frankfurt by train

This story is a contribution to the 10th STSC Symposium, a monthly collaboration from STSC's writers around a set theme. Our topic for this month is Trains.

when we arrive at the train station after pushing our suitcases down cement sidewalks which never seemed as uneven as they do today, the first thought which occurs to me is i could use a cigarette. i watch a woman in her mid-40s light one from across the platform, the flame illuminating her tuft of bright-red hair tucked into a gray parka. her chest puffs up like a pelican’s and then deflates, a billow of smoke floating around the crown of her head. it is drizzling rain in the late afternoon sun and the woman stands before a glorious broad rainbow, hunching her shoulders to shield the cigarette from getting wet. I have not had a smoke since last february at Johanna’s 30th birthday party, at something past 3 in the morning, intoxicated from berliner luft schnapps and nostalgic hits from the 2000s. i do not typically crave cigarettes without the influence of alcohol but it feels good to lust after one now, while waiting to be whisked from one main station to another.

the train arrives precisely seven minutes late as predicted in the deutsche bahn app and we board and look for our assigned seats. i whisper something to Ulrich, highly cognizant that we are in the quiet car. what conversations are allowed in the quiet car? what words must be exchanged now in hushed tones, which cannot wait to be spoken at a normal volume in 2 hours’ time after we arrive in frankfurt?

the train glides so smoothly on its tracks that i wonder for a brief moment if it is actually suspended from above. i see moss, bogs, trees, cars, clouds, grass, electric lines sail past the window in the opposite direction of where we’re going. the last time i rode on a train - last april, on the amtrak cascades route between seattle and vancouver to see my mom for the first time since COVID - there were rows and rows of camping tents bordering the tracks, though i didn’t see anybody inhabiting them.

the wifi is always spotty in the quiet car, on the deutsche bahn just as with amtrak. a pity for those who booked a seat here hoping to get some work done; a wellspring of open-ended time for those who would rather meditate or watch electric lines stream by like flocks of starlings past their window.