I'm Sorry, I Didn't Realize This Was the Serengeti (A GREAT Story)

Preface: For the past few weeks, a good friend of mine from my fraternity and I have been planning on meeting up in Vienna, Austria. He’ll be backpacking around Europe for about a month, and we just happened to be going there around the same time. Well, we had planned on meeting up in Vienna on June 16^th, and spending two nights there together. Well, for some reason, I got confused and thought that I wasn’t leaving Berlin until the morning of the 17^th. So as I was getting ready for bed last night, I got an e-mail from Ryan asking what time I would be getting to Vienna the following day. Wait… what?? That’s tomorrow?! I’d completely screwed up… now I had to find a way to be in Vienna by mid-afternoon, as he would be getting there at 2pm, and I certainly couldn’t leave him stranded. Besides, we had big plans to watch Austria play Germany in the Euro Games, and hit the town hard. I looked up train times for that morning to see if I could get there around the same time as him. It’s a ten-hour train ride… crap. That would mean I need to be on a train by 4am (it was already 1:30 at this point). Well, there wasn’t a 4am train available, but I did find one for 5:49, which would put me in Vienna by 3:30. I decided that’s what I would take. And since the train was leaving so early, I was just going to pull an all-nighter and catch the train in the morning. The only problem is this – my hostel is in the middle of nowhere, and because of this, it is only serviced by buses (not the metro). Buses wouldn’t start running until 6 in the morning, and I had to be at the station by 5. The metro trains do run all night, though. So I decided I would walk to the nearest metro station from my hostel (about 30 or 40 minutes) and take that to Hauptbonhof, where I was catching my train to Vienna.

Okay, did you get all that?? Recap – I’m an idiot, had to get a train to Vienna ASAP, found one for 5:49 in the morning, and will be walking to the metro 40 minutes away so that I can get to the station in time.

Preface 2 – As mentioned above, my hostel is in the middle of nowhere. I mean nowhere. It is on the outskirts of Berlin, right between the suburbs and a big forest, which may be some sort of national park or something. For all intents and purposes, the hostel is in the woods – it feels like you’re camping actually. To get to the hostel from the main road, you have to walk down a gravel path, maybe 250 meters long, that has woods on both sides. At night the road is really creepy – I’d walked home on it at night a few times, but never with any problem.

Actual Post – Okay, now that I have all that out of the way, I can actually tell you my story. Let me start it off by posing a question: Of all the hardships or problems that a traveler might face (such as myself), what do you think the most severe or the most worrisome would be? Think about it long and hard. Is it a lack of funds? Homesickness? Getting lost? When you have your answer, read on to find out what the case was for me.

Okay, are you ready? Well here it is – my problem was… wild boars. That’s right… WILD. BOARS. I know that right now, that doesn’t make any sense, but it is my intention to explain myself as clearly as possible. So here we go… Remember how I said I was going to have to walk to the metro station in order to get to my train in time? Well, I left the hostel at 3:45 in the morning, with the metro station being about a half hour away. And remember how my hostel lies on the edge of a forest down a very long, dimly lit road? Well, as I left the hostel I started out down the gravel road, suited up with my pack on my back. I was a little tired, but excited to see my friend in Vienna. It was a cold night – so cold in fact, that I noticed before I left that I could see my breath. As I first set out, the gravel road was eerily silent, and all I could see was pitch black interrupted by the faint glow of three light posts in the distance that lit the path sporadically. As I walked along, the only sounds were of my footsteps grinding against the gravel. As my eyes adjusted, I could see about 15 feet in front of me (barely) but only black beyond that.

