The Blog of Harald

A friend of mine need to do two things: change trains at the station near my office, and give me an attachment for his digital camera. It made perfect sense for us to combine the two.

So I wander down to the station, and walk over to the escalator for the appropriate track. “I’m sorry, only passengers are allowed on the track level. It’s for safety, and it’s a policy. You can meet your friend over there at Arrivals”. As a regular commuter, I probably spend more time on train platforms than he does, but whatever. Sadly, I understand droid mentality, even if it makes me cringe.

Still trying to be lawful, I went to the security desk to see if someone there would be kind enough to escort me upstairs, but there was no one around. Time is running out…

I wandered over to the Arrivals area for that track. Hey, the escalator is going _up_ instead of _down_. “Aha!” says I, “I now have an excuse for being on the platform if anyone stops me”. I waited for his train to arrive, went up the escalator, and joined him as he got off the train. He handed me the cable then went over to his other train, and I went down the other arrivals escalator (just as though I were an arriving passenger).

Several train and station staff saw me walking around on the “wrong” part of the train platform; nobody even looked at me twice. Which just proves, as always, that you can go pretty much anywhere as long as you look like you know what you’re doing…