German things...

I fortgot to blog about it few days ago, but the morning's experience I had today made me remind this subject :)

Here in Hamburg, the metro (subway, s-bahn, u-bahn, whatever) really works. It is irritatingly in time, and all the station have plates with a minutes countdown. There's no ticket control to get in the train, but if you "forget" to pay and someone ask you for the ticket, then you would pay much more.

It's incredible, eveybody buy tickets!!! Including me :-D

I imagine this kind of system in the Sao Paulo's metro, for instance....heheheh

But sometimes the train delays. That already happened with me twice, I guess. The reason: people jump in front of the train trying to kill themselves.

I thought it was a joke, but a couple of days ago I was in the metro coming to the FSFE's office and when the train supposed to go straight to stop in the station, it got another rail and stopped in other place. Georg said "it is strange, the train always stops in the other side". Well, when we were walking in the station, he saw the ambulance, few police people and said: "ah, someone jumped in front of the train, again". With a weird naturalitty in his voice!!! I got stalled, and asked "WHAT????!!!" How could people decide to kill themselves jumping in front of the trains?? And worst: How can the others think that it is normal???

If you have been in Brazil, and saw an accident on the transit, for instance, you noticed lots of people standing around willing to see whether the person is bleeding, or lost a leg, or died. Here it doesn't happen!!! Nobody stops to ask whether the criature is still alive or not!

Well, this morning I was again in the train, coming to the FSFE's office again. The sound system start to announce something different, then I asked Georg: what happened? (Since I cannot -- yet -- understand german). And his answer: "Someone jumped in front of the train".

Minutes later, more messages in the sound system. I asked again: "What happened now? One more?" And he: "No, they are just telling that they took of the corpse and the traffic is back to normal."

And one more normal working day begins...

It doesn't sound weird???