Without a ticket: Like Hansel and Gretel

Saturday morning around four. The S-Bahn smells like the weekend, sweat and perfume. Shortly before departure, a breathless woman enters the compartment. She has her hair shaved and headphones on, looks around and collapses into the seat across from me. A draft comes through the door as something gray flutters towards us. The woman throws her legs up and shouts “Oha!” Suddenly a pigeon sits between us and looks as disturbed as we do.

“Hey, you have to get out again,” the woman says to the pigeon, takes her cell phone and quickly takes a photo as the doors close and the train pulls away. Another woman comes from the other side. “So something like that has never happened before and I drive every bike here.” She wears a T-shirt with Pink Panther with her denim skirt.

A guy wearing a Hawaiian shirt suddenly stands next to us and films the pigeon as it walks down the aisle with staring eyes. "It's for my uncle. He breeds pigeons." She nervously walks past him, drops a few blobs of poop, and sits down under a seat.

Then the Hawaiian shirt pulls out trail mix. "I have nuts. We can lay them as a trail. Like with Hansel and Gretel."

“Are they allowed to eat nuts?” asks the headphone woman.

"Yes, you can. I'm a teacher," he explains: "Primary school. Science lessons. Pigeons were there last year."

"I have cookies too! They taste better than the old nuts!" says the woman with the Pink Panther shirt. The teacher looks at the package of shortbread cookies in her hand. “Actually, sugar isn’t that good, but city pigeons are definitely used to everything.”

He crushes a few nuts and pushes them towards the door with his shoe. He places a piece of biscuit directly in front of the pigeon's beak. Then she starts moving. She pecks and follows the trail. At the next stop we open the door. She hops out and flies away. We look at each other with relief. Such an S-Bahn pigeon connects.