Train journeys are strange social experiments — quiet, confined hours spent in close proximity to total strangers, where everyone pretends not to be watching everyone else.
But of course, everyone is watching.
It’s the ritual of the observer: staring discreetly at the person opposite, then darting your eyes away the moment they make contact. It’s a subtle dance — as much a part of train travel as the ticket punch or the low rumble of the wheels.
Say what you will about the continent, but at least European trains run on time. They're clean, punctual, and notably free of graffiti like “MUFC 4EVA” or “Shaz 4 Darren” scratched into the toilet mirror. The air doesn’t reek of stale lager, and there's no sticky floor beneath your boots.
And the fares? Mercifully cheaper than back home.
Leaving Frankfurt, I settled in for the long haul to Paris — a journey made bearable by what I like to think of as seat-side theatre. You don’t need a book when the carriage offers an entire cast of characters.
The People-Watching Game
Across from me sat a middle-aged German woman, travelling with a small group who spoke in that soft-yet-stern tone peculiar to those born under heavy Teutonic skies. What fascinated me wasn’t what she said — I understood almost none of it — but her face.
Her neck was so broad that it was difficult to tell where her chin stopped and her face began. Even more captivating: at some point in her life, she had taken the time to painstakingly pluck every individual eyebrow hair… and then drawn them back on with all the elegance of a geometry set. Thin, arched, deliberate — like twin commas hovering above blank expression.
🎒 Enter the English
Around 25 people boarded with me in Frankfurt — all of them in hiking boots and ridiculous matching yellow hats, the kind children wear on school trips to make them easier to count.
They shuffled along the corridor, chirping their beige little sentences at each other.
“What time does the train leave, Roger?”“Isn’t this a beautiful station?”
Ah yes, I thought — only the English could look that daft abroad. And sure enough, I picked up the accent as they passed.
Still, they were right about the station. Frankfurt Hauptbahnhof is nothing if not beautiful — all steel, glass, and sweeping arches. A far cry from the grime of Rhyl or the existential despair of Crewe.
Roland’s Germany
Earlier in the day, Roland (my German acquaintance with something of a vendetta against his homeland) had said to me with venom:
“Welcome to Germany. Look at all the nice people in their nice cars. Look how everything has to be in order. Not a thing out of place.”
To him, Germany’s obsession with order was suffocating.
To me, coming from the grey sludge of British public spaces — broken ticket machines, gum-stained pavements, bins overflowing with chip wrappers — it was reassuring.
You begin to notice just how filthy some parts of Britain are only after you leave them.
🎫 The Journey
There’s something therapeutic about a long train ride across Europe. The world rolls past your window like a slow film. Forests become suburbs, suburbs fade into farmland. People board. People leave.
And all the while, you're sitting there — between languages, between countries, between lives — pretending not to stare at the woman with the marker-pen eyebrows while quietly judging people in yellow hats.
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