[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CHmAUODVaLY&feature=fvw[/youtube]

I was sitting yesterday on the table bench on the train from Munich to Berlin. Across from me were a woman and a man in their late 30’s or early 40’s, minding their own laptop. Across the corridor sat an oriental woman with headphones that forced everyone in the car to listen to an oriental music and was chewing her gum like a cow. It was very annoying. The 20-year-old choir girl sitting next to her was giving her very mean looks, the others avoided any contact. I felt mainly embarrassment, I can’t even explain why.

By the time we arrived to Leipzig, the train was completely full. Then, about 100 people boarded the train. Some asked others to move their belongings from the seats so they could sit, and it reached a point where the only seat open (the window seat) was the one beside me. At this point there were about 30 people standing in the corridor between our car and the next. They were all staring at me and the seat, but no one made a move.

The man and woman across from me were staring at me and then turning their heads to look at the riders in the corridor. They were nervous, but when they noticed that I was laughing, they also started to luagh nervously. I said: “I hope this is not what I am thinking because then we shouldn’t laugh”, and they stopped laughing. He said: “maybe it is the fear of Germans to initiate any kind of communication”, and I said: “but it wasn’t a problem when they asked others”, and the woman said: “maybe it is your physique and the fact that you are big that intimidate them”. I called a friend and told him about the incident and whether he thinks that it has anything to do with my skin color because I can’t believe that’s the case.

So the people across from me are laughing nervously again, and my friend is telling me: “it’s incerdible, I am so embarrassed”. And at home I tell my wife, who immediately loses the joy in her face, and I have to ask her to look on the good conversation and laughter I had with the other two passengers. And before I go to sleep I think how weird it is that I am sitting so comfortably on two chairs while thirty Germans are cramming themselves standing for one hour. Like a distorted mirror.