The Train And I - A Train of Thought (Railways in general)

Member Name: MALU

Product:	Railways in general
Date:	04/10/01 (127 review reads)
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Are you in a hurry? If so, I’d rather you passed by, because I want to take you with me on a long and sentimental train journey.

My experience with trains goes back a long way. My secondary grammar school was a fifteen minute train ride away from the town where I lived then. I travelled back and forth for nine years, the train wasn’t just a means of transportation, it was part of my life.

My classmates who got in one station before me were always in the second carriage, last compartment. They used to prepare our homework to the extent that they found out where the problems were, and when I got in we would tackle them together. I remember one day when we had a Latin test in the first lesson and there was no light in the whole train, it was winter and pitch dark. We were all panicky, and when the conductor came with a torch round his neck to control the tickets we begged him to stay with us and shine his light on the pages of our books, which he did! The man be praised forever.

I used to write so well with my schoolbag on my knees that no teacher could ever find out that my homework had been done only minutes before reaching school. You can do a lot in 15 minutes if you’re well organized! The morning rides were always quiet, everyone scribbling away, composing, copying, reading or memorizing. I mostly copied maths and swapped my German homework for it. The rides back were a bit livelier, the girls were chatting and giggling, the boys using the carriages as gyms swinging from the luggage racks or doing other workout exercises on the wooden (!) benches to release the strain after a hard day at school.

We didn’t come late to school only because we occasionally missed the train, but also because cows loved to wander between the rails every now and then, no hooting made them leave the track. We had to follow them up to the next station where they were shooed away by the railway people.

Once I strolled with some friends through the goods station, and two friendly men on a steam (!) locomotive invited us to have a short ride with them. I was about 12 years old then and so deeply impressed that I wrote an op about the adventure, sent it to a kids’ mag and got a book for it as a prize. Looking back I see this as the seed from which a lifetime later my dooyoo career sprang!

When I was 18 years old, I had bad marks in English and had to go to England for a language course. I decided on a school in Cambridge and went there by train, alone, so as not to have someone with whom I could speak German. I managed well, found the right train in Dover, the right train in London, but then...The conductor said “Change at Ely”, and for the life of me I didn’t know what he was talking about. Imagine, I had never heard of the existence of Ely, so what he said, was just a combination of strange sounds and then - oh, the shame of it - I didn’t know the meaning of the verb ‘to change’, not in the context of trains! I can’t understand it now, but it’s true, believe me. (All my pupils MUST learn this expression, I tell them what can happen if not!) My English fellow travellers saved me by throwing me out at Ely crying in chorus “You must change here!”. Well, when I was standing on the platform with my luggage, it was dawning on me what I had to do.

I made my longest train ride ever as a student when I went to a language course in Moscow. Our professor had told us, no, ordered us, to go by train to get a feeling for the vastness of the country. I’ll be forever grateful for this advice. All in all, the ride lasted 36 hours (nothing compared to what a friend of ours did: Naples - Peking, 11 days!), we had a big compartment in which we could sit, play cards, read, eat and drink endless cups of tea which the attendant of the carriage prepared with a samowar. For the night a folding wall was drawn in the middle
so as to divide the women’s from the men’s section!

During the course a friend and I decided to visit Boris Pasternak’s grave (the author of ‘Dr. Shivago’ for which he got the Nobel Prize for Literature) in a small town in the vicinity of Moscow which was strictly off limits for foreigners in those days. I decided to be a deaf mute for a while, my friend did the talking and bought the tickets. He could speak Russian much better than I, at least as well as the hundreds of non-Russian peoples in the Soviet Union. We were poor and badly dressed then and disappeared inconspicuously in the crowd. All went well and we had a great day out.

I WAS a deaf mute and inconspicuous when travelling in Denmark, but in a completely different situation. I travelled with a Danish friend, small and dark-haired, who’s taken for a local when in Italy, whereas I can pass for a Danish woman. So the conductors and fellow travellers used to address me which I didn’t even notice because I don’t understand Danish. Very amusing!

When I tell you that I travelled by train in Egypt as well, you might expect something adventurous, but it wasn’t, the first class train ride from Cairo to Assuan was part of a group trip, all went smoothly. The only interesting thing were the locomotives and trains we saw in the main station of Cairo, they were all ‘Made in Germany‘. They were quite new, we saw the dates of production, but looked as if they came straight out of a museum. The sand-dust from the nearby desert had rubbed off the gleaming polish of all the metal parts like sandpaper. The way of travelling - passengers sitting in the open windows, one leg in, one out, and standing on the steps on the outside of the doors clinging to the handles - was also different from what we know and do in this country!

