Day 1.1: The Old Man On The S-Bahn

So I took the wrong but out of the airport in Berlin and had to walk to the subway station. After finally figuring out the ticket system and getting on, an old man who was talking to himself got on after me.  The doors of the car had already started to close and actually did close on the front of his walker.  It was tense for a moment but a few people helped him with the doors and he made it on.

He moved over to the side of the train where I stood and looked at me and said something.  I didn't know what he said so I looked around and he said it again.  I realized I wanted me to move so I got out of the way and apologized (in English, of course, because at that moment I of course couldn't remember a single word of German).  I felt like an idiot until he said the same thing to two women who had been standing next to me.  There wasn't much room for them to move quickly and he actually started pushing them out of the way with his walker.  They weren't very happy about it and tried to get out of his way but he kept pushing them with the walker.

Eventually everyone got settled and the old man sat in his walker and said something to one woman that seemed to be an apology.  She said it was okay (I understood this part) but then he said something else that must have been pretty bad because the two women moved away from him.  He said something else and they made a point to move even further from him.  Now I was pretty much the person closest to this guy because I was the only one not sure what he was saying.  He said something to me again.  I shrugged.  He turned to a guy next to me and asked him something, gesturing to me, the guy shrugged.  Again the old man asked me something and FINALLY I remembered that German is a language I know at least well enough to say "sorry, I don't know" and so I said "sorry, I don't know."

I glanced over at the woman who he had pushed, because she was, at this point, the only person I had even a remote connection to through both of us being made uncomfortable by this whole situation.  She looked at me and gave me what I can only think of as the 'thumbs up of the face': a slight lowering of the eyebrows, a small smile, and a small nod.  That felt pretty good and the old man left me alone after that, thankfully.