLiked by 1 person
Me too! 😀
LikeLike
Linda, you poor thing!
I think you’re now qualified to adopt the old unofficial US postal service motto: “Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night [stays these couriers from the swift completion of their appointed rounds]”… just change the last bit to English teaching. 😉
The silver lining- at least you weren’t chased by a public toilet. (http://www.dailymail.co.uk/travel/travel_news/article-4654996/Chaos-Moscow-people-flee-portable-toilets.html)
LikeLiked by 1 person
Ha ha! Oh my god! That’s hilarious! I guess life can always be worse – although being chased by a toilet probably would have made my day – I could dine out on that story for years!
LikeLiked by 1 person
All that flooding is scary! Better to stay in… unless there’s dinner and a glass of wine at the other end of your trip.
LikeLike
Always amusing reading about monsoon conditions in locations not accustomed to this being an annual affair. 🙂 Says the woman just returned to a monsoon drenched Mumbai!!
LikeLiked by 1 person
Ha, glad you made it out of there safely! It was really freaky here! The whole city just filled up in the space of a few hours!
LikeLike
Wow, I thought we had it bad in the UK the last few days but that video of the water flowing down into the underground is something else again 😳😳😳 Hope it will get drier soon… 😘
LikeLiked by 1 person
Same! Today is looking pretty ominous! I think we had 3 months’ worth of rain in 1 day – no way the city could cope with that!
LikeLike
You guys have sent us your unweather! It’s actually pretty terrible, we have fatalities 😦
LikeLiked by 1 person
Not sure about fatalities here but the fire brigade had over 2000 calls that day! I think there were quite a few road accidents – two trams even crashed! Hope your summer gets better! It’s still looking pretty shit here too 😦
LikeLike
So, the main news agency reported this weekend, citing the official meteorological service, that “summer might bypass the central region of Russia this year.” Go figure
😦 We’re transitioning from Spring to Autumn
LikeLike
Yikes! I didn’t know there were fatalities from that big storm, so sorry to hear that 😦 I saw the pictures of the weather on Varlamov’s blog… parts of Moscow looked positively apocalyptic!
LikeLiked by 1 person
Yup. And it’s our second one this year, we had a tornado/hurricane thing in May I think. MADNESS!
LikeLiked by 1 person
But you know, there’s no such thing as climate change 😉
LikeLike
none 🙂
LikeLiked by 1 person
I love Manfredas’s sense of humor … he’s perfect for you! Ugh, hope the unweather becomes no weather soon …
LikeLiked by 2 people
Ha ha! That was super cheesy but I like a bit of cheese 🙂 Yeah, I’d really like to drop that “un” too!
LikeLiked by 2 people
No Unwetters down here, but plenty of coffee and cake 🙂
LikeLiked by 1 person
See? Coffee and cake = happy German 🙂 Glad you’re back in the land of decent cake again!
LikeLike
I saw images of Berlin last night on the news and it did look pretty bad. It seems to be a year for heavy rain in a lot of places. Our summer hasn’t yet fully arrived in Montreal and rain in the forecast almost every day though not to the level where the streets and metros are flooded but still pretty dreary… Good luck with getting dry! (Suzanne)
LikeLiked by 1 person
Thanks! I’m home now, couple of cups of tea down and dried out. Unfortunately, it’s pissing down again and I have to go out! I hope your summer improves too – I’ll be buying wellies instead of bikinis at this rate 😉
LikeLiked by 1 person
Probably a good idea on the wellies…always a good thing to have. Though the bikini could be useful in all that rain…less to dry out when you get home!
LikeLiked by 1 person
Not sure Berlin is ready to see that though 😉
LikeLike