Today, after class was over, Nancy, Jose, Jeremy, Elisha, Yu-Xin, me and our teacher, Lydia went on a group excursion to St Peter. As we packed up our gear, Lydia gently reminded us not once, not twice, but three times that “we must meet at 1:30 pm on platform 7″.
Class finishes at 1 pm and theoretically, half an hour is ages to get to the Hauptbahnhof from school. However, Elisha, Jeremy and I had the bright idea of dropping off our books in our rooms, agreeing to meet in fairly vague terms “around here”, power walking back to the Hauptbahnhof, and buying lunch, all (in a perfect world) in time for the 1:30 pm meet-up.
Jeremy sped off on his bike calling into the wind “I’ll be really quick!” while Elisha and I trudged to the Gästehaus behind an old man and his very obedient donkey.
When we got to the Gästehaus, we parted ways to discard our books and reconvened outside Jeremy’s room window: “Wo ist Jeremy?” I asked Elisha. We peered in– his bag had already been dropped off: ¨JEREMY, WO BIST DU DENN!!!¨ (¨JEREMY, WHERE ARE YOU!!!¨) I shouted through his window which had been left slightly ajar.
Silencio; not a peep.
Elisha shifted from one magenta-grey socked foot to the other, and I postulated that Jeremy was, in all likelihood, on zee toilet: “JEREMY!!!!” I tried again.
Nichts, nada– silenzio, multiplied by 23 trillion.
I nibbled on my bottom lip as the hands of my watch hit 1:17 pm, while Elisha solemnly declared the reality of the situation: “Wir müssen gehen- wir werden spät sein ” (“We have to go- we’re gonna be late”)– and so, we had no choice. We tore ourselves away from Jeremy’s window, and high-tailed out of there. I took a jogging skip for every one of Elisha’s giant strides, and we huffed along trying to figure out when to get food: “You go on to Lydia and I’ll get our food!” commanded Elisha, and I huffed and puffed that this was a grand idea. I checked my watch: 1:28 pm–actually, there was no time. Elisha must have had the same realisation because one second he was sprinting away from me, and the next minute, he was all height and tallness and arms and legs everywhere as he came hurtling back down the stairs: “There isn’t any time, we have to go!!” I nodded as he shoved my money back into my hand and we jogged down the stairs to the platform.
As we scanned the horizon, Elisha spotted Lydia and Yu-Xin on their lonesome half-way up the platform. Although probably a little concerned, Lydia smiled brightly and shrugged when we flopped into a chair, and asked where the others were. The train was due in two minutes and only 50% of the excursion population had turned up. It was nail-bitingly close, but since Jose is our class president, I was pretty sure that everything was gonna be alright.
As we paced and turned this way and that, Elisha finally caught sight of Nancy, Jose and Jeremy– all armed with Maccas– Jeremy’s jungle green excursion shorts announcing to all and sundry that “I’m going on an excursion today, yes I am”. He strided up and blustered: “Where were you guys, I was waiting for ages by myself and had to leave!!” to which we blustered back that we’d hollered into his room, only to not receive a response for the longest time ever. We didn´t say it, but we all exchanged mutually apologetic looks because our plan and the execution of it, had been a bit of an unachievable, indisputable shamozzle.
The train pulled sedately up just as the machine spat out our ticket, and we all breathed a collective and proud sigh of relief– we couldn’t have timed it better if we’d tried. Jeremy kindly proferred up half his fries as Elisha and I were still foodless, and Elisha and I hoovered them up gratefully while hanging out for the next leg of our trip to hopefully invade a bakery and eat! eat! eat!
After about 20 minutes, we got off the train and found a bakery across the road from the bus stop: “You have five minutes,” Lydia said.
Nancy, Elisha, Yu-Xin and I sprinted across the road. The queue was already centuries long. An old man took two hundred years to order a sandwich. Another insisted on a complicated summer drink. Time was ticking. Elisha ordered. The lady at the register carefully wrapped up his sandwich. I saw the bus pull up. Lydia started waving urgently. My stomach protested. I needed to get that sandwich. Elisha got his sandwich and ran. The bus was now full. Lydia was watching us with restrained concern. Nancy needed a drink. Yu-Xin was deciding what she wanted. I needed a sandwich.