I had gotten about halfway down the road when I first thought I saw something. Up ahead, near the wood pile along the side of the road I thought I saw something move. Nah, I’m sure it’s just my eyes playing tricks on me. After all, it is pretty late. Well wait a second, there it went again. My pace slowed as up ahead, in the incredibly faint glow of a street lamp, I saw something move again. Is that a fox? I was about 100 feet away from the wood pile, but I was still walking forward, knowing that even if there was something there, it would surely get lost quick when it heard me coming. When I got to about 60 feet from the wood pile, that’s when it turned. Whatever it was, it was MUCH bigger than I had originally thought. I froze dead in my tracks, unsure as to what lay ahead of me. All I could see was a silhouette, and it appeared to be about the size of a large dog. It hadn’t made a sound yet, and the forest was dead silent now that I had stopped. I waited for something, anything to give me some indication as to what it was or where it was headed. After about 30 seconds, it started to move. It had moved out into the road, away from the glow of the street lamp, and I could no longer see it whatsoever – not even an outline. Its footsteps were heavy, and I could tell that they were coming directly at me, in the middle of the road. I was now in between two of the street lamps, far from either one, and a good 125 meters from the hostel. As the steps got faster, I knew that this thing in the distance was closing the space between it and me. As dark as it was, I wouldn’t be able to see it at all until it was about 15 feet away from me, and I didn’t want to be 15 feet away from whatever this thing was. I didn’t want to move, because then I wouldn’t be able to hear its positioning, but I had no choice. I slowly paced backwards, painstakingly placing each step with the utmost precision so as to make the least sound possible. I didn’t turn my back on whatever it was… I wanted to make sure to be in some sort of attack formation in case this thing decided to get physical. Its steps were still faster than mine and getting louder, so I knew it was close. As I continued to walk backwards, I neared one of the street lamps, and I began to come in range of the glow once more. And that’s when I saw it. The lamp’s rays swept over my pursuer, and I got the first view of what was approaching me. There, in the middle of the road, 30 feet away, was a massive wild boar. A WILD BOAR. WHY ARE THERE WILD BOARS IN THE OUTSKIRTS OF BERLIN!?! At this point, I started to freak out a little bit and think about what I should do next. I was frozen in the middle of the road, unable to believe what my eyes were seeing. The boar let out a loud grunt, with the warm breath from its snout visible in the cold air. What am I supposed to do in this situation? Okay, think… there has to be some sort of boar protocol. Do I open up my jacket and yell, like with a bear? Do I stand still? If I run, will it chase me? Are boars aggressive? Should I curl up in the fetal position and wait to be impaled? I had to do something. The boar took a few steps down the road, and then began to run straight at me. In a split second, my body reacted and didn’t care about whatever reasoning my brain was trying to do. I was running – fast. I was putting one foot in front of the other straight back in the direction of the hostel. I thought about ditching my pack as it was slowing me down bigtime, but I wanted to have something big that I could put between me and the boar if it got too close. The only problem was now that I was running, I couldn’t hear the boar. Was it still chasing me? I don’t know, but it hasn’t hit me yet, so I’m not stopping. I ran back to the hostel, got inside the wooden fence, and threw my pack on the ground. WHAT just happened?? How is this possible? Behind the impermeable safety of the rickety wooden gate, I looked back down the gravel road to see where the boar was. It sounded like he was now in the woods, and I heard multiple grunts and footsteps over a minute or two. It was still pretty close, but at least I was near the hostel now. All of a sudden, the boar darted across the road. Wait a second, that’s not one boar... that's a bunch of boar!! There were at least five of them, and they all ran across in a line. Whatever you call a bunch of boar – a herd, a flock, a gaggle, a pride – I don’t know, but this was 5-7 bloodthirsty, flesh-eating boar out in the forest. In retrospect, I believe it was a mother and a bunch of young ones. Perhaps that’s why she was so moody and decided to throw down.

I went back inside the hostel and there were still 7 or 8 people up in the common room, drinking and socializing. I was still in complete shock and awe; I told them what happened and none of them could believe it. One of them said he heard of a guy that had seen a boar the night before on the same road. I guess I didn’t get that memo. They all wanted to see if what I spoke was the truth, so we all headed back out into the gravel road, the time being about 4am at this point. Immediately, we could hear them rooting around in the woods, stomping around and grunting. Since the people from inside were quite full of liquid courage at this point, they decided that they wanted to try to get pictures. I didn’t mind, because one way or another, I had to get to that train station, and that road was the only way. If they’re distracting the boars with paparazzi shots while I sneak by unscathed, that’s fine with me.

We venture back out onto the path, and I’m not nervous at all now that I’m with other people. However, this time I was armed with a flashlight and my pocketknife. Not that the pocketknife would do anything but make it really mad, but it did give me some sort of solace. We walked down the path and eventually got to the point where the boars were straight into the woods next to us. The other people started pointing and snapping, and that’s when I high-tailed it outta there. As I walked away, I could hear the boar still out in the forest, and they weren’t coming my way at all this time. The diversion had worked. I made it to the end of the road and out of the forest, back into the suburbs of Berlin. What a ridiculous, absurd, totally nonsensical experience that was. I just got charged by a gaggle of angry boar in Germany. Well, maybe that’s an exaggeration, but seeing the outline of that thing in the moonlight is still pretty intense(not to mention having it charge you when you're not even able to see it). As stressful as it was at the time, I laughed about it the entire way to the train station, thinking of the reactions I would get when I recounted it to people. If anything else, it’s definitely a great story, and it has made my trip to Berlin all the more “unique.”

I ended up making my 5:49 train, and I’m currently on my way to Vienna. I haven’t slept yet, and I’m not sure if I’ll be able to sleep on this train. I really hope I do, because Ryan and I don’t have a place to sleep tonight – all the hostels were booked up, so we decided we would bank on the hope that Austria will win the game, and then ride the wave of energy all night long until morning. Austria hasn't beaten Germany in soccer in 22 years... think of how Boston was when they won the series. That's what Austria will be like if they win this game. We’ll see what happens – hopefully the boar didn’t take all my energy. Until next time…