Lost and Found | Blake Byrne

I like everyone else have lost something important at some point in my lifetime. Every time this happens, the feelings of panic and fear always flood my system as I try and search into the depths of my mind in attempt to remember the last place I had it. Sometimes I am able to remember and find what I lost but the panic and fear is still there for some time. Now I known everyone has experienced this same scenario in their own lives. Remember what you felt at that time and then multiply it by ten and that’s what it feels like to losing something with unequivocal value in a foreign country. This item I had lost, not counting my passport, is the most important thing I have on this trip. It was my phone.

I was in a group with some fellow E3ers and we were coming back on a tram from a memorial we visited for class. We finally got to the exit by our hostel and got off the tram, but my phone did not seem to think it should get off on the same stop. Yes, I left my phone on a tram in Berlin. I did not realize it was missing until about a minute later when Daniel asked me to send him some photos. I went to reach in my pocket and nothing was there. Immediately that feeling I mentioned earlier struck me like a bolt of lightning and I took off down the sidewalk trying to chase the tram to its next stop, but then it turned left down a street that I couldn’t cross to follow. This was when it dawned on me that we were close to the end of the line, so the tram would have to loop back around to where we were. I sprinted to the stop it goes to first after the loop and waited. To add even more suspense, the trams were switching drivers, so it took longer for the trains to make the loop. Thankfully, my group members were awesome and came to help me because they had two versions of the train we took making the loop. We divided two and two to scan the trams for my phone and then get off on the next stop. Gemma and Neyah got on the first tram and searched. They had nothing. It came down to the second tram. It was make or break time. It slowly found its way to the stop where Daniel and I quickly hit the button and jumped aboard. We quickly scanned for where we were sitting when I lost it. We ran over there, looked in my seat, and it was there! We hopped off, got the girls, and headed back to the hostel as it was raining on us. I, however, didn’t care because I was able to find a phone that I was sure would stay in Germany without us.