Don't try to skip the fare in BERLIN

For those of you who don't know, the public transportation system in Germany is sort of based on the honor system. You don't pass through a turnstile or anything; you just buy your ticket and step on to the train. The catch is that a very small percentage of the time, people come through to check everyone's tickets, and anyone caught without a valid ticket faces a 40-euro fine.

But the people I stayed with in Munich said they get checked about once every month and a half of riding the U-Bahn every day, and that I should just buy a day-card, not validate it (it's not valid until you stamp it with the time and date, so you can plead ignorance if it's not stamped) and use it my whole time in Munich.

Not the best idea in Berlin.

A minute after I got onto the subway, the ticket-checkers stormed into the car and yelled, GUTENTAG!, and everyone else starting getting out their tickets. When the guy got to me and I handed it to him, he started explaining to me in German that it wasn't the right ticket. I began my dumb tourist act, and he told me I had to get off the train at the next stop. This seemed easy enough -- I figured I'd get off, stamp the card and get back on.

Other Ticket Checker had another idea.

The two men followed me off the train, and the other guy, who from here on our will be referred to as Pissy Man, started lecturing me.

"Wrong ticket! Wrong ticket!" he said.

Apparently in addition to not stamping it, I had also bought a child's ticket, which I thought might be the case but also thought "reduced fare" might have meant it was for off-peak travel, like in London.

"Oh?" I asked. "What's wrong with it?"

"This is a child's ticket! For aged 14!"

"Oh, I'm sorry. I didn't know," I said, as innocently as I can, but we all know how great a liar I am. "Will you show me the right ticket to buy?"

The other guy was much nicer and seemed more inclined to help the confused tourist. His English wasn't so good, but he tried to explain to me that I also hadn't validated the card. But Pissy Man cut him off.

"40-euro fine! You pay 40-euro fine!"

I could see the dumb tourist card wasn't working with him, so I shifted to the compassion card:
"I'm really sorry," I said. "I didn't understand the instructions because they were in German. Can you please make an exception, and I'll buy the right ticket this time?"

"You pay 40-euro fine!" he said emphatically. "The instructions are also in English."

I knew this (it's all in German in both Munich and Hamburg, but Berlin has an English option), but the button for English was pretty small and near the bottom of the screen, so I figured I could say I didn't see it. Still didn't work.

At this point he'd asked for my passport and was typing something (my passport number?) in this handheld touchpad, and repeating "40-euro fine! You pay 40-euro fine! You pay 40 euros or we call the police!" over and over again. But 40 euros is like a day's budget.

"I don't have 40 euros," I said.

This was actually a true statement.

"Then this is a problem," he said.

Now, with him threatening to call the police anyway, and after the dumb tourist card and compassion card didn't work, I figured I had nothing to lose. So I got angry with him.

"NO," I said firmly. "It isn't a problem. The rules are not that cut and dry. I didn't know I'd bought the wrong ticket. I just got on at the last stop, and I got off at this one when you told me to. I will buy the right ticket. But I will not pay a fine. You can make exceptions, and this is one of the times you make exceptions."

At this point the two men turned to each other and started conversing in German. I, meanwhile, was trying not to piss my pants because at this point, I was actually very worried I'd spend my first full day in Berlin at the police station. Finally Pissy Man turned back to me.

"You drive now?" he asked, and I thought he was referring to the ride in the police car.

"What?"

"The train! You get back on the train?" he said, apparently annoyed that he wasn't making any sense.

"Yes," I said.

Then he hit the right buttons on the ticket-buying machine, said, "Buy ticket!" and walked away.

It was a *really* great start to the day. Later I discovered that the S-bahn trains accept the Eurail pass, so I think from now on I'll be sticking to them (I got ticket-checked again on one of those later in the day).

And that's my really long story about a near run-in with the law in Berlin.

Which means I have very little time to actually write about the rest of Berlin, which is unfortunate because it's a pretty great city. So far I've been to the Gemaldegalerie (16th- through 18th-century art), The Neue Nationalgallerie (they had an exhibit called "Melancholy," which was pretty much what it sounds like, and was actually pretty interesting), Reichstag, Brandeburg Gate, the Berliner Dom (huge Protestant church that, if built today, would cost something like 120 million euros to construct), Bebelplatz (the site of the first Nazi book burning), the Alte Nationalgalerie (old national gallery), the Deutscher Dom (German history museum) and Hamburger Bahnof (modern art museum with a Minimalism exhibit, and weird as hell).

On top of all the weirdness at Hamburger Bahnof, which had "artwork" like a neon sign that spells out "Neon" and a white plaster wall that says and defines white, plaster and wall, I had a very strange confrontation with one of the employees. Museums station employees in just about every room at museums in Europe, and in Germany in particular they stand in the doorway and eye you suspiciously, like you're going to suddenly run off with a painting under your shirt.

Well one guy in Hamburger Bahnof said, "Guttentag!" to me as I walked in the room, which was very strange given that they usually just give you the don't-fuck-around look.

So I responded, Guttentag, and he laughed and said, "America!" but it wasn't quite America because he pronounced it Ah-meh-REE-kah. I smiled and said yes.

At which point he started following me around, so I thought maybe the conversation wasn't over. I smiled and said, "California."

He laughed and said, "California! Ah-meh-REE-kah"

He kept following me.

"Yep," I said. "Um. Los Angeles?" This time it was more of a question.

Again, he laughed.

"Ah-meh-REE-kah!" he said again, and reached in his pocket and handed me a cough drop.

I had to leave that wing of the museum to get him to stop following me.

On that note, I'll write more about Berlin when I get the chance. I'm still going to see the Fernnsehturm, Rotes Rathaus, Checkpoint Charlie, Olympic Stadium, Marienkirche, the Picasso Museum and a few more things before I leave for Warsaw on Monday night.