Reflections regarding Thursday August 22, 2024 in transit from Paris, France to Berlin, Germany
On our last day in Paris, Matanel woke up earlier than everyone else. He was craving some alone time with me so we walked to the market to buy breakfast for the family. On our way home I let him run ahead. He rounded the corner to our apartment complex and stood waiting outside the gate like a responsible young man. Just as I was rounding the corner, I saw a woman stop to talk to him. She was visibly concerned about seeing a young boy all by himself and tried talking to him. He obviously had no idea what she was saying and just looked at her. She began walking away, but kept looking back over her shoulder. I could tell she was wondering what to do. As soon as we were near each other I let her know in mom code, you know that body language that says “he’s mine”, that I knew where we was the whole time. She smiled widely and hastened her pace relieved that the young boy would be fine. Afterward, I talked to Matanel about the incident and why the woman was concerned. It was a good lesson about offering children the autonomy they crave while setting boundaries that are comfortable for everyone, and it was an important opportunity to talk about differing cultural norms we will experience as we move around the world. In his delightful seven-year-old way, he looked at me solemnly and said, “Okay Mommy” and then happily skipped through the gate and into the complex.
Chaim and I were still packing as everyone was waking up. Our laundry from the bedbug situation was intense, making packing take much longer than it usually did. Amichai and Eitan were incredibly helpful, entertaining their brothers with karaoke and dancing for about an hour. Then, when we needed all of the boys to help strip their beds and bring the luggage downstairs, they all got right to it and worked like a team. I don’t want to say that I was surprised, but I was pretty impressed and kind of surprised at how beautifully they worked together and listened. Perhaps it was the recent “Wipe Out Bedbugs” team mission we had, or maybe it was just that everyone was in a great mood. Either way, as the boys would say, “they were cooking!”
We left the flat at 12:00PM and walked to the park across the street. We had several hours to run around before needing to go to the train station. At the park, Amichai decided to write and direct a superhero comedy movie where the superheroes were training at a superhero academy and kept failing. His brothers had a grand time acting in his show. It reminded me of Police Academy, which he’s never seen. We think it will be pretty funny once edited. About 2:00PM we treated ourselves with an Uber to Grand Nord Station to begin our journey to Berlin.
To get to Berlin, we needed to take a train from Paris to Cologne, a train from Cologne to Düsseldorf, and then an overnight train from Düsseldorf to Berlin. When Chaim first researched the train ticket the train from Cologne to Düsseldorf was not listed. We learned only after booking the train tickets that this was a three-train journey. We were mildly annoyed because it was going to be late at night, but figured it would all work out in the end. Our train from Paris to Cologne was uneventful, except that I spent the entire time managing tech glitches for the boys and taking children to the bathroom while Chaim worked.
We arrived in Cologne about 7:00PM and put our luggage in storage lockers conveniently located in the train station and very cheap. We walked outside to see the cathedral looming over the station, but couldn’t go in because visiting hours were over. Instead, the boys and Chaim enjoyed sitting on the steps watching street performers perform in Germany. I walked around the outside of the cathedral. It is overwhelming. I was mildly disturbed by the juxtaposition of the dark, grimy exterior, the cathedral’s mass, and grotesque gargoyles, and still wishing I could have seen inside. Twenty minutes later we walked back into the station to scavenge for food. We found sushi and a surprising number of vegan options.
Cologne train station is not a place I would recommend wandering around at night, especially with children. There is an atmosphere that suggests questionable things happen when no one is looking. Then there are the things that happen when someone is looking. As I’ve mentioned before, our boys love to play tag at all times of day and night when there is nothing else for them to do. My mama bear radar was running high at the station. Losing my patience with how far away they were running from us, I had to set a rule that the boys could not be more than two squares away from Chaim or me at any time. The concrete rule helped, and it led to a lot of questions about why we were being so “overprotective” in the station. We had a frank conversation with the older boys about being aware of our surroundings and the unfortunate reality that train stations at night can attract unsavory people. They looked at us like we had two heads.
Around 9:00PM we walked toward our storage lockers to retrieve our baggage. Earlier in the station, I noticed a man, who I will call Mr. X, who looked a bit off. As we were walking to the lockers, we passed several times. All throughout Mr. X was grabbing his hair and face, rubbing his arms, and pacing with a distraught look on his face. While hoping he was okay, I attempted to steer us clear without the boys noticing. As we waited for Chaim to open the locker storage, I gave the older boys a mini-lesson on how to trust your gut and how to look for suspicious activity. A lesson they would never have gotten at home in the States until they were much, much older.
I asked them to survey the crowd in the entrance and tell me who they thought might look like someone to keep at a decent distance. Our darling children who are so trusting and naïve randomly selected a person in a hat and a person with long hair. It is possible that these two people could have been a good choice for all I know, but, in that moment, they looked very normal to me: Checking the arrival and departure screen and moving on at a normal pace. Meanwhile, Mr. X had stopped in the middle of the scene, directly in front of us. He hastily took off his jacket and laid it out on the ground, placing two coke bottles next to it. Then he took off his sweater, and then his t-shirt. He was on his knees then standing, all while shaking his arms around and continuing to look distraught. Back on the ground, he pulled out a box and took something that looked like a needle out. Then he did something that looked like injecting his arm and discarded the box on the ground. After a minute or two Mr. X gathered up all of his items, except the discarded box, and went on his way.
