1: The Aggie on My Bus
Not to give away the ending with the title, but I lost my phone on a bus one night coming back into town for church and a 211 review. I'm still not sure how it managed to slip out of my pocket without my noticing, but that's irrelevant. Let's just say it was a stressful evening; I missed Mass waiting for all of the buses my phone could have been on to filter back through, went to the 211 review, and then re-checked all of the buses as they went past my house at 30 minute intervals late that night. I thought it was a goner; my only source of real help came from Kanci's host mum, Bibiana, who was a saint. She called the lost and found first thing in the morning (because they spoke German) and somehow got in contact with someone who located the bus I was on. He was able to find out that a phone had indeed been turned in, and I went a day later and picked it up! Although I have not had a terribly negative experience with a German yet, I admit I didn't have the highest hopes for recovering my phone. After all, this isn't Aggieland and people may not act according to our honor code. However, given the events that transpired, I am convinced even if the person who turned my phone in was not an Aggie, he/she sure has the fine makings of one.
2: The Piano in the Airport
Next to our gate in Prague's Václav Havel Airport stood a public piano, placed by the a non-government organization "focused on animation of public places in cities." Since we had about forty minutes until boarding, Rachel and I walked over and took turns playing the simple melodies we knew. Our arsenal of tunes was quickly depleted, and so we returned to our seats. The gate attendant came over to us and asked us to keep playing; he said everyone sitting around enjoyed listening to us. So, emboldened by his confidence in us, Maggie and I went back over to the piano and played a simple duet. Maggie then played "A Thousand Years", and afterwards I started playing "The Entertainer". I was only playing the right hand, and a man walked up (he turned out to be from Holland) and asked if he could play the left hand with me. I said, "of course!" and so an American and a Dutchman played a piano piece together in an airport in the Czech Republic. I will remember that moment for the rest of my life. What a wonderful world.
3: Adventures on a Bus, 84th Edition
One night, after the evening Differential Equations class which ends at 9pm, Kanci, Rachel and I caught our bus home and learned more about the German transportation system in the process. As with Aggie Spirit buses, there is more than one way to leave the bus; however, not every exit is always an entrance. Sometimes only the doors at the very front of the bus will open, sometimes the front doors and the next set of doors in the middle of the bus will open, sometimes all three sets of doors will open. Another important tidbit of information is that most German bus drivers speak little, if any, English. Further, I have a personal hypothesis that these people move around a lot in their sleep, because many seem to consistently wake up on the wrong side of the bed. Anyways, that night the second set of doors opened and we got on through them, assuming we wouldn't have to show our monthly passes because the driver hadn't forced us to go through the first door and, thus, past him. This turned out to be an incorrect assumption to make; the driver turned around and started talking and looking at us and another man who had gotten on with us. This man went over to the driver and then came back, but we still didn't understand what our friend the driver was saying and all the while he kept getting a little louder, more animated, and continued looking at us. We asked if he spoke English, but he said "nein" and kept right on talking in a reprimanding tone. The man who got on with us then told us in English that we did, in fact, have to show the driver our passes. We immediately went forward and showed the bus driver our passes, and when we returned to our seats, the man asked us if we were studying here from abroad. We said yes, we were from America and would be studying in Bonn until May. He asked if we spoke any German, we said "ein bisschen" (a little) but that we were learning some more every week. He had to get off soon after, but he wished us good luck and that he hoped we enjoyed our time in Germany. It's hard to explain the feeling of being welcomed to a country by a native, much less a stranger, but the word heartwarming comes to mind. It would have been easier for this man to ignore us and stare out the window, but instead he reached out to us and made more of an indelible impression than he knows. Lesson: Never doubt you have the potential to influence someone's way of thinking with a small action.
(After my piano friend and I finished our piece, we begged him to play something.
We were not disappointed.)
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