I arrived in Berlin on a Thursday night, and the concierge at my hotel had a brilliant suggestion. There's an island of museums in Berlin that he called, conveniently, Museum Island, and on Thursdays they're open late and they're free. All I had to do was hop a bus right in front of the hotel and it'd take me straight there.

I'm well aware how the simplest plans can turn into debacles, so I doublechecked with the driver. "Can you tell me when we get to Museum Island?" I asked. Just like that, with the English words. I was spending four days in Berlin, so I didn't think I required the entire German language. I knew the lyrics to Cabaret and 99 Luftballons and figured those would cover most of the situations I'd get in.

The bus driver, sadly, had been hired for something other than charm. He repeated "Eh?" several times while I repeated "Museum Island," each of us steadily ramping up in volume, and after four or five minutes he just started yelling German words at me which I was pretty sure translated to, "Just shut the FUCK up and MOVE TO THE BACK OF THE BUS."

Which I did, you know, since my mental picture of the German police doesn't include them approaching me slowly and saying, "Welcome to our lovely nation! May we be of assistance?" And in about ten minutes I saw a small island overloaded with museum-sized buildings slide by on the left side of the bus.

Naturally I headed back to the driver. "Is that Museum Island?" I asked. He resumed his furious ignorance and started screaming at me as though he'd never stopped. He waved me away like I was disturbing his driving and then, as he pulled over to the next bus stop, he acted out the stupidest little sham I've ever seen, and I've been to several Adam Sandler movies. A faux lightbulb went off over his head. "Oh!" he said, like suddenly he got it. "MuseumsINSEL."

Let's make this crystal clear: at eight o'clock at night in an unfamiliar city I'm left half a mile from my destination because a bus driver didn't connect "Museum Island" with "Museumsinsel," one of the major stops on his route.

I spent the rest of my time in Berlin with a boiling teakettle for a head, but gradually the anger faded and left admiration. I mean, it takes some kind of guts to either proudly punish tourists who don't bother to learn German, or take responsibility for ferrying tourists around while being physically unable to make basic connections in the brain. The sheer chutzpah is breathtaking. I mean, it's all about power, and what better way to demonstrate power than by misusing it?

Sometimes now when the weather is nice I sit outside and daydream that I've followed in this man's shoes. I pretend that I'm a cabdriver, and I too hold fate in my fingers. I patiently listen to my passengers' requests, pretend to ponder them for a second, and then take my cue from that bus driver's playbook. "Broomingdale's? Buddy, I been here for thirty-somethin' years, and there ain't never been no store by that name."