79
I’ve been thinking about train-travel a lot lately. Maybe because of all the people moving away, the friends who graduated but, because of this strange year, couldn’t get a proper send-off. And also, not being able to get on a train myself. I like train travel. The moments that can happen, in the waiting. My last long train trip, to San Sebastian and back in October 2018. Drinking an Orangina by a dusty, hot street in Nevers across from the train station while waiting for my connection. There is a feeling in waiting, in a strange place, soaking in the warmth of the last summer sun. Being idle, and therefore, letting thoughts fly a little freer. A state of mind difficult to enter into otherwise, never at home.
Or seeing the landscapes transition outside the windows. Thinking about the exogenous processes that made them, the Earth movements and people through the ages. On trains, it is okay to not do anything in particular, it does not make me restless, because I can feel the movement in my body already. The train-ride from Lyon to Barcelona is gorgeous, grazing cows followed by vineyards followed by olive groves and grassy wetlands by the ocean, mountains constantly framing in the landscape. Forests on rolling hills half-covered by evening mist in northern Spain.
And the places I never would have seen if I didn’t have to make so many stops along the way. Many of my favorite botanic gardens: Lyon, Hamburg, Paris. And Barcelona. I would never have made the detour to Barcelona on that conference trip to San Sebastian. Never would have fallen for those concrete and rusted-iron-framed garden beds with all Mediterranean plants. Winding paths make for more interesting journeys. For Christmas, I’m wishing for a not-too-far-off future where getting on a train, for a journey of detours, will be allowed once more.
Photo: Jardí Botànic de Barcelona, Catalonia, Spain, October 2018. Posted on Instagram December 20, 2020.
Katja Malmborg 