The unforgettable passenger

Wherever we go, we carry huge expectations and rejoice when reality comes close, or exceeds them. And as we know the rejoicing doesn’t happen often, and consequently quotes on the lines of ‘reality sucks’ and ‘expectations always hurt’ keep coming up.

Hidden in these dark walls of lofty expectations are the crevices of surprise. We don’t encounter them often. But each time we do, every such crevice can defy whatever we think we know about ourselves, and about life. It’s like Mario stumbling onto a bonus round. The nature of this moment appears differently to everyone, and this is what one of mine looked like.

I was heading from Vienna to Zagreb, a two-train journey. The first one was largely uneventful, as I unwisely spent so much time browsing my laptop that my head was swirling by the end of it. Sure, I could’ve looked out the window or spoken to the fellow passengers, but I guess I wasn’t in the mood. The journey was long, and I wanted to kill time. 

A train in Copenhagen

However I changed my mind about that as I boarded the second train from Graz to Zagreb. Enough of the laptop. Enough of all electronics. That means you too, earphones. Yes Kindle, you have books, and I know you hate being called a gadget. But you are one.

This train, like all those that passed through Slovenia, had compartments divided into six-seater-cabin, like the first class coaches in India. I took my seat in a cabin occupied by only one other passenger.

In my experience, it’s rare to be unencumbered by electronics totally during a long journey, at least in 2015. I just wanted to do a factory reset, and see what happens if I just sit, and be.

The passenger in front of me was a girl. She was sitting in an inexplicably odd position. She was leaning onto her seat in an oblong way, with her back on the seat and legs propped up comfortably on the window-table. Now quite a few Europeans are likely to greet you with a warm and polite hello. This girl was indifferent to my entry into the cabin, and stayed crocodile-still, with her earphones plugged in. I was taken a little aback.

So my mind had something to think about: how do I start a conversation with this girl? Should I just say hi loudly? Do I ask her some question about the train? Not very high quality ideas, as you can see. A lot of times the words seem to come to my lips, then scram back into my head out of hear. ‘It’s a girl. Alcohol not found. Abort. I repeat, mission abort! What were you thinking, your Shyness?’

This went on for about half an hour. I was leaning my head on the sliding door to the cabin, and humming. (Wait, humming? This was new. So this is what I do after a factory reset.) The girl had taken out a small colorful notepad, and had started scribbling in it. Probably writing a smart ass diary, just like her cool posture and clothes, I judged.

My newfound hum was interrupted by a knock on the door by the ticket conductor. With a bit of a smirk, I showed my Eurail Pass to him, as if I were the President of Slovenia.

“You have to enter your journey details on the ticket.”, he said, handing be back my pass and moving on to the next cabin. Just then I noticed that the girl was now sitting properly, had taken off her earphones, and was seconds away from putting them back on. This is your chance, fly you fool! 

“Excuse me, do you have a pen?”

It was like Ethan Hunt timing his dive at the very last second through a rapidly closing door. In a world where I’m Ethan Hunt, finding ice-breakers like this is what my impossible missions would probably be like.

As she replied with the affirmative and extended her hand to give me the pen, she broke into a smile, and time just paused for a second. In that moment, every judgement I passed on her in my head went out the window. The conversation that followed was conclusive proof of this.

Fortunately for me, she spoke English. It turned out, she was a student of music. When I asked her about the notepad, she said it was for marking the number of hours she has to practice each instrument, each day of the week, which included both singing and dancing. I secretly wished the word awesome was reserved for worthwhile mentions, like this one.

I enjoyed telling her about my own passion for instrumental music and background scores of movies, and the fondness for occasional singing. And with no further ado she asked me to sing for her. Every cell of my body just stopped whatever it was doing, and stared.

“Come on, I have to rehearse so much every week. I rarely get to listen anyone perform.”

After a few minutes of my asinine reasons why I couldn’t do it, she excused herself and left the cabin. This gave me some time to consider. It would just be me and her in the cabin, so not too much potential embarrassment. I started thinking of songs with the lyrics and pitch I’m comfortable with. In moments of distress, God comes to the minds of those who believe in Him. Coldplay came to mine.

I was preparing myself for the moment she would come back to the cabin, but time kept on ticking. Her luggage was still inside. I opened the door to glance out the window, and saw her standing in the corridor doing the same thing. I wondered distraught whether my hesitation drove her away. Well if it was, it was time for amends. I did not sky dive or scuba dive, ever. That kind of thrill never appealed to me. But this was the metaphorical sky dive. This was my kind of thrill.

“Hey, I’m ready to sing.”

“Great!”

And so I dove into Fix You, my all-time favorite song. 

“That was really good, sing one more”

It was time for Yellow. She was, unsurprisingly, familiar with both songs.

“Can you sing some Avicii?”, she asked, at which I burst out laughing. Enough thrill for the day.

Later on she showed a video of hers, performing an instrument I’d never seen before with delicate excellence. (It was the Zither, the word from which Guitar was derived, culturally part of Slovenia).

When her stop came in Slovenia, it was with mixed feelings I said goodbye. Sure, it was great talking to her, and I couldn’t be happier about my decision to stay away from my gadgets. But it was just that sinking feeling, that I knew I’d never see her again. It’s not like I was in love, but it was just another reminder of the fact how fleeting everything is. 

Today, I look at this differently. It is an example of how life can amaze us out of nowhere, and how we can play a hand in that. I revel in knowing that no matter what we do, the unknown variable shall always be in the equation. You never know when you're going to sing Coldplay to a Slovenian girl on a train.

EuroStory 3: From Copenhagen to Madrid

After an eventful first week in Copenhagen that included a day out in Malmo, it was time to pack and leave; the rest of Europe was waiting. Having attended a total of one and a half lectures, we figured we had learnt enough for the next three months.