When it comes to travelling by train in Italy, I don’t know where to begin and where to end,
hardly a trip without something to talk about! Delays are all part and parcel for the Italians (I looked up that expression, in German we would say: ‘It’s their daily bread’). What can cause a delay in Italy? Well, Italy is so long! A minute more in this station, two minutes more in that, they all add up and when the train coming from Sicily arrives in Rome or coming from there, at the Austrian border, it simply can’t be on time any more. Then the strikes! The two main railway lines run along the eastern and the western coast, it’s very easy to cause chaos in the whole country, one small independent union of locomotive drivers can do that by just blocking traffic in one of the cities on these arteries.

Once I came from Florence and was forced to wait in Bologna for seven hours sitting in the waiting room of the station where in 1980 85 people were killed and 300 injured in a fascist bomb attack. That was a weird feeling; when finally a train came at 2 a.m., I had stared at the memorial for such a long time that I nearly knew the names of all the casualties by heart.

But I also think of my Italian fellow travellers. After being together with Southern Italians for some hours, they know more about me than my colleagues with whom I’ve worked for 20 years. How come? They ask! They ask why I’m travelling in Italy, why I can speak Italian, what my marital status is, what I think about the political situation in Italy and in Germany, what I do for a living, how much I earn - an absolute no-no question in Germany! (Don’t know why, I’m a civil servant, anyone who’d like to know about my salary could find out anyway)

Once I read a funny short story about travelling in Italy: a single, young, good-looking Italian happened to be in a compartment together with an Italian family with a still unmarried daughter. When they finally arrived in Sicily he was nearly engaged to her and could only sav
e his skin by jumping out of the train as quickly as possible and disappearing in the crowd. - Something comparable hasn’t happened to me, but I’ve definitely done a lot for my conversational skills on Italian trains!

How do I pass my time in German trains? The Germans are related to the Brits when it comes to communicating with strangers. Germaine Greer: “Even crushed against his brother in the Tube the average Englishman pretends desperately that he is alone.” Exceptions prove the rule, but lively conversations with German fellow travellers are indeed so rare that I remember the few I’ve had even years later.

I know what the German landscapes look like from North to South and East to West, so I don’t have to press my nose against the window and look out. I eat. I belong to the tribe of eaters-on-trains who begin eating at once, no matter if the train’s already moving or still standing in the station. Everything tastes better on a train! Is there anyone out there who can understand me?

I watch people and think "God’s kingdom has indeed many inhabitants, how on earth can anyone look voluntarily like that?" Or: "What would my life be like if I were so good-looking?" I listen to other people’s conversation pretending not to, I try to find out which foreign language my neighbours speak if I can’t understand it, oh, there’re many ways to while away the time.

Or I read, nothing serious, I’d never study on a train (I had enough of that as a schoolgirl), but nothing too silly, either, not a book I would leave behind me on the seat when getting out.

With a little bit of thinking you can create a situation for yourself which is just perfect, (like reading ‘Death in Venice’ in Venice). You have a wide choice and reading matter for hours on end, I’m sure my selection can last you at least up to the border of Mongolia on t
he Transsib.

Patricia Highsmith, Strangers on a Train
Agatha Christie, Murder on the Orient Express
Paul Theroux, The Old Patagonian Express
Paul Theroux, The Great Railway Bazaar
Paul Theroux, Riding the Iron Rooster
Michael Crichton, The Great Train Robbery
Andrew Matthews, The Great Gold Train Robbery

And don’t forget to put the old jazz piece ‘Take The A Train’ in your portable CD-player!

I see you yawning. You’re tired? - That could be a clever transition to the subject of sleeping and couchette cars, but no, not today, let’s stop now.

Do I have to state explicitly that I love travelling by train, no matter what, come hell or high water, or has it come across? I’d like to express my deep-felt sympathy with you poor creatures who live on islands with a tiny railway system where you can’t even travel for a whole day in one direction without falling into the sea (London - Edinburgh, 3. 50 hours in a tilt train, dear me!) or none at all, my heart goes out to you.

See you on the continent!


P.S.
rattle (Thesaurus) :

(motion): move quickly, speed (train)
(loquacity): blabber, rant

Summary: I love travelling by train.