No. 9 One Step Ahead of the Law

Munich, Germany

There are few things that irritate my husband, Tim, more than purchasing a ticket that is not collected or inspected. He feels like he’s been cheated. If no person of authority cares enough to check if the fee has been paid, then the service or experience wasn’t worth paying for. He could have gotten it for free.

The biggest unnecessary ticket offender is public transportation. Not the Tube or subway typically, which acknowledge the ticket purchase with doors that won’t otherwise part. The problem arises with most frequency on transit trains.

Take for instance a trip from London to Canterbury that we took decades ago. The fee was something in the order of $200. As the train lurched out of Victoria station, we waited, tickets in hand, for the conductor to punch them for us. The train sped through yellow fields of rapeseed, past colossal wheels of hay drying in rock-walled meadows. No one ever checked the tickets.

In my mind, that’s what it costs for the privilege of using BritRail. Use the service, pay the fee. In Tim’s mind, he got suckered into laying out two hundred dollars for what could have been a free ride. No doubt he still remembers how he got ripped off in England in 1994.

This was the psychology at work years later when our family of four boarded a train in Munich, Germany without paying the fare.

#parentinggoals #makingdelinquentsisnteasy

We had spent a full day in Munich, wandering around the old city in the morning, and bellying up to the biergarten in the afternoon. When we’d had our fill of dunkel (dark) beer, oversized pretzels and oompah-pah bands, we decided to return to our duplex in Vaterstetten, a suburb about twenty minutes away.

Munich Central Station was largely empty, of commuters and conductors. Our train beckoned from the track, doors open, with tantalizing barrier-free access. No doubt the pints of dark ale didn’t help, but the decision to bypass the ticket machine and walk directly onto the locomotive hinged on our train ride from Vaterstetten that morning when we had purchased tickets and no one collected them. That had been money wasted. Money better spent on beer and pretzels.

And so we strolled down the concourse toward our train home with law-breaking abandon. At least, Tim did. I had the feeling there was an arrow over my head, flashing emergency red, to declare my flagrant disregard for law and order to authorities everywhere.

There are eleven stops between Munich and Vaterstetten. Just before the fourth stop at Rosenheimer Platz (to this day I think of it as Weisenheimer Platz), the metal door at the end of our train car slid open. The conductor entered like a cowboy ready to duel. Passengers shifted this way and that to retrieve the tickets that they’d paid for like responsible, upstanding citizens.

“Let’s get off here,” Tim said. We moved casually to the sliding doors and momentarily clogged the opening as we shouldered our way out and burst onto the platform before the conductor reached us.

For forty minutes we sat on the Weisenheimer’s metal benches within spitting distance of the ticket machine—not using it. The kids fidgeted with nervous energy, Aidan especially. He was a born rule follower and rarely disobeyed authority.

It gave me plenty of time to think about the heinous parking act I had committed in the Vaterstetten parking lot that morning. I had driven our station wagon around the parking lot twice. Ninety-nine and a quarter of the one hundred spaces were full. The one empty spot was located between two cars that had spilled over the white lines. The resulting space was barely car sized, let alone station-wagon sized. It was best suited for a unicycle, or an especially thick piece of paper with a unicycle drawn on it.

Naturally, I parked there. What’s an eager tourist to do?

Tim and the kids evacuated the wagon. The car doors wouldn’t open once wedged in place. I executed a hundred point turn to line up just right, and squeaked into the spot, scrambling through the hatchback to exit.

The four of us stared at the parking job. There were no more than six inches on either side of the wagon. The neighboring cars would have to tear off their mirrors to get out. I glanced around, feeling guilty for the trouble it was bound to cause. I considered moving the car, but wasn’t entirely certain that I could get it out again.

“Do you think we’ll get a citation?” I asked.

“What choice is there?” Tim said, ever practical. There had been no street parking on the way, and neither of us wanted to make the kids walk the two miles from the house. A responsible tourist might have driven the car home and walked herself back to the train station while the rest of the family waited, but sightseeing time was a-burning. I was in a hurry to see Munich. And besides, did those people really need to get home?

With five minutes left to wait on the Weisenheimer platform, I asked Tim the heretofore unspoken question hanging in the air. “Aren’t we going to buy tickets this time?”

