One Way or Another

In 2010 I gifted myself with a trip to Germany, however, that year April 14 was not only my 22nd birthday but a memorable day for over 10 million other travellers due to the eruption of Eyjafjallajökull (the name that challenged even the old and seasoned news reporters all over the globe) which caused a massive ash cloud over Europe. My flight back home to Moscow, among numerous others, was cancelled.
The train station greeted me with a “Sold out” sign. A man, whom I later came to know as Alexey, was staring at the train to Poland with his bloodshot eyes. I caught his glance and the next moment we both rushed to the carriage through the open door and planted ourselves on the seats. While I tried to come up with a feasible story of not having a ticket and anticipated being kicked off the train, Alexey repeated his “At least we were heading toward home” mantra. My fellow traveller turned out to be an opera singer who snuck away to Berlin to visit his friends after a European tour and was now rushing back for another performance. All the way to Warsaw we were either anxiously staring out the window or laughing about our misfortunate trip. At Warsaw, the next train to Moscow was leaving in 7 minutes. Alexey headed to the ticket desk, while I raced to the platform. Time was ticking away. I noticed a jolly man in a navy blue uniform, whistling a tune and waddling toward the head of the train. Driven by desperation, I grabbed the jolly man by the hand and started begging him to delay the departure. I jumped from cancelled flight to my finals and Alexey’s performance. The thought that the man might not have spoken Russian or was even affiliated with the train didn’t occur to me. What happened next was like a scene from a Charlie Chaplin film. Alexey reappeared at the platform, waving two tickets over his head as a victory flag, and started walking towards me. Suddenly he tripped, his credit card flew out of his hand and fell on to the train tracks. “Are you suicidal?” the jolly man cried in despair as Alexey jumped down without a second thought.
My heart was still racing when we found our seats and Alexey opened a bottle of wine. “I got it for my wife but we have a good cause to celebrate”, he said filling our plastic cups. Although my journey home turned out to be completely different from the initial plan, I could hardly imagine a more memorable way to finish that trip.