Always Check the Parking Space

19. März 2011

“Did you check the parking space?” my sister screams almost frenetically as we leave every location on family trips. Someone always answers that of course they have, even if they haven’t and then looks guiltily back to make sure karma doesn’t have her way with them for it. This frenzy of my sister’s stems back to our family’s first camping trip when she was four and I was nine. On such trips, our family station wagon is always packed so full that just opening a door leaves you in danger of having something tumble out. In that case, an Eeyore baseball cap belonging to my sister was the offending item. We replaced it later, but even 13 years afterwards, she’s never forgotten the incident. So that’s the rule: No matter what, you check the parking space.

Perhaps you are wondering what exactly this has to do with Germany. Well, now comes the part of the story where N* is stupid…very stupid…twice. Towards the end of our stay in Dresden, Michelle’s wisdom teeth started acting up. Badly. Now as I am prone to losing things, being careless and generally “not thinking” about all things common sense related, I can by no means say that what happened next was a result of that situation, but I can guess that having worry as a distraction did not play in my favor. Something had to give. And so I broke the rule: I did not pass go, I did not collect $200, and I definitely did not check the “parking space”.

About 30 minutes after leaving the train station, I noticed that I did not have my gift bag – a cause for great concern, since all my purchases from the trip were in it. I had already felt a little guilty, worrying that I had spent too much, so of course my first thought was that this was karma “getting me”. My second thought was accompanied by an empty ache because aside from at the Christmas markets, I haven’t really bought myself much in Germany, and the items I purchased in Dresden were effectively irreplaceable. My third thought was, “Please God, don’t let anything happen to my camera.” (If you missed that story, you can catch up on it here).

By some stroke of luck, the conductor had seen my poor abandoned bag all lonely and yellow on the platform, and it was still there when someone came up to fetch it. She gave me a number to call, and I managed to arrange to have my belongings sent back to me. For the nominal fee of (drum roll please…) €20, of course. Way to add insult to injury, but at least I received everything back intact yesterday. So please don’t pull an N* and leave things on train platforms, but of you should…ASK! The Deutsche Bahn just might have put its exacting efficiency into play and rescued your abandoned belongings.

Now this really should have been enough, but apparently it was just that kind of day. On our way to Berlin, we spent a couple of hours in Roßlau so I could grab some groceries since everything would be closed on Sunday when I cam back. While I was shopping, I was also on the phone with my Mom, talking about what was going on with Michelle. As we have just seen, distractions and I do not mix. As far as I can figure out, I must have forgotten to take my German debit card back out of the reader, or I accidentally dropped it on my way back. Either way, I didn’t need it in Berlin, so I didn’t notice it was gone until I was trying to buy my train ticket back to Roßlau.

Of course by the time I managed to change the €50 bill I luckily had with me into smaller bills, I had missed the only direct train to Roßlau for two hours and had to take one via Wittenberg, thus undergoing a three-hour trip while worrying about identity theft, rather than an hour and a half one. I was able to call the bank hotline and lock my card, and on Monday I called the bank and ordered a new one (there goes another €10). Like my package, I also received that yesterday.

While the whole situation was incredibly frustrating and stressful, at least my debit card was protected by a pin number and I didn’t lose any money, and I did get everything back, even if I had to pay (literally) for my carelessness. So as I continue on my travels, I will try to return to the decent track record I had held of not losing things in Germany up until last weekend, and I will always, ALWAYS check the parking space.

Deine,
N*