Prüfdienst

I hopped on the U-bahn at 10:15 on Saturday night on my way to Hafen City for a couple of drinks. After choosing a seat, the doors closed and the Prüfdienst made itself known. Had I been paying more attention, I probably would have noticed the group of men and women dressed in blue with PRÜFDIENST stamped on their backs since they don't really blend in with the crowd.

They asked to see everyone's tickets. This was my first "check" in Hamburg. If you know me, you know I follow rules to the T. I wear my seat belt to move the car from the driveway to the garage. Of course I had a valid ticket, yet I still found myself a bit nervous as I fumbled in my wallet to prove it.  It's all so formal and a smidge intimidating. Once we made it to the next stop, they moved on to the car in front of us. If you are caught without a ticket, I believe you pay a fine of roughly 40 EUR. It's not quite as much as I pay for a monthly ticket, so some people do take the chance. If I were to chance it, I would certainly be a walking ball of stress.

In all of my time abroad, I've been so rarely asked to show a ticket that each experience tends to stick in my memory. In Innsbruck, I was only checked twice the entire year. And both times were on back to back days. Clearly they were on a mission that week. The first time even happened to be the day I was en route to Bubble Point to wash my laundry. I think I had a minor heart attack.

I don't seem to have any recollection of being checked in Vienna, but I feel like it must have happened at least once in the two years. Although, I must say, that if memory serves correctly, the Austrians tend to have plain-clothed officers checking. It's much more of a sneak attack, so even the savvy Schwarzfahrer (fare dodger) cannot hop off the bus/U-bahn/Straßenbahn to avoid the check.

However, there was one "incident" in Vienna that proves how much luck can be a factor. A group of friends and I were all dressed up to head to a Maturaball (a school dance of sorts, but anyone can attend - hence a group of teaching assistants). We didn't calculate enough time to catch the S-bahn and buy tickets, so we decided to chance it. Now, all four of us did have our regular tickets, but we were heading out of the "normal zone". And two of the four of us were covered since they were working outside of Vienna itself. It's much more common to be checked on these types of rides, but not a given.

We were checked. The two with 100% valid tickets showed theirs first. Then I was up. I smiled and handed over my card. Then I had to pay the price of the ticket with an extra fee. I want to say it only came out to 10 EUR or so, but that was an awful lot on our budget at the time. And then just as he gave me my receipt we pulled into another stop and he never came back. So, our fourth group member didn't have to pay. That's life.