My travel buddy is quite fond of supermarkets, especially before any Eurail journey. She introduced me to all kinds of energy bars, and gave me the idea of picking up a delightfully affordable bottle of wine with bread, cheese and chips. A few hours into the journey, the train stopped and there was an announcement that we all need to empty the train, and go onto the deck. Deck?

Me - Relaxation level 99

As it turns out, the Danish-German border crossing is quite fascinating. The Baltic Sea lies between the two borders, between which a ferry shuttles. The entirety of the train moves onto the ferry, and comes out back on the track when the ferry reaches the other border. And while this happens, the passengers of the train have the fortunate luxury to be on the deck of the ferry. The cherry on top for us was that these 45 minutes coincided with the sunset. It was at this sunset, with a little liquid courage from my wine, that I mustered the guts to talk to another passenger for the first time. My friend was away having a smoke, and there was this girl gazing at the sinking sun alone. To my delight she was interested in books, and narrated bits and pieces about Swedish Fantasy fiction.

We dumped our luggage in Frankfurt and began the herculean task of packing for the next two weeks into the limited space of our backpacks. We were to leave for Spain in Vueling, and had another flight scheduled within Spain with RyanAir, an airline that makes up for its cheap prices by charging a penalty for as much as a sneeze inside the flight. Trust me, a 10 kg limit is far from comfortable, and more so if you’re a guy. Some of the clothes packed by the girls in our group could be folded to a point like a tissue, at which we could only longingly gaze. One of us actually ended up packing a hand towel instead of a normal one, to save space. My own compromise was on the gifts/souvenirs I carried, and I hope others don’t make the same mistake.

Eventually, we all made it through the flight and successfully sidestepped the penalty traps, and we checked into a hostel for the first time in Madrid. There aren’t many moments that stand out from the rest and are firmly imbibed into my memory, for two reasons: One, traveling in a group was not working out for me very well. And two, finding good food was quite a struggle for me, and isn’t good food the cornerstone of a great day? It is for me. Then again, the bright and shining moments of my time in Spain are also credit to my compadres.

Utterly famished, when we walked towards the nearest plaza on our first day in Madrid to fill our stomachs, reality hit me in the face. As my friends comfortably settled into one of the food joints, my vegetarian eyes could only look at the menu, squirm, and walk away. From what I saw, the prominence of meat in Spain is more visible than anywhere else I’ve been too. They all decorate almost every restaurant by hanging a countless carcasses like they’re Christmas lights, and every day is Christmas in Spain. But hey, you gotta eat to live. So after a fruitless exploration of the rest of the plaza, I chose a cozy looking café, and decided to get one of those long-thin bread sandwiches on display, called baguettes, or bocadillos in Spanish. The task turned out to be much harder than I thought, as the barista didn’t speak English.

I always thought that the capital city of a country would be the most metropolitan and hence well versed with English – however this isn’t the case with Madrid, as Barcelona pips it in this regard. Anyway, coming back to the café – I was vehemently shaking my head at every kind of meat she was picking out, and muttering ‘no meat’ ‘no meat’. In the end, a woman from a nearby table took pity on my predicament and offered to translate, and voila – I had a bocadillo with tomatoes and cheese. It wasn’t much, and I couldn’t help thinking – two more weeks of this.

Besides the food, Madrid was beautiful. You can be walking across the narrow twisting and turning roads that are a feature of Spain, and next minute you could be on a highway lined with majestic pristine structures and trees. And the cultural combination of sangria and Flamenco was courtesy of my friends, who made the enquiries and plans around it, and we were all left quite awestruck by the passion and energy radiated by the tap-dancers.

Flamenco!

In contrast to the Danish and German folk, the Spanish are a little less bothered about fitness. My own curvilinear paunch is giving me a ‘really, Kishore?’ look, so I’ll explain. It is not an uncommon sight to see an aged woman running through gales and snow in Europe, generally. They could put an average Indian youth to shame on a trek. So at first glance, these Flamenco dancers would appear a bit heavyset. But when the music starts, it’s poetry in motion.

Football was one of the things I was really excited about before going to Spain. If the mere sight of a football stadium gave me goose bumps in Malmo, you can imagine what I was going through on our way to Santiago Bernabeu, home to Real Madrid football club for a stadium tour. From the breathtaking panorama view of the stadium from the top, through the interactive audio-visual halls to the hallowed dressing room of the one and only Cristiano Ronaldo – it was just magical. You cannot help but feel overwhelmed when you realize; this is where the likes of Ronaldo, Zidane and Cristiano have made history. Easily the best 18 euros ever spent.

And yet, despite all this, I felt I was missing out on something. Not that my company was intolerable, but it was evident that whatever the group (and for that matter - any group) decides as a whole, I’m not going to be happy about it every time. And there is little room for randomness when you’re traveling in a group, because you have to stick together. Sure you could say that nobody needs to stick together 24x7, and I am always free to do what I want – it isn’t quite so. This is largely because, our time in Spain was completely tied up beforehand. We had to take flights in and out of Spain from Frankfurt, because the trains for the same routes are both long and expensive. And even within these two weeks, we had a RyanAir flight to Ibiza and back to the Spanish mainland, and three of us had tickets to watch a football match in Barcelona.

This tight schedule greatly undermined the mystique Europe held in the near future for me, as I don’t plan that long ahead for anything. So why did I agree to this? I was hit by a whirlwind of tasks together while this part was being planned, and I just agreed to whatever everyone else had decided.

However, I did see a window of opportunity. While the others had Seville as their next stop, I decided to go on my own to Granada for a day, a city couple of hours away from Seville.