I blurted out my order and told the lady I’d pay for Nancy while Yu-Xin eventually abandoned her quest for a beverage with a decisive shake of her ponytail, a soft: “Nein, nein, keine Zeit!” (“No, no– no time!”), a “well, what can ya do!” lift of both arms, and like seasoned pros, we were done. The bus revved its engine as Lydia craned her neck and smiled urgcouragingly (a despairing mixture of urgently and encouragingly), and we left that bakery behind in a pile of baked goods dust, as we put our heads down and ran, backpacks swinging ridiculously low. We made it by the skin of our teeth, and Lydia shook her head with a wry grin: two out of two connections made; both a little too tight for comfort.
As we drove up the winding road, we chattered like kids on a school excursion to the local fire station (we had to do that in year 3, and even back then I recognised that the firemen were hunky spunks). Elisha pontificated on the origin of his penchant for crazy, colourful socks, I wolfed down my sandwich, while we all thanked our lucky stars that the weather, which had been forecast to be grizzly, drizzly and grey, had come up trumps in magnificent style to produce a sunny, mild summer´s day.
When we reached St Peter, we wandered through the fields and came across an eclectic selection of animals: the cow that stared stonily at Jeremy and proceeded to participate in, and subsequently, win the world´s first man versus cow staring competition (Jeremy named him Seppe, as in “Giuseppe”), the gaggle of geese that hurried down to the pond for a drink with inexplicable urgency (I say “inexplicable” because it wasn´t like the pond was going to go anywhere anytime soon), the billy goat who kept forgetting that he was tied with a long rope to a pole and proceeded to give himself mild whiplash at least eleventy times, the rooster who fanned out his crest and crowed and asserted his male pride to the entire farm, and best of all, the donkey who had watched us silently when we first walked past, but erupted into a raucous round of ¨HEE HAW! HEE HAW, HEE HAWWWW!¨ when we returned, his perfectly straight chompers all on display, his winking eyes, delighted.
We walked for hours up the mountain, rolling hills on each side, and memorised the blueness of the sky, the soft low hanging clouds and lapped up the crisp, fresh air. We lay in the grass languorously practising our German and time slipped away as the sun rolled lower, mellowing out.
When the time hit 6 pm, we trekked back down to catch the bus– but not before producing one final display of ridiculously tight punctuality: “You have three minutes¨, Lydia warned with a smile, when Elisha and Jose announced their need for an icecream. They galloped off.
Ten seconds later, the bus pulled up. No sign of Jose and Elisha. We all craned our necks. No way in Freiburg were they anywhere near close to making their flavour selections. The bus driver bristled. Jeremy got up to find them. Lydia waited outside the bus and stood watch. The bus engine was turned back on. We held our breath. Then, like a phoenix rising from the ashes, Elisha stormed out with the biggest double scoop you ever saw, while Jose loped after him, clutching a single scoop in a cup. They sauntered onto the bus:
¨No icecream allowed¨ declared the bus driver.
Elisha and Jose turned to Lydia for moral support. Lydia pleaded for a bit of forbearance from the bus driver. The bus driver set his mouth in a firm line and declined. Crunch time, baby.
The cogs in both Elisha´s and Jose´s brain started whirring, and they mutually concluded: We´re gonna eat these masterpieces here and now, and we´re gonna make this bus, and we´re gonna divide and conquer and win, and then the world is going to worship us and high-five us a million times over.
And that they did, everybody– that they did. Elisha inhaled his double scoop in not more than 60 seconds (¨I have no idea what I ate, I tasted nothing¨, he heroically reported later), while Jose slipped his icecream down with the slick slyness of a dessert-eating king before later producing his gelato shovel from the depths of his jacket pocket (¨Yeah, it was really yummy¨, he confirmed modestly with a beaming grin).
We flopped back into the carpeted train seats and dozed all the way home: a perfect day with the sweetest of class mates, kindest teacher and most exemplary and consistent display of punctuality man has ever seen.
Word/phrase/name of the day: Ernie the Esel, meaning ¨Ernie the donkey¨, because I will never forget how quickly he went from silently staring at us with what appeared to be obtuse disdain, to erupting into a braying solo with all his pearly chompers confidently on display, how high his hee-haws were, and eventually, how quickly he regained his composure, re-set his face into a hee-hawless stare and quietly moved away. It was the best.