Berlin Bus Mobs

Anyone can wait in a bus line, and often has. Queuing up in bus lines can be very frustrating, boring and ever so time consuming. That is why I found it refreshingly different to learn that Berliners have introduced an entirely new and entertaining method to replace queuing up in the traditional sense while still preserving that quaint old designation for it. They have done away with bus lines altogether and everyone just crowds in as he or she pleases or is fit. For lack of a better term, I call this innovative German bus line approach "bus mobbing."

It's ingenious, really. Germans hate waiting for buses just as much as the rest of us do but they were the first to collectively realize that you don't actually have to wait anymore if you don't want to. At least not nominally. It makes no difference that bus mobs actually take longer to load than those unfortunate souls in less advance cultures who are still waiting patiently to board in traditional bus lines, the important thing is that German bus mobbers no longer have to wait. You can have your Kuchen (cake) and eat it too.

It is not the time that one loses by taking part in bus mobbing here, in other words, the important distinction here is knowing that one is no longer waiting in line.

It would be false to conclude that Germans cannot comprehend how to form a proper line. No, far from it. It is just that they do not seem to understand why you would choose to do so if not physically forced to (Germans are the born anarchists, but more on that later). Moreover, as a foreign element in this culture, I have found that whenever I attempt to form some semblance of order or bus line all on my own (I understand that this is a valiant though senseless undertaking) while waiting patiently among the bus mobbers not waiting so patiently all around me, this is met with confusion, consternation and even downright aggression. Foreign elements who think they can wait in bus lines here obviously make bus mobbers nervous. This type of misbehavior makes them feel out of place. And they're not out of place, the foreign elements are. I can't seem to board the buses here properly, in other words and my very presence in line/crowd has become a public nuisance.

I understand that the problem lies with me. My awkwardness with bus mobs has to do with my perception of what constitutes a line. Americans wait in a (1) line, you see. The British queue up in a (1) line. Germans, complex beings that they are, visualize lines differently than we do. Maybe I am the only one in the crowd who is even sees this teeming horde of humanity as a mob. I am the alien here, after all. Perhaps they are actually forming four or five or six complex lines all at once, invisible to me (not unlike the ancient Roman phalanx?), and proceeding in their own particular "orderly" way.

But no, that can't be. That would not explain all of the aggression. Bus lines or mobs aside, there is a degree of aggression here (while not waiting for a bus) not to be found in other civilized countries I have visited (while waiting for a bus). Everyone elbows their way in simultaneously, for instance. The old ladies are the worst. Even the fat ones have bony elbows here. They generally have a lower center of gravity too and can do a number on your ribs quicker than you can say "Bitteschön." If you are skinny and fast (I am neither), you can sometimes find an opening to slide in through sideways on the driver's side while holding your left elbow up at a 45 degree angle to give you cover from behind, but not always. Time is of the essence. If you are going to try this, make sure it's right after the doors blow open. There won't be enough room later and once the last third of the mob starts getting verbally abusive and very loud you'll have other things to worry about because that's when they start throwing things at each other, especially if it's raining, which it almost always is. And when it does come to that occasional fist fight, and it will, rest assured that the bus driver almost always intervenes and firmly insists that the combatants duke it out outside. After this is when the children and the pregnant women with the baby buggies are allowed to enter.

Then it's usually my turn. I am always the very last one in, if there is still any room. I quickly learned to prefer it this way. I also prefer boarding a German bus alone. The Germans I have tried traveling with, all bus mobbers of course, always try to save a seat for me once they break through but they are hopelessly outnumbered and must eventually give the seat back up again. I can sense that it's really embarrassing for them to be associated with someone as ineffectual as I am, somebody that way out of line, so-to-speak. I don't mind. I want to save them and myself that embarrassment. And besides, there's always another bus coming along.

Fortsetzung folgt (to be continued).

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Originally from California's Central San Joaquin Valley and washed ashore on the coast of old West Berlin, Charles Larson is a freelance writer well versed in German and German culture. For more info, feel free to visit his website at EnglishPro & Co.