Apart from that I travel with strange people: Grown women who suck their thumbs while staring out the window, business men reading the latest Spiderman comic and four generations of an Asian family in different states of distress.
I enjoy train hopping a lot and I am glad to have chosen this way of travelling.
11/06/2011
Aberdeen is a little bland after Brighton and it is so far off that I stay there only for 3 hours before heading to York in order to make it to Oxford at some point tonight. Nevertheless, it was good to come here for the great landscape and the journey on the Caledonian Sleeper alone. I’d never have thought I would enjoy looking out of train windows so much.
11/06/2011
11/06/2011
Much of the train route runs along the coast and as we have wet weather today the view is somewhat alien: The sky is hanging low and very white, while the sea lies undisturbed and black beneath it. More than anything else I am observing and absorbing everything I come across.
11/06/2011
Vera says I might be moving too fast. Only I am not. I’m just moving fast enough to not think. ‘cause this is somehow the main aim of this trip: To fight this losing battle alone, to look out the windows and at different cities and never back, because I might get sick; to cover as much ground as possible, so the days can feel like weeks, because I need weeks off. What I am undertaking here is no tourist trip, no sightseeing tour – it is an elaborate distraction, a huge white noise to drown out everything else.
11/06/2011
I have the feeling I should take a closer look at Newcastle. Out of the train it looks like a disturbingly ugly hotchpotch of different architectural styles: really modern, really old, flashy, dirty, loads of glass, red brick buildings, little towers and arches, big H-Blocks, factories that are withering away and overgrown parks – could be a city for me.
11/06/2011
One of the most fascinating things of travelling alone are the states of frustration and near-depression one goes through and how one doesn’t give in. In this very moment I only want to catch the next train to Bangor, fall into my bed and stay there until the world goes away. I don’t though. I convince myself that whatever comes next on the trip is the better alternative and I remain close to the east coast, so the distance to Bangor doesn’t get too small.
It’s not a new phenomenon, I felt like this before, not only on solitary trips. But it’s more intense then, because no one can push you but yourself. So I keep pushing, creating a dark and unwelcoming picture of Bangor in my head. Today is half-time and North Wales will have to wait until I’m done with what I try not to do: processing.
11/06/2011
And then – finally – York! The sunshine is back and the city is just insane. The great limestone Minster, the city walls, the theatre – this is way better than lying in my bed in Bangor. While I am looking at a statue of Constantine a man plays “Don’t cry for me Argentina” on his Zither, people sing along, one couple starts dancing – I don’t know how they do it – being so amazing on a black day like this.
The time I have in York is not really plenty, but I don’t have to rush either and so I take my time to stroll through the Museum Gardens, buy Belgian Waffles on the market and listen to two guitar players for a while. This is so different to Aberdeen with its port and grey brick buildings. Around the ruins in the Museum Gardens grows Lavender and along the river stand willows – all is young and green and more spring-like than anything else. It’s good that I didn’t spontaneously hop off in Newcastle, ‘cause I think it wouldn’t have made me as happy as this. This being blue skies and squirrels and music. That’s what I meant when I talked about my fascination with the downtimes of travelling: You turn ‘round the corner and suddenly you don’t want to go home anymore. You want to walk on. And see more.
11/06/2011
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