Train musings

I’d never really though of it this way, but riding a train is kind of like riding a giant metal worm. [As an aside, note to self: do NOT, under any circumstances, do a google image search containing the word 'worm' in order to illustrate a post]. It’s like you’ve been swallowed by the thing from Tremors, and it gulps you whole, luggage and all, before descending beneath the earth to arise somewhere else. Perhaps the bastard lovechild of Tremors and a tin can. And of course, Sunday nights is when the entire male youth population of Switzerland, decked out in their little pressed uniforms and their little machine guns, seem to be on the road from somewhere to somewhere else. Thankfully, the ones in uniform with guns are generally not the ones in uniform with beer. Still, where I have my crutches clasped between my knees, the youngling across from me has some kind of weapon pressed between his, and despite our beloved second amendment, I have to say I find it unnerving that someone who wouldn’t be allowed in a bar in the US (but would be granted a driver’s license) is allowed a weapon in Switzerland.

You have to hand it to them Swiss. Their country sure is a be-yoo-tiful place, gosh darnit. They have mountains and rivers and lakes and villages, and occasional castles, and things are actually green most of the time. Even well into the winter. The train rides are picturesque, taking you through rustic hamlets and old mining towns, interspersed with modern or antique cities of mini- to moderate size, and everything is clean. Squeeeeeeky, freakishly clean. I feel like if you sent the Smurfs, (otherwise known as the blue-suited street-sweeper corps of Geneva) to some random African country, with an equal amount of effort they would build an entire interstate highway system inside of a week. They could at least stop off in Cairo for a week or so; I’m sure they’d have the place looking spiffy in no time.



Cruising in from Germany towards the Swiss border, I was kidnapped by a corpulent woman with an incomprehensible accent and a small man and suitcase in tow. She had offered me the option of riding along on their group ticket, and while I saved €1,70 (actually, €3,70 if you count the money we forgot to pay for the tram) on the trip, I and the slightly confused looking youngish guy the lady also managed to snag paid for more than half the ticket. In any case, she swept me, the other guy, and my crutches up and deposited us in a corner of the train, where we proceeded to make small talk most of the way to Switzerland. I think her first question to me was if I could read. Or if I did read. She asked me things like, “do you read burks?” which turned out to mean “do you read books?” I ended up faking the title and author of a historical novel I pretended recently to have read (because I felt that edifying her on the subject of refugee security in Africa might be more than she had bargained for). We made small talk. It was difficult.

Many people assume I am German. These people were no exception. And like many Germans, I dare to say, who speak (only) standard, normal German, I hold a vague resentment towards speakers of dialect, as if they are deliberately trying to frustrate me by reducing my comprehension to approximately 30% of what they say. I, of course, am always the wronged party, and I draw my indignation by resorting to the usual argument of “I am a foreigner,” which is true but irrelevant in this situation, as I feel my comprehension is not much behind that of your average not-from-a-small-town-in-southern-Germany-German, and the latter group can’t draw their indignation from a sense of people making it hard because you’re not from around here. My traveling companions, the hefty lady From A Small Town in Southern Germany (which evokes mild terror among speakers of High German) spoke with a nearly unintelligible accent. It was like trying to speak Cockney with an American. She repeated a lot of her questions, and eventually we resorted to talking about the weather. Her husband / shadow was a slight man with a broad smile, tobacco-stained teeth and a worse accent, which was explained by the fact that he was actually Sicilian, so he spoke Small Town German With A Foreign Accent. Despite the fact that I understood nothing of what he said he seemed quite nice. Our last companion, the fellow snagged at the last minute, was a businessman of some kind who spoke normal German but was also From and Lived In A Small Town In Southern Germany. As soon as he fell into conversation with the lady I could see my comprehension sinking faster than a concrete-laden mafia victim (no inspiration from the Sicilian, for sure) as he delved into a detailed explanation of why he dislikes his father-in-law and therefore refuses to name his impending child after him. We made an unlikely collection of lost souls, for sure. I feigned sleep and hoped for the best.

Because of a recent operation I’ve been traveling with crutches. I have an awesome, slightly bloodstained and slightly grody bandage on my left foot, now held together with some kind of red hockey tape and a lot of good will, and I feel I require this visual sign of my grave disability to justify my crutches, my unique style of locomotion, and the fact that my foot and I take up two to three chairs at every opportunity. Now I can get around without the sticks, using them mostly just for stability’s sake and to chastise errant friends, but in the beginning it was a tiring mixture of limp-walking, hobbling, and full-on ground-eating crutching, which left me exhausted after about 20 meters and made me look absolutely ridiculous. Still, people make way for me on the tram, give me seats on the train and generally go about being nice to me or giving me pitying looks. Being “handicapped” has led to me being tenderly cared for all weekend and exempted from dish duty, which has been quite a bonus, and has led me to adopt a style of eating commensurate to the fact that one of my legs sticks out to the side of the table and is propped on the chair, meaning I can’t get closer than about a foot (30 cm) to my food in many cases. Besides the dish-duty-free-ness and the vaguely satisfying visible display of a long-standing problem (why does no one believe I have torn ligaments? It’s not like I run or wear ridiculous high-heeled shoes all the time or anything), the experience has given me a greater respect for people who can’t simply pop downstairs (four flights) to grab the washing because of a dependency on crutches or a wheelchair or simply funny legs or joints. The experience has also given me a surprisingly peaceful and even freeing sense of resignation I recognize from countries where nothing works or runs on time: you get there when you get there, and not before, and that’s okay. The world doesn’t wait for you to crutch your way there, but it’s actually not that bad if it turns a little bit without you.

