Train

The Train
I had taken the train to Bratislava as well, but had been left more or less alone… my only companions were a young woman with a violin case, a perfectly cut image for a musician, down to the cleaned up hippie clothes and sweetly plain face; and then a little while later, a slightly fat woman wearing a skin tight outfit entirely in two different kinds of cheap dark plaid. It had been a pleasant ride, but excepting my second companion, entirely unremarkable.
But on the train back to Roznava, I found myself in two different worlds. I boarded the train with four other exchange students who were all heading to cities in central Slovakia, three women that never failed to launch into a pseudo-intellectual conversation about their latest trip to Auschwitz, or the beauty of the Slovak mountain ranges, and one silent Mexican, whom I had never spoken to. The train was modern and clean. I passed my time blasting music that I’d hoped would drown out the conversation, and occasionally exchanging looks with the Mexican. It was then that I realized the simplest things can bring people together- Fede and I never spoke during the ride, but it was this mutual silence, this quiet but almost tangible disregard for our companions, that made him feel like my accomplice. Eventually we reached Banska Bystrica, and I had to switch cabins, leaving my partner in crime to fend for himself.
But it was in this half of the ride that I found enchantment. Rushing through the train to my new cabin was like entering another decade. The colors faded as the paint chipped and the seat cushions darkened to burgundy. I found myself in a cabin preceding me by 30 years, accented with fake dark wood and thick yellow paint. I sat back in my seat as the train rolled on. Twilight approached, and I leaned my head against the window, watching fields and dimly lit villages pass by. The landscape matched my present surroundings, the spaces in sporadic loveliness filled with old Communist industry, blackening the quiet towns. But then a church steeple would rise among the old houses, adding majesty to the disheveled gardens and low hills, throwing modern America even further on the horizon. And it was then, with my head occasionally jostled against the pane, my eyes adjusting to the artificial light and observing the other silent passenger through his reflection in the window, occasionally dozing and feeling time creep by with the intermittent stops, that I felt, I had made it, it being something I wasn’t totally sure of- a goal I hadn’t been aware of reaching, an independence I had missed obtaining. I was alone. The people in this country would eventually fade from my life, leaving only their imprint and their language, and perhaps a few words of reflection throughout the next years of my life. My contact would disappear, and I would be left with this, just images, that defined a year of my life so unlike all the others. And so it was in this train that I found briefly the purpose of my exchange, this connection with a forgotten country and most of all with myself, wrapped in yellow light and welcomed loneliness. The train slowed into Roznava, and I gathered my things, nodding to my companion, and stepped out into the night.