by Hannes
One of the more exciting points so far of my time in Germany was what happened in the subway three weeks ago . . . . Drum roll, please . . . .
I had just gotten out of school at about 2:00 and was waiting in the subway station right next to our school with my friend Niko. I had my bag with all my basketball stuff, and some Turkish guy just bumped right into my bag. At the time I thought it was an accident, so I kind of looked at him and—as usual—I was smiling. He didn’t like this, so he came over to me and asked me: “Hast du Probleme mit mir?” That means: “Do you have a problem with me?” Then he took out a knife and held it out threateningly. I was scared to death, so I just said, “Sorry, sorry, sorry!” and started backing away from him. He kept advancing on me, and punched me with a right hook just below my left eye. I’ve never been so scared in my life.
The right hook!
My friend Niko was almost as shocked and terrified as I was, so we went to the other side of the station and hid behind a pole (making sure that we didn’t look at him). Then when the train came we let him get on without us, and we waited five minutes for the next train. A bunch of other friends who had seen what had happened but had not seen that we didn’t get on the train waited for us at the next station and then got on with us. We were all talking about what had happened and none of them had ever seen anything like it.
First-aid at home
I had a huge bruise and bump on my left cheekbone, but it could have been much worse. We didn’t go to the police because we didn’t really have any hope that they would find him again in a city as big as Berlin. But the next day, on the little television that’s always running in the subway train, they had a new video about knives being prohibited on the subway. I’m guessing that maybe they saw what had happened on the surveillance cameras in the subway station.
At first I was very worried about meeting up with that guy again, but as I said, in a city this big, what’s the chance of seeing him again? Now I enjoy riding the subways again, and life is good!
