During one of my many trips to England, I was at a train station late one night, trying to get back to my hotel after visiting with a good friend and colleague. I was still new to the train system, and I wasn't sure if the next train approaching went to Bracknell, where I was staying.
I figured I should ask someone, so I walked up to a young lady standing on the platform and said, “Excuse me, does the next train go to Bracknell?”
I had apparently startled her, so I took a step back. She looked like she was processing something, then said, “Bracknell.”
“Oh, okay, so does it have a stop in Bracknell?”
“Yes….”
The answer sounded a bit tentative, but I took it at face value.
Later on, I would discover that the apparent extent of her English vocabulary was “yes,” “no,” “Bracknell,” “taxi,” and “I'm so sorry.”
At the time I was none the wiser, so I assumed that, yes, the next train would stop in Bracknell, so I moved back a bit and waited. The train approached the station, but I didn't know what to look at to figure out where it would go; I was a complete newbie at this train business. The young lady hopped onto the train when it stopped, so I confidently hopped on after her. If she thought it was going to Bracknell, then why not?
I should have hopped right back off when I saw her looking nervously at the scrolling destination display. It was only after the doors closed and the train started rolling that it showed that the train in fact went to some other place with a name that did not at all resemble “Bracknell” in the least. Probably something ending in “ham” or “cester” or “shire”. Maybe Hamcestershire.
At this point, we started probing the depths of her English. She had also realized that the train was not going where she wanted to go, and that she had therefore led me astray as well. She started saying, “I'm so sorry! I'm so sorry!” The poor thing. I sensed this train ride was the cap on what had probably already been a bad day for her.
We settled into an empty seat, and I tried to reassure her. “It's okay. We'll get off at the next station, and we'll get a taxi.” I punctuated this with wild gesticulations and a slightly elevated volume, in true American style, since by this point the penny had dropped and I knew there was a communication breakdown somewhere.
“Taxi?” She seemed to be feeling ever so slightly better.
“Yes, we'll get a taxi. We're not that far from Bracknell.” The words “taxi” and “Bracknell” found the necessary mental Velcro to stick to. She calmed down a bit.
We hopped off at the next station and found the taxi queue. A nice driver hopped out of the cab and sized up the unlikely pair: the graying guy obviously not from here and the young lady who in a normal world had no business hanging around the aforementioned graying guy.
I explained our plight. To his immense credit, there was no snicker or snide remark. He acted as if it was the most normal thing in the world. Maybe he had seen a few unlikely pairs like us. Maybe he was just a typical super-polite Englishman. We'll assume the latter.
Of course, it's easy to split a taxi when both passengers can simply tell the driver their respective destinations. Sadly, my traveling companion's vocabulary did not include many words that conveyed places, directions, addresses, or postcodes. She pulled out her phone and called someone, and started speaking in what sounded like a Slavic language of some sort. Eventually, she found someone who could explain to the driver where she needed to go. It turned out to not be too far from my hotel, so I asked the driver to drop her off first. After a few more rounds of “I'm so sorry,” we reached her destination. I waved her off from paying the cabbie and told her I'd cover it. She was nearly in tears. Yeah, bad day for sure.
We drove off, and the driver explained she was Polish and that the person he spoke to on the phone only had a slightly larger vocabulary, but he was a trooper and had finally gotten a postcode.
“What about you? You don't sound like you're from here. You have a bit of an accent.”
A bit of an accent! A bit of a Southern-United-States-redneck-who's-never-been-to-England accent. Bless him. More of that English politeness.
I told him I was traveling on business and what had happened. I wondered if he suspected something more nefarious, but he seemed to accept it. Nice guy.
My friend got a good giggle from my story the next day. I studied the train system a bit more carefully after that.
I hope the young lady had a better day the next day.