Train to Cologne

This entry comes as I sit in a hi-speed “Ice” train currently docked in Amsterdam Centraal. Am anticipating the speed part especially! We‘re on our way to Germany (finally!). Cologne, to be exact. It’s only a two-hour trip and we thought we’d start small.

I’ve just had a bilingual conversation with a French passenger. He’s a cellist and the entire car seems to be filled with the orchestra he performs with . I cannot tell whether he is being tremendously forbearing with me and my attempts at conversation, and (admittedly odd) questions or whether he genuinely enjoyed the conversation. It is difficult to read people from other cultures; difficult to read anyone, really…but I find that countrymen share and pick up similar facial expressions revealing thoughts and feelings…the way a new baby starts to make the same faces a parents does…I read Canadian faces! Am not a multilingual reader of physiognomy…yet!

I seem to meet mostly artist in my train travels. Met a young energetic poet on a previous trip back Brussels. We had an animated conversation about the poetic process, comparing notes on how our best works seems to come out as an almost completed whole in one mad rush of inspiration. Only a bit of tinkering required after the fact. I shall try to pull out his blog link and some of his poetry in a future post.

The train is beginning is departure now out of Central. NO impressive hi-speed as of yet.

Begin to see real forests. Shorter trees at first, with bare ground in between, widely spaced tress – but forests nonetheless. I am surprised at tears springing suddenly. How I’ve missed the woods. It is a sunny day and the light plays in generous swathes between the trees., on the warm brown bare ground.

As we reach Arnhem, the last stop before Germany, the trees are taller, the forests we pass through are thick with underbrush, still lush, but with higher ceiling. Patches of sunlight trip down the long branches and over the layers of greens: different leaves, different trees, folded each on each.

Arnhem is very pretty from the window – the windows and doors seem to me very German.

We have just been ousted from our seats. Apparently folks can reserve seats and if you happened to be of the plebian majority who did not, the former can kick you out. Thus displaced, we have wandered our way to the front of the train—amid the chaos of people with luggage standing next to their reserved seats as the former occupants wrestle their luggage together and move onward. We passed a good number of displaced young people who have simply plopped themselves down in the common spaces near the WCs. We persevere however, and find a haven for reservation-seat -system refugees at the front car – where many seats lay open. We can only hope we wont be ousted again before we hit Cologne. Oh, and we left our luggage four cars back above our sometime seats. Note: must remember to get these…

A final note about the speed of the train. It is fast, yes. But it is reasonably smooth and affords no plane takeoff thrill, in fact it affords nothing so much as a mild headache. Ah well.