[PRCo] Re: Rogues Gallery Candidate in Germany

[Herb Brannon]

I am always amazed when I look at a train or trolley (tram) of European manufacture. They are so small compared to the oversized equipment built here in the U.S. The new LRV cars made here are such giant, somewhat ugly looking things compared to the clean lines and trim appearance of a European product. The PCC car was, in my opinion, the best in design for U.S. streetcars. I have been used to riding and conductoring* in the Breda monsters here at home. When I went to PRM last week I looked inside a few PCCs and they seemed so small, but clean lined and neat, to me. Much better than a LRV type car.
   
  As for English spoken in Europe, I was amazed that on a trip to Copenhagen, Denmark I had no problem. Everyone spoke English. It was explained to me they take English in school from Kindergarten through high school. 
   
  *During special events here in Cleveland (Browns football, Indians baseball, large-draw concerts, etc. RTA runs two light rail cars coupled together to handle the crowds. Bus operators are used as 'conductors' in the second car. One just opens/closes doors, collects fares and answers questions. I always sign up for this extra work. Its fun to do and really is good for the paycheck.
   
  Its still snowing here. The plows have been working all day and can't keep up with it. I live on a main downtown street and it has been snow covered all day. Every so often two or three plows go by. It just gets snowed over again in 30 minutes after they go by. I will probably not be taking any road trips tomorrow.
Fred Schneider <fwschneider at comcast.net> wrote:
  This has nothing to do with Pittsburgh. Nothing at all to do with 
western Pennsylvania, West Virginia or Eastern Ohio. It's just a 
funny picture.
The picture that Encarta is going to strip out of this and put into a 
link below is not one of us but it is good for a laugh. The "little 
man" calls it Biting the Bullet ... the person who sent it to me is 
the man biting the bullet or kissing the train or whatever. He's 
Dan Joseph, a bus driver for Chicago Transit Authority and a very 
active member of the Central Electric Railfans Association. He 
organized the trip to Russia, Estonia and Latvia in 2004, a wonderful 
trip during which I actually got a chance to run an MU train of Tatra 
cars on a street in Daugapils, Estonia. Yes, Dan is rather 
short ... when I asked how I would recognize him, he simply said, 
shortest man in the crowd.

Where was the picture taken? ... Leipzig, in the former Deutsche 
Demokratische Republik or DDR. It was once anything but 
democratic ... that was communist East Germany. Berlin is the 
largest city in Germany with 3.4 million people. Leipzig is the 
second largest in the former DDR with 505,000. Dresden is third in 
the east with 500,000. Bullet trains? The Commies didn't have 
anything like this. This is all since the world turned.

The DB once stood for Deutsche Bundesbahn or German Federal Railway, 
the western company. In the DDR, the railroad was DR or Deutche 
Reichbahn. Reich being an Empire. Today its a privatized company 
everywhere ... Deutchebahn or German Railway.

Isn't it a marvelous train station. Three completely separate 
arched sheds each covering four tracks. Es ist fantastisch! And 
out in front you will still see tram cars. The Deutschebahn 
Kurzbuch (their version of the Official Guide) still weighs like a 
big city telephone directory, totally unlike Amtrak's little system- 
wide folder. I have one acquaintance who manages DB's Oberbayern 
Region in München (Munich to most Americans). He is responsible for 
more trains in one day than the combined total for the Long Island, 
Amtrak, Metro North, New Jersey Transit and Connecticut DOT running 
into New York City. And Munich is a small city with only 840,000 
inhabitants. Imagine what his counterparts in Berlin or Hamburg 
contend with? It has something to do with the difference between 1 
or 2 percent of us using public transportation to go to work and 30 
percent of them.

I know Dan was going on some sort of a tour of railfan tour of 
Germany. One of our other friends living in Delaware just came 
back. And like all railfan tours, they probably saw their fair share 
of museums and steam engines, etc.

On my first tour of the DDR, back when it was still a separate 
communist country, I was standing in the parking lot in front of a 
Hauptbahnhof (main train station) in Dresden when I stranger started 
to converse with me in German. It was late in the day and I just 
didn't feel like struggling in German. To dissuade him I answered, 
"Mein Deutsch ist nicht sehr gut. Konnen Sie English sprechen." I 
figured telling him my German was no good and asking him to speak 
English would get him to leave me alone. Instead he answered in 
very crisp British accented English, "As a matter of fact, I can 
speak English." Turns out his uncle had a business in England and 
he moved there during World War II to escape Germany. Then he 
proceeded to regale this American for the next fifteen minutes about 
how beautiful Dresden had been before the fire storm in 1944 or 
1945. What a serendipitous experience. I'm glad he didn't let me go.

And now the pitch ... go, see it, you'll enjoy it. No place on the 
planet is perfect. We're not. They're not. Nor is any place all 
wrong. It's amazing how looking at other places enriches the mind.

English is not commonly spoken in places like Leipzig or Dresden or 
anywhere in the former DDR. But it was a very common second 
language in western Germany because we had Army divisions there plus 
the air force. If any of you think you want to go to Germany to see 
what it's like, fear not about the language barrier.

I remember my wife once wanting to use up the last of her Germany 
Deutche Marks on her first trip to Germany ... this was long before 
the Euro became the EEC currency of choice. We had come over on 
Iceland Air to Luxembourg so I took her to Kaiserslautern to spend 
the last money and simply turned her loose. She was paranoid that 
they would not understand her. I just smiled. I understood what 
she did not. Kaiserslautern had a population of 220,000 of which 
125,000 were U. S. servicemen and retired military personnel who 
chose to live in Germany. There was also a Opal (General Motors) 
assembly plant there. It is a totally bilingual city. She walked 
into the first store, the sales clerk looked at what she was wearing, 
and said, "How may I help you, Madam?" May not be the same today 
but it made a wonderful story.

I remember marching Dick Lloyd (the now deceased Superintendent of 
Transportation of the Baltimore Streetcar Museum) into the 
information office at Central Station, den Haag (the Hague), 
Netherlands. The clerk immediately spoke to him in English. 
English is the most common second language in countries in Europe 
with minority languages (Sweden, Finland, Norway, Holland, northern 
Belgium, Portugal for example). He was astonished. To be an 
information clerk, each person had to be fluent in Dutch (Flemmish), 
English, French and German plus one other language of their choice. 
And we fight learning Spanish!

Dick got a sad lesson in how widespread English was on another 
trip. He was critiquing a female motorman in Lisbon, Portugal in 
English. It was obvious a supervisor was riding with her and that 
she was fairly new at the game but she was also proficient. I was 
trying to signal Dick to muzzle his mouth but it wasn't getting 
through to him. He felt in a Portuguese-speaking country he was 
safe. Well, the supervisor got off to attend to something and told 
the lady to wait for a minute. She turned around and looked 
straight at Dick and very crisply said, in English, "Does my 
operating of this car meet with your approval, Sir?" He learned his 
lesson. Maybe that had something to do with him landing in a London 
hospital with a stroke three days later. I don't know.






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Herb Brannon