During this episode, I surreptitiously pointed him out to the boys. Amichai and Eitan thought I was crazy. They said everything he was doing made sense to them. My mama bear was in full force by now. I described, in as nonjudgmental a way as I possibly could, what I thought was happening and why I wanted us to put a little more distance between us and Mr. X. I tried to frame it as here is a person who is in distress and whose actions we can’t anticipate in this moment; therefore, it is best for us to give him space. Eitan looked at me and said, “I’m scared.” I quickly let him know that it was okay to be scared, but he didn’t have to be worried because his parents know how to be aware of our surroundings and this is something he is learning. After he exhaled and relaxed a bit, I may have added, “and this is why I tell you to practice your Tae Kwan Do.” For the first time since we left for Iceland, Amichai and Eitan started practicing their Tae Kwan Do right then and there.
With luggage in hand and several life lessons later that I wasn’t sure I was ready for my children to have had, we made our way to our platform and waited for our second train from Cologne to Düsseldorf. It was a thirty-minute train ride, and we would have fourteen minutes to get from our arrival platform in Düsseldorf to our departing platform to catch our third, and final, train of the night. Not knowing anything about the Düsseldorf station we were mildly anxious about how we were going to get from one platform to the other within the allotted time frame.
Though we were first to our platform, we were one of the last groups of people to get onto our train, which proved a poor choice on our part. We ended up having to stand right near the doors packed in like sardines by the crowd of people getting onto the train at each stop. This was the least of our challenges though.
First, the entrance of the train is slightly sloped. Anyone who had to stand in that section was not on even ground. I was one of those people and was having a heck of time trying to maintain my balance, which was already problematic given the number of backpacks I was wearing while trying to keep my luggage from falling over. Every time the train stopped it was like a roller coaster stop. Really fast and abrupt. It did not matter what stance I took or how much I tried to prepare for it. I fell forward onto Eitan who was losing his super trooper calm by this point, and multiple times and backward onto the poor adolescent and his mother behind me more times than I could have imagined possible. I felt so bad for them. At some point several strangers just started making a point of catching me before I fell. Mildly embarrassing to say the least.
Second, even though Matanel had gone to the toilet multiple times at the Cologne station, we made the mistake of letting him drink three-quarters of a bottle of Gatorade before boarding the train. He had to pee so badly. At first, we told him he had to hold it. When it became clear that he was going to have an accident on the train, I chugged Shai’s bottle of Gatorade, handed it to Chaim, and told him to help Matanel pee in the bottle. Yup. That is exactly what happened on the train. In Germany. Where people love to follow rules. Chaim, who was standing with Matanel next to one of the doors, pulled him into the corner, blocked Matanel from everyone else’s view, and held the bottle for Matanel to pee in. Not the easiest of feats given how much the train swayed and rocked. Thankfully, everyone on the train was laughing and nodding at us. As the saying goes, “When you gotta go, you gotta go.”
Third, our train was falling behind schedule due to the number of people that kept trying to get onto it. Amichai and Eitan were having what I might call a mild panic attack. They were so nervous that we were going to miss our train to Berlin and get stuck in Düsseldorf without a place to sleep. After their experiences in Cologne station this was the last thing they wanted to happen. When things get frantic, my default is to get calm and begin thinking of Plans B, C, D…Z to implement should Plan A not work. I recognize what is in my control and what is not. This makes me a more difficult person for my children to tolerate when they are feeling out of control. As of now, they do not appreciate my calm and find it more insufferable than anything else. Eitan was on the brink of tears between the pain from being fallen on and the uncertainty of our ability to make the train. Shai imitated Amichai who kept repeating, “I’m going to die. I’m going to die. I’m dying. I’m dying.” To whom I responded with statements like, “You’re not dying. We can only control what we can control. We will figure it out. Try to think positively.” To which Amichai grunted and said, “Stop it. No. I’m dying. You're making things worse.” This transpired for a solid fifteen minutes of the ride, punctuated by Matanel’s pee emergency and lots of falling.
Fourth, as soon as we reached Düsseldorf everyone flooded out of the train. We had five minutes to get to the next platform, which happened to be to where everyone else was heading. As quickly as possible, we hustled down an escalator, through the station, and up another escalator. Thank God there were escalators, I was exhausted and sore. We made it to the departure platform with one minute to spare before the original departure time was scheduled. It was now scheduled to depart four minutes later. Just as we started to relax, I noticed that the crowd near us began a mass exodus, frantically running down the stairs. I started yelling, “Berlin? Berlin?” to anyone nearby. Finally, someone answered me. “Yes! I hope so. We just found out on Facebook it’s arriving at a different platform.” Forget trying to keep everyone together. We took our stuff and ran with Matanel leading the way. Down the escalator, through the station, up an escalator. It was all I could do to keep him in my line of sight. As I (attempted) running up the stairs instead of the escalator to catch up with Matanel, a lovely stranger holding flowers saw me and grabbed one of my carry-ons and took it up for me. When we made it to our departure platform the train had already arrived. We jumped onto the train just in time for me to notice that we had run right back to the original platform we arrived at when we got off our train from Cologne.
Grateful that we had made our train, the boys settled into their seats. Meanwhile, Chaim was taking time to gather himself. The poor guy had just carried four suitcases and two backpacks up at record pace up the stairs and onto the train.
Our final leg to Berlin was uneventful. Every child had two seats to himself to sleep across. Chaim and I took turns sitting with the kids who felt they needed a parent with them. The only mild frustration was that the lights never turned off, only sort of dimmed, and the train stopped about twelve times between Düsseldorf and Berlin, which meant there was a loudspeaker announcement each time. I did not sleep, but that was the least of my problems in the grand scheme of things. I was just happy we were all on the train in one piece with all of our luggage.