December hath come and (almost) gone...

I’m sitting on a train somewhere between Lausanne and Bern. Somewhere around here the announcements will be in German first, then French, instead of the other way around, but train is train is train. Muddy snow and the occasional light display are the only indications it’s working towards Christmas. Tiny country, many languages, strange politics: welcome to Europe. “What are you getting your family for Christmas?” “Chocolate.” Welcome to Switzerland.

Everyone pretty much went or is going home, a mass exodus of foreign students because no one is actually ever from here. The cité universitaire (the dorms) are haunted only by the forlorn echo of a door closing somewhere above or below you, and the hush of a big building with few people. Most anyone who’s left is doing laundry, and tinny Christmas music blares from the foyer. I wonder how much the receptionists hate it.



For my part, and I likely speak for my colleagues, not having anything to do is an unaccustomed and perhaps somewhat uncomfortable feeling—life is no longer predetermined, and there is no polycopié inducing guilt from the bookshelf. You can tell how the semester is going by the collective note of panic in everyone’s facebook statuses, reflecting long hours at the library, too many papers, a triumphal word count update or occasionally the expression of pure misery. The general burst of euphoria following the end of semester gave way to a general perplexity and a communal “…now what?” I don’t know either.

And I’m homeless again. In the hope of finding someone to take my room while I’m gone I packed everything I owned, distributed it among various friends who were maintaining their rooms, and cleared the premises. For the next two months I will live out of a backpack that is already too full without having much in it. I forget Christmas is next week. I felt like I’ve barely seen the sun for weeks, and my sudden parole has left me unprepared for the holiday spirit. Though I am going to Germany where, in my opinion, Christmas more or less is done properly (replete with Christmas markets, kitsch of all kinds and pre-Christmas Advent and St. Nicholas celebrations), I’m not going to any place I would call “home”, instead shuttling around among couches in a country which once was mine but to which I by all rights no longer belong. But I will be among my adopted my family, by which I mean that community of individuals who have taken such good care of me for all the years I’ve been a vagabond, a packrat, a holiday orphan, or just passing through. These days it seems all I ever do is pass through, and any time I start settling down, the little voice in the back of my mind starts encouraging me to pack my bag and move on.

(time elapses)

In Bern my trip took a turn for the worse. I was supposed to change in Bern to Basel, so, toting various backpacks, laptop bags, plastic bags with extraneous food products including a very large quantity of chocolate, I exited the train at Bern, happily took the escalator up to the main platform….to discover my connection had a 30-minute delay. There was no way I would make my connection (what to do what to do what to do what to do what to do) to the other Basel station (frustratingly, there are two train stations in Basel, the Swiss one and the German one, and you can’t all that easily from one to another). The train of which I had just gotten off would continue on to Olten and Zürich, and I remember having gone through Olten (what to do what to do what to do what to do what to do) on my way to Freiburg once, so…. Hectically I dashed down the platform to the train I had just gotten off, finding no maps no departure no other information, no ticket taker who could have helped me, no no no no no nothing (what to do what to do what to do what to do what to do!!!). Still unsure I went back up to the main platform—still dragging sundry and all baggage, resulting in a noticeable tilt to starboard due to my laptop bag—and found a map showing Olten to be more or less (what to do what to do what to do what to do what to do) between Bern and Freiburg. On a wing and a prayer I decided to risk the train to Olten, with the possibility that there would be no trains to Basel or that I would get to Basel too late to get on to Germany (what to do what to do what to do what to do what to do). Deciding to give it a go, I dash back down the platform where, by some miracle of which I was undeserving, the train I had just gotten off of was still there. I hopped back in, coincidentally in the same compartment, and spent the next twenty minutes desperately trying to connect with someone in Germany who would tell me when and if I would ever make it to my destination.



I was so preoccupied with my possible timetables and would I make my connection in Olten that I almost forgot to get off at Olten, and barely managed to collect my belongings and fight my way against the stream of boarding passengers like a giant malformed red salmon. I hurried three platforms over in the hope of catching a connecting train 3 minutes later, which turned out not to exist, which meant I had then to change seven platforms in the other direction to wait for my next train to Basel (Swiss). Upon boarding the train, upset, flustered and tired and looking forward to the yoghurt I had packed as at least a minor improvement in my evening, I discovered that said yoghurt had responded to Newton’s Third Law, which states that for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. Some action must have compressed its fragile plastic domicile, and in lawful reaction it exploded all over everything. They say yoghurt is good for the skin and I hope they’re right, ‘cause I kinda had to use it as hand cream (no Kleenex at hand).



Basel, of course, was a continuation of my previous disaster, as the S-Bahn over to the other Basel station is at the very very end and somehow half as long as the others, so a very hectic and almost painful odyssey over there made defeat all the more bitter when I discovered I had missed the transfer by about two minutes. Thankfully, in some last-ditch attempt to refute Murphy’s law, there was a (fast) train to Freiburg some minutes later. It is, of course, considerably more expensive than the train I otherwise would have taken, but at that point there was nothing I could do to change that.