Last week we went to Berlin, which was a trip we’d planned a long time before we’d decided to get four rescue kittens and it became massively inconvenient (plus, I didn’t want to leave them, at all, because I knew how much I’d miss them).

Anyway, we were kind of tied into it because we had Cirque tickets (my favourite thing ever) and The Witcher concert tickets (more Joe’s thing than mine). So off we went to Berlin and had a great time doing all kinds of things, including an immersive Squid Game experience that was very fun.

It wasn’t until the last day that I thought, “hmm, nothing weird has happened. What am I actually going to say in my blog post about this?”

And then of course things started to get weird.

The taxi from the airport to our hotel had been expensive, so we decided to get public transport on the way back. It was an easy underground journey a few stops followed by a train.

The underground journey passed by without incident, but when we got on the train I noticed a man acting a little strangely.

The carriage was a really small one, it was more of an underground train doing an overground journey, and it consisted of two pairs of seats facing each other. He was standing in front of one of the seats facing the window, messing with his bag.

And then I started to hear a loud rustling.

I looked over, and I noticed there was something weird about the man’s head. He had something sticking out of the sides of his hood.

Was that…tin foil?!

He pulled his hood back and I saw that yes, it was in fact shaped tin foil. Around his head. He had an entire roll of tin foil he was pulling sections off, and continued to add to the helmet he was fashioning, securing it with brown tape. Small bits of foil clustered around his feet as he diligently created his head gear.

Honestly, I was fascinated. It hadn’t occurred to me until that moment that tin foil hats were a thing that people actually did in real life. I genuinely thought it was just internet lore/sarcasm.

He lifted his shirt, revealing a torso also entirely covered with tin foil and brown tape (“here’s one I made earlier”?), and added more layers to that.

By this point I was entertaining myself watching other people sitting/standing around notice what he was doing and do a double take.

After he’d finished, which took quite a few stops, he pulled out a regular smartphone with his bare hands (which honestly I was surprised by, given that I hadn’t expected him to have a phone. And upon seeing his phone, was immediately concerned for him that he hadn’t crafted tin foil gloves to use it).

A few seconds later the noise started. At first I thought it was just a usual random train/tracks screeching noise, but it continued. It was both loud and high pitched and immediately made me want to kill people (did I ever mention I’m sensitive to loud, high pitched noises?).

Yes, it turned out to be Tin Man’s phone.

At that point he had pushed me too far and we moved carriages. We couldn’t move far, because there was no way through to the actual next proper carriages, but we were able to move far enough along that “I want to murder everyone” became “This is low key aggravating.”

We were okay for another few stops. And then the train stopped. And it didn’t start again.

And people started to leave the train. We stuck our heads out enough to see a “Zug endert hier” sign. The train was supposed to go all the way to the airport, our flight was in less than three hours, and we were still a good 45 minutes away, if not more.

So we dragged our stuff off, and after being momentarily distracted by a rail replacement bus sign, which turned out to be going in the opposite direction, we headed through the train station to another train that was also going to the airport.

Two train loads of people were trying to get on that train, but because it was Germany and not England, it wasn’t super crowded. (In England we probably would not have been able to get on the train, and if we had we’d have been crammed in like sardines unable to move and immediately died in any kind of emergency).

And the journey continued. For another half hour. Until the second train stopped.

This time there was no sign. So we waited for a few minutes, in case it had just arrived at the platform early.

It became apparent that nothing was actually going to happen at the same time I heard a girl say loudly, “I’m getting an Uber. Does anyone want to get an Uber with me?”

Sure, why not. I wasn’t convinced a third train was going to help this situation, even if we could find one in time.

It turned out the girl was from Manchester, which was a bit of a random coincidence, and we promptly left the station and went out to a dual carriageway which was clearly extremely inconvenient for stopping at. She ordered an Uber, and then we also had an Israeli woman approach us asking if she could share with us because she didn’t have or understand Uber and at that point we were all, sure, why the heck not.

And then, after negotiating four lanes of traffic and a central reservation while dragging three suitcases between the four of us, we were on our merry way.

Except of course we weren’t, because that would be far too easy.

We got in the taxi, and the Uber driver asked for a pin. In all the dozens of Ubers, Bolts, taxis in general we’ve got anywhere in the world, no one has ever asked for a pin. And of course we didn’t have one for the booking. Or in fact see where a pin might be on Gabby’s Uber app.

The taxi driver also did not speak English. My German is school level circa 2003 and I don’t really have the words for any/all of the technologies we use in these modern times even assuming I could remember enough to say or understand anything useful. (Turns out I’m pretty good on obvious nouns and adjectives but my grammar is shocking).

Apparently no one else spoke German either, but somehow we managed to explain and convince the guy enough to pay cash for the journey (at least I could remember my numbers for this impromptu international negotiation). It was a bit overpriced for a short journey, but since we were splitting it four ways (well, three – we ended up just paying Gabi’s share because she didn’t have cash, but that was fine and she’d organised everything else).

In hindsight I don’t really know why we didn’t just google where to find the pin in the Uber app, but Gabi was so convinced there was nothing there at all, that I don’t know whether there was one or not. We were all just in a bit of a blind panic at the thought of missing three different flights between us, because by that point we were massively running out of time. Even a small delay getting through the airport and we were screwed.

Luckily, we managed to get there (two different terminals between us, because of course), and made it to the gate. Which of course then meant the flight was immediately delayed for forty minutes.

And that was the curse of the tin man.