Never take getting on a train for granted! Anything can happen. You can crash, board the wrong train—taking you to an unwanted destination and meeting a stranger—all of which can leave an indelible impression on you!
And encountering a stranger might represent a crucial turning point that dramatically transforms you!
A train journey can turn into a moment of destiny. You won't be the same person who initially got on the train. Things might turn out right, wrong or regrettable. The main thing is to ignore cynics who claim travelling never changes people… It does!
For the film director Wim Wenders grasped this basic axiom of truth [see Wender's road movies, Alice in the Cities {1974} and The Wrong Move {1975} which dramatize chance meetings with strangers]
Russian, Scottish and American folklore acknowledges the possible major changes… and such notions are confirmed by my own personal experience also!
For instance, there are legends of the Moscow Metro where passengers claim to have boarded a train and momentarily gone back in time where they witnessed scenes from the Russian civil war or when Stalin addressed Russians in the metro station Mayakovskaya in 1941. There are also dark legends of passengers seeing a strange ghost who surfaces on the eve of terrible disasters.
Whether those stories are true or just based on rumors, hearsay……..
Or simply pure invention is another matter. What can't be denied is how trains inspire an inexhaustible number of stories and remind us that not all trains go from A to B but can go almost anywhere! So boarding a train might open up all kinds of unexplored options.
If the poet T.S. Eliot suggested 'Old men ought to be explorers' then getting on the next train wouldn't be a bad start.
Meeting some strangers is something I can never forget. Psychologists were on to something when they spoke about 'the stranger effect' on passengers. The notion is that a passenger is more likely to reveal the most intimidate details of his or her life to a stranger than his friends or family because they will most likely never meet this person ever again. It is thus appears much safer and less of a risk to reveal things. Passengers feel it is less risky to confess things to a stranger on a train than say, a priest, friend or family member. So they unburden themselves to a complete stranger.
In this respect I found the German sociologist George Simmel's article 'The Stranger' more than relevant.
Simmel argues that the unusual distance between a stranger and another person gives the former a kind of privileged status in communication. People feel more comfortable talking to a stranger about their problems…
because he can be more objective than a member of a group. So the potential for unusual interactions between passengers on trains is higher than in other scenarios.
Let me recollect some encounters with strangers which certainly changed me. During the late 1970's I was young school boy returning from Edinburgh to Glasgow on a train. I found myself sitting across from a slightly middle aged man who seemed very talkative.
He was hardly dangerous and far from being a bore. He came across as quite passionate, charming and eloquent. He began to speak about the great Jazz musicians he adored. He would talk about concerts and how he had heard certain players perform and even try to mimic them with hands. He would say "Ahh Duke Elligton. He is a genius! How brilliant he could perform as a pianist... Nobody could play like him. "He was shocked to discover I had never heard of him... "You have never heard of him? You ought to listen to him." Since this very encounter I became a fan of Jazz music. Owing to the charisma of this stranger, I was led into another world based on different forms of time and space. I found that Jazz is a world in itself at odds with the conventional world we dwell in. It conveys a childlike sense of freedom you'll find nowhere else.
On another train journey in Scotland I felt that I'd come face to face with death itself. Even after almost fifty years it is sad to retell the story. While on a train trip back from Glasgow I met a young school girl in uniform. She was a very beautiful girl of around 13-14 who but looked quite sad and forlorn. For some reason she told me "Do you know I'm going to die in about 6 months?" I did not know how to react to this open confession. I had never met this girl before.
My first reaction was disbelief and denial. "What? You are going to die in this amount of time." I said loudly. Despite my hysterical reaction, she remained calm but still sad. Her classmate who sat next to her tried to console her by saying, "Well the thing is to try and enjoy what time you have left."
I never saw this girl again. But when the months passed I heard her classmates cycling through the streets of my town shouting how this girl was very close to death. That unnerved me . This chance meeting reminded me of how unfair life was and how death could strike anyone down.
I think such a nice girl deserved much better from life than such a cruel premature death.
Years later on a train from Belfast to Dublin in the early 1980's I recall how an old American tourist was trying to console an Irish woman who had fallen out with her parents and had not seen them for years. The consoling included the advice that everything would go well with the meeting.
And later I recall how a stranger I had befriended in France was bemused by how I managed to get from Paris to London without tickets. I simply boarded a ferry going to England because the official was absorbed in a deep conversation with another passenger and he just ushered me past with a signal to go past. My new acquaintance stared at me in disbelief telling me "You are very lucky."
But while travelling around on trains in Russia I often experienced the oddest meetings with strangers. Once I was on a metro train. A strange man who seemed a little drunk approached me and started to pound my back for some reason. I thought I was being physically attacked by a madman or drunk person. {In some very exceptional situations a passenger might shove or punch me for no reason. I usually hit him back and a scuffle or threatened fight would break out. But 99 % of the passengers on the Moscow metro are calm and don't like to draw attention to themselves or annoy others.}
It turned out that this homeless person meant no harm. He had a nice face and told me "I'm only trying to clean your overcoat. It is very dirty. You have some white chalk or paint on it." I apologized and told him I thought he was attacking me. He suggested we go for a drink but I was on my way to work. I could hardly turn up in front of my students smelling of alcohol.
In another odd meeting a man with a bushy beard and long hair suddenly came up to me and gave me a bear hug. I was a bit startled. It turned out to be a homeless person I had not seen for years. He was the guy who repaired Jim Vail's washing machine and was a handyman who worked at a homeless night-shelter for some time.
As for travelling, I have never enjoyed inter city trains…
It seems like something always goes wrong. Once on the way back from Saint Petersburg I was awoken by a drunk man who staggered and fell on top of me. I asked him "Are you okay?" His eyes were so dazed that he remained mute and made his way back to his own carriage to slump down oblivious to the outside world. I think he was the last passenger to leave the train when it arrived in Moscow the following morning.
But it was the train from Moscow to Tallinn in Estonia where things turned out to be far worse. When going over the border the Russian border guards who checked my passport regarded it as very suspicious. Perhaps they had never ever seen a passport like it. They suspected the passport was a forgery. To test whether it was genuine or not they started to plod it with a knife and even cut part of it up. My passport was utterly damaged. Now it had been rendered even more suspicious.
So every time I went through some kind of passport control I was stopped for a long time, subjected to many questions as to what was the aim of my journey and "Why is your passport in such a bad condition?" I could hardly retort "My passport was damaged by some of your colleagues?" That would only be seen as 'a provocation' and anger them. My passport finally deteriorated to such an extent the Estonian passport control as well as Russian embassy insisted that I get a new passport. They were very polite and helpful on this question.
My wife told me she had a similar kind of experience while crossing over to West Germany in 1989. For 40 minutes the passport officials were scrutinizing her passport. Her passport looked strange because of the way her photo had been hastily glued on. You could even see the glue. It looked as if a child had glued this photo on. She asked the officials "Why have I been kept waiting for so long?" The German officials were reticent, saying, "We don't answer such questions."
I can't say I relish long train trips abroad! But I can well understand why people are drawn to the alluring adventure of setting off into the unknown on a train. Life is all about movement and having the courage to cross all kinds of obstacles and borders. And trains transform people!
Going on trains allows you to break away from the mundane routine of everyday life. After all, anything can happen while meeting a stranger on a train.
Don't say, "Perish the thought!" Rather, embrace adventure!