Verloren*

Crossing over the Czech border, a sense of panic grasps me. While we huddle together in a train nearly out of an old movie about British India (no people on the outside of the train, but just as packed inside) I realize that the announcements are no longer in German. Everything is suddenly in Czech. My only hope for understanding the announcements is from a Bavarian woman who barely speaks Czech or English, while I barely speak German. She tells me we need to transfer now because there is "a problem with China" or so I understand. The houses along the country side stop looking quaint and begin looking more and more like Baja California. Crumbling houses in need of repair, clotheslines hang on ruins, broken windows abound. I did not stop to take pictures. I quickly became so over-whealmed by the fact that we were not even hearing German (much less the occasional English or Italian that you get in Germany) that all sense left me and I just forgot everything but English and 'crazy monkey pointing'. Pils (as in Pilsner Beer) looks like Detroit after the apocolypse, I cannot believe this is a functioning train station and this is where we must transfer... I follow the crowd and cannot even tell what the word for 'platform' must be... worse yet I am looking for Platform 2 but they have written out the word for 2 rather than used the number.

I pray; God oh God please don't let me get stranded in Pils.

*German word of the day is Verloren; lost.

(this is not the station in Pils... this one actually looks a little less run down)