This S.T.A.R. story reenforces skills such as: Leadership, Team- work, German Language, Communication, Problem Solving, Self- reliance, Adaptability.
Situation: After a weekend trip to Munich, three friends and I were traveling by train back to Berlin. In order to save money we pur- chased train passes for regional trains, which involved a lot of transfers throughout the trip. We made it back to Dresden just fine, however none of the trains from Dresden to Berlin were regional. Therefore our passes didn’t work. We did not have much time to explore options, so we jumped on the first train to Berlin. Being ex- perienced travelers, we knew there would be an attendant selling tickets on the train. So,
Task: We needed to purchase new passes or tickets on the train. We could have waited for the attendant to find us, but we thought it may benefit us in the long run to be proactive and find the atten- dant first. (there can be large fines, or expensive tickets, for not hav- ing the appropriate passes for a train).
Action: We found a somewhat empty space on one of the cars and decided that the girls would watch all of our luggage while an- other guy and I ran around the train to get tickets. We started walk- ing towards the front, and we found an older German lady with a handheld ticket printer/credit card scanner. My friend approached her first and began a conversation in English; this was not well re- ceived judging by the look on her face. When I got close enough to talk, I opened with “Guten Tag, wie gehts Ihnen heute?” Yea, I speak German. Also, I used the formal ‘Ihnen’ which presented the most respect possible. She seemed to lighten up after that greeting. I showed her our passes, explained we were with two other peo- ple, and discussed our options for tickets. The train was heading to the Hauptbahnhof in Berlin, but was stopping at a few places in the city before that. If we opted to get off at one of these stops the tickets would be cheaper.
Result: We bought tickets for an earlier stop in Berlin, which were cheaper but still got us within the city. To end the conversation, I said something like “Vielen Dank! Wir sind nur amerikanishe stu- denten, und wir wissen nicht viel.” She seemed to find it quite humorous and smiled, which is something rarely seen by German train employees.