“Why?” he asked. “What are the chances that another conductor will get on between here and Vaterstetten? It’s only a few more stops.”

I can’t explain the Svengalic effect of my husband’s blithe confidence. He makes misdemeanors sound so reasonable. Despite my misgivings, I found myself thinking—it is just a few more stops. It does seem unlikely that the same thing would happen twice.

We got on the next train sans tickets for the second time. The car was crowded with commuters, our wait just long enough to reach rush hour. I scanned the faces and wondered which one or two of them would be shouting at me in the parking lot in the near future. Tim and I sat diagonally from one another across the open space in front of the sliding doors. We each put a kid on our laps, to give them a seat and a little reassurance.

The train chugged through several stations with no incident. When we approached Gronsdorf, only two stops from our destination, I started to relax. As the train slowed, the large windows framed the only two passengers waiting on the platform. Two uniformed men stood side-by-side at the second set of doors to our car. The moment the doors opened, one of them shouted, “Tickets, bitte!”

Tim slid Aidan off his knee. “We need to move to the next car.” I stared after him. What are the chances? he’d said. And I had known the answer. Of course I had. The chances were one hundred percent.

The four of us huddled up on the sliding door to the next compartment. Nothing to see here—complete coincidence that we’re leaving at this exact moment. I pushed the button to activate it. It felt like whole minutes before it opened. As we filed through, I cast a glance back. The conductors were already halfway through the car.

“We should get off here and wait for the next one,” I said. Just then the train nudged forward and began to pick up speed.

“We’ll just keep moving to the last car,” Tim said. “Hopefully it’s far enough away that they won’t reach us before our stop.”

Aidan let out a panicked whimper.

“It’s okay, buddy. It’ll be fine,” I said, a dazzling sweat erupting on my forehead. We walked single file down the aisle to the next car and into the one beyond that. The last one. The end of the line for us. At the farthest set of doors, we clumped together to await our fates.

The seconds dragged. The scenery streaking past the windows gave me the contradictory feeling that everything was going in slow motion. When the train began to slow for a stop, I felt relief wash through me. The doors opened and I took a step. Tim snagged my elbow. “We can make it.” The safety of the platform slid away.

Thirty seconds later, the door to our compartment swished aside. The two conductors entered. The kids went rigid with fear. Aidan looked on the verge of tears and I thought

WHY

WHY do I listen to this MAN?!

We had saved twenty dollars—like three beers and a Bavarian pretzel—in order to pay hundreds of Euro in fines, not to mention potential thousands on therapy.

The commuters produced their tickets without hesitation. Like it was a contest to see who could be first. Like they were ticket-shaming the fare dodgers. The conductors worked quickly and methodically down the rows toward us. Damn their German efficiency.

I pressed my face to the door’s glass. In the extreme distance, I could see Vaterstetten. The train began to slow. There were ten people between us and the conductors. A teenaged boy fumbled through his pockets, bless him. He was looking for student pass. I know because I could see it on the floor beneath his seat.

Did I tell him? Not a chance.

The train pulled up to Vaterstetten and the doors slid open. We hurried off the train, grateful to have escaped.

“I told you we’d make it,” Tim said.

The last hurdle between me and a stress nap was the station wagon. I wasn’t too worried that it had been towed. There was no way to get it out. But I imagined the tow truck waiting with a stiff-backed, disapproving police officer.

The parking lot had cleared out by half since the morning. It looked as though every second car had departed, except for the cluster around the station wagon. Either the owners of those cars had despaired of getting out and found another way home, or I had a tremendous stroke of luck and they hadn’t come back yet.

As the four of us surveyed the challenge of extricating the wagon, a pedestrian stopped cold in his tracks and looked pointedly at the whiff of space between our car and the next, and then up at me with eyes wide. I gave him an incredulous smile, a smile that said “I know, right? Can you believe both of these drivers blocked me in like this?” He turned away, shaking his head. Tourists.

I wanted to tell him that this dunkelhead had learned her lesson. Tomorrow if there were no parking spaces, I’d drive home and call a cab. And when we got to the train platform to head into Munich, I would hug the ticket machine and buy at least three tickets to a place called Peace of Mindenheimer Platz.

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