Why I Walk Two Miles to Avoid Taking the Bus

How a confusing bus ride in Germany revealed my lifelong habit of walking to escape public awkwardness.

Embarrassment is the price of admission for a life fully lived.” — Susan David

Arun Kumar

The morning air in Bonn was brisk enough to justify a coat, but not cold enough to excuse the sudden warmth rising up the back of my neck.

I was standing near the front of a crowded bus, suspended in a peculiar mental state known only to foreigners. In my right hand, I held a crumpled five-euro note, extended like a peace offering toward the bus driver who looked through me with the clinical indifference reserved for tourist. With a slow, practiced flick of his wrist, he pointed toward the back of the bus. No words. None were deemed necessary. Whether he spoke English or simply preferred the modest power of withholding it, the message was clear: Move along and go the ticket machine at the back.

I turned and began the unsteady trek down the aisle. The bus lurched forward, forcing me into a precarious dance, bracing against handrails to avoid tumbling into the lap of some unsuspecting commuter reading the morning news. When I finally reached the ticket machine, another trial began.

The interface stared back at me in German, a language whose long, compound nouns look remarkably official. I fumbled for the language toggle, hyper-aware of the quiet, captive audience around me. When English finally appeared, it brought no relief — only a bewildering array of transit options. Single journey? Short trip? City zone? Day pass?

I tapped the screen, tapped it again, waved my credit card against the reader, and prayed for the gentle hum of a printing ticket rather than the harsh beep of rejection.

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If the distance between my hotel and a meeting is two miles or less, I will almost always choose to walk. It takes about forty-five minutes; a duration I have spent years rationalizing. It’s good for my health, I would tell myself. It offers time for contemplation.

Never mind that half of these walks take place along six-lane arterial roads, where “contemplation” consists primarily of walking through exhaust fumes and listening to truck horns. The narrative was comforting because it framed my choice as intentional, healthy, and high-minded.

It was only there in Germany, balanced on one foot against the momentum of a lurching bus, that the self-deception fell away and clarity emerged.

I was not walking for fitness. I was walking to escape stage fright.

Taking a bus in an unfamiliar city is not merely transportation; it is an unexpected, unscripted five-minute performance in front of an audience. You step onto a brightly lit stage, surrounded by seated spectators. Every hesitation — searching for the machine, staring in bafflement at the fare structure — becomes a spotlight.

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A while back, I wrote about this same phenomenon: the extraordinary lengths we go to in order to avoid public embarrassment. At the time, I wondered if this sensitivity is rooted in something far older.

In early human history, falling out of favor with the group was rarely a minor inconvenience — it was a threat to survival. To be noticed for the wrong reasons was to risk isolation. Perhaps our nervous systems still carry that primal memory, mistaking the quiet scrutiny of morning commuters for the quiet judgment of the tribe. The pulse spikes not because the ticket machine is complex (which it is), but because our biology still reads public awkwardness as a matter of life and death.

Go figure.

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Yet, the irony of stage fright is also how quickly the stage dissolves.

On my second morning in Bonn, I stepped through the bus doors with a different rhythm. I walked straight to the machine, swiped the card without looking for the English toggle, retrieved the ticket, and slid into an empty seat near the window. The audience hadn’t changed, but the feeling of being in spotlight was gone. I was no longer an actor in a play; I was just another passenger watching the morning traffic on streets of Bonn, on my way to a meeting.

Ciao, and thanks for reading.