First day at work

Monday heralded the first commute of my new working life. This brought new torments to a familiar drudge.

As I was shuffling nervously through the station, triple checking my route, and generally playing the part of a right tourist, I became the very thing that drove me around the bend in London: the bumbling platform hazard.

Then, as I became sure that the Berlin map did not require constant examination to prevent it from morphing, I began to look about me. Dodgy vending machines; bored commuters; irritatingly captivating adverts – the usual trappings of mass transit life.

Yet, the people, oddly, looked much as they did at any other time. As I began to look a little more closely, it seemed that everyone was in casual clothing. Any platform pointing towards the city centre at rush hour anywhere in the world should have smart, suited up, professional looking people preparing their organised minds for another day’s climbing the greasy pole.

But on Monday morning, I was, it seemed, the only person in Berlin wearing a tie.

So, I’m sure I scared the pants off the people that I worked with. I think most of them have forgotten how ties work.

Apparently, I am too neat for the Germans.

Anyway, more to come…