racial tensions on the train

October 5, 2008

Warning: this story is anti climatic, in my opinion.

I boarded my train in Amsterdam and got all settled in for the train ride home.  I'd taken a quilt with me (to work on, not to keep warm, although it did serve that alternate purpose), and had it in my lap.  Headphones on.  Zoned out.

What do we call the person who comes through and checks the validity of your tickets in English?  I honestly can't remember, so I keep Englishifying the French word: controller.  My experience with trains in Europe (and I've ridden them a bunch in the last two years anyway), is that the controller gets on and checks tickets while the train is moving.  The conductor does not wait for the controllers to finish making sure everyone is legal before pulling out of the station.  If you don't have a valid ticket--you get a fine.  It's a simple rule.  I would think it's a pretty universal rule.  

So I'm zoned out when the controller approaches me.  I see him and have to hit pause on my ipod, dig under the quilt into my bag to pull out my ticket, which he clicks and moves on to the person behind me.  I return to my zone.

After a few minutes, though, I notice that the train is not moving AND the controller has not moved either.  He is still behind me, talking to the passenger there, a non-white immigrant to France.  I hit pause on my ipod and begin to eavesdrop.  (Is that bad?)  

They are speaking English, and he says, "Madame, it's very simple.  You can exit the train and purchase a ticket for 3.50 or I can write you a fine for 50 euros."

Her:  "Yes, but if I get off the train, I will miss my connecting train in the Hague."

Him:  "Madame, that is not my problem.  You cannot ride this train without a ticket.  You can exit the train and purchase a ticket for 3.50 or I can write you a fine for 50 euros."

Her:  "Why can't YOU just sell me the 3.50 ticket?"

Him:  "Madame, I don't sell tickets, I write them.  They are called fines.  I write them for 50 euros, but I am offering you the chance to purchase a cheaper ticket, for 3.50...by exiting the train."

She gets up, storms off the train and the controller moves on to the next passenger.  Less than two minutes later, however, she returns, and takes her seat back.  The controller spots her, comes up, and asks (as if they had not had any interaction before), "Ticket please."

"I have no ticket."

He leaves and returns with another worker.  Worker #2 greets her in Dutch.  She bellows (very forcefully and rudely), "PARLEZ AVEC MOI EN FRANCAIS!"  (Speak to me in French!)

Worker #1 says (in English), "No, Madame.  You are in the Netherlands.  We will speak to you in our language, Dutch, or as a courtesy, we will speak to you in English.  We do not speak French here."

She says, "Je parle pas l'Anglais."  (I don't speak English.)  To which all the English speaking people in the car scoffed, because we'd listened to her have the entire previous conversation with the first worker in English.

Worker #2 puts his hand on his coworker's shoulder to get him to calm down, and says, (in French), "Oui, madame.  Your ticket, please?"

Woman (in French): "I have no ticket."

Worker #2 (in French): "Would you like to buy a ticket?  It costs 3.50."

They go back and forth in French, having the same conversation she'd had with the first worker.  All of us who speak French in the car are translating the conversation into whispered English for the Dutch speakers.  Whenever Worker #1 speaks now, he only does so in Dutch, which the Dutch speakers are translating into whispered English for all the French speakers.  (The man next to me was an Indian-origin Dutchman.)

I'm sitting there a bit dumbfounded.  I can't believe they have let this situation go on this long.  If I were a controller, I might be nice enough to give someone the chance to exit the train to buy a ticket one time.  I would not offer them that chance continually for 15 minutes.  I mean, it was clear that she was not going to exit the train...so write her the fine already and let us get on our way.

She continues on about how if the train were in France, they would not be treating her this way.  In France they...Worker #2 interrupts her and comments that the Dutch are no different than any other country in the world.  If you board a train without a valid ticket, you get a fine.  Then he politely says, (in French), "Madame, you are being very rude."

She screams at him, (in French), "No!  It is YOU who is being very rude!"

Well, all the French people exhaled an "oh la la" in disbelief, because these two controllers have been beyond gracious.  She has been nothing but rude and difficult to them.  They both leave and get the police, who come and escort the woman off the train.

As they are leading her off, she screams that she is being treated this way because she is the only non-white person in the car.  Worker #1 says something in Dutch, to which all the Dutch people laugh, except for the man next to me.  I ask him what the controller said, and he said, "He said that she was being treated that way because she did not have a ticket, and that all the white people in the car are righteous."

I asked if he meant, "in the right," because we all have our tickets and she did not.  (In French, the word "juste" can mean "just, righteous, fair, in the right," etc...so I thought maybe he was making a translation error by saying righteous.)  He responded, "No, he said righteous.  He was making a rude play on words towards us."  He was clearly offended.

So apparently...there are the same racial tensions in the Netherlands that exist here in France with the immigrants.  He stayed in a foul mood for the rest of his journey, cussing in English about how her shenanigans were making us late.  Sure enough, I checked the clock...and I was going to have to run to make my connecting train in Brussels.  I just kept thinking over and over, "I do NOT want to spend the night in Brussels!"  I ran for my life there and barely jumped on the train before it pulled out for Paris.

And so I made it home all fine with no exciting story to tell about having to spend a night in Brussels.  See, I told you.  Anti climatic.