A Trip

I took a trip to Berlin on Friday to see my ersatz daughter (my ex-girlfriend´s daughter) perform at her acting school that she has been attending for the last year. At any rate I took the train not wanting to drive 4 hours and try to park somewhere in Berlin. They do have alternate side of the street parking and fines,towing whatever if you are in the wrong spot at the wrong time. Train travel is my favorite mode of journeying allowing me to catch up on reading. This is pastime I seldom do other than peruse online news and there must be a psychological reason for this that I haven`t quite figured out. I can read a book for hours as long as I am in a line or some similar place such as the doctor's waiting room. I have to be forced to while away my time and then voila, the urge is there.

German trains are clean, efficient, and mostly pleasant to travel on when not overcrowded such as before a holiday. The express trains are called ICE`s (Acronym and pronounced in German "EEE TSAY AY" or I-C-E as in English. They can be more crowded than the regional trains as they travel the main busy corridors. I prefer the slower trains as they seem to have more room although not as "cutting edge space technology designed" to coin a description more in German than in English thinking. I am referring to my trying to say something in English sentence while thinking in German and not knowing what the hell I am saying. The Germans love to put words together making it fun to try and separate them to figure out what the meaning is. Mark Twain wrote an essay along those lines. I try to get onto the dining car in the ICE as it guarantees a comfortable spot along with a cup of coffee that I can nurse along for at least two hours with a refill and it is particularly useful if the train is jam-packed. The problem that I had on Friday was the design of this dining car that was similar to Burger King in that they don´t want you to stay and this car had almost no tables. It was standing room only at small tables minimizing comfort making you want to drink and go. I toughed it out for an hour and a half still having a half cup of coffee. The lucky few that found booths to sit at stayed there so there was no chance for me.

The regional train from Hof to Leipzig was fairly empty until about a half hour before arriving there and it filled up with students going home for the weekend. A group of deaf youths sat near me and began to have animated hand and gesture conversations. It can be surprisingly quite easy sometimes almost to understand.

I arrived at the East Railway Station in Berlin and using the S-Bahn proceeded to the Underground located at Warsaw square coming neatly into Görlitzer Rail Station, my final destination. There was a street or subway singer on board with a voice that seemed to be amplified singing an original song with guitar accompaniment. She was not amplified but had an unusually focused voice which I found out after talking with her and she made her living working the subways five hours a day. She got out at my stop and we continued our conversation along with a coffee at a nearby cafe. She was also a composer, lyricist, and poet who had done among other things original accompaniments with synthesizer for various performances of art, music and video. I just made it in time to the performance.