joaoflux / digital / analog / culture

Despite the fact that I am not a heavy traveller and that when I travel I usually don’t go to exotic places, it seems that most of my posts are about traveling. One would expect that western Europe is one of the places in the world where traveling is most convenient: In most european countries there is a tight net of public transport and due to cheap flights to places where you would often not even expect an airport,it has become quite affordable to operate on a european scale (even for a very stereotypical Berlin based freelancer like myself).

I happen to have a client in Eindhoven, home of Philips and PSV. Instead of staying in Hotel I sometimes prefer to stay with friends in Cologne. It looks pretty near on the map and comparing the local accents of Dutch / German in both places, it sounds pretty near too. You would think that commuting between the cities is no problem. The truth is being in / waiting for trains in Mönchengladbach and Venlo makes you feel like you’re in a Kaurismäki movie or like you’re trying to cross the Austrian / Czech Border somewhere in Waldviertel in 1993 - only without the prostitutes and chinese merchants selling underwear and nuclear fire crackers. The trains also look like they were bought from one of the former socialist countries (maybe Deutsche Bahn got them in return for second hand cars).

Waiting at the station in Venlo I notice that the second hand of the station clock always pauses at the full minute. Concluding that all other seconds must be either shortened or at least one second must be dropped I start counting the seconds. 5 minutes after your train is scheduled you hear a message that it got cancelled all together and that it has been replaced with a bus. In front of the station is a bus labeled “Schulbus” waiting. All of a sudden there is huge crowed and everybody fights to get on the bus. The negotiations take a good 15 minutes. You hear people complaining that the bus always takes more than an hour to the place the you would get to in 20 minutes by train - if there was one. Obviously this happens frequently.

I sit opposite of a guy who mashes a beer can. “Hier kann man die noch kaputt machen - kein Pfand”. He shouts to the driver who just started the engine “Fahr los Jupp!”. The Driver shouts back from beyond the crowd standing in the corridor “Mach ich, Boss”. The Boss offers a beer to a german speaking Dutch girl with a lip piercing in the seat behind his seat. She looks at me showing her amusement. The Boss asks me where I go. I tell him I have to catch a flight at Köln-Bonn Airport. He says that he also took a flight once and asks the guy next to him, if he ever took flight. The guy nods. He asks the girl with the piercing where she was going. “Remmscheid, mein Freund wohnt da.” - “Remmscheid kenn ich, da war ich Knast.” I fight to not show my amusement. Somebody shouts that the air inlet in the ceiling should be opened. The Boss agrees. A woman fails to open it onthe first attempt. “Jo Mutti, drücken” he encourages the woman who is well in her 40s. “bin keine Mutti” - “wie? immer noch nicht?”.

The boss tells us that he goes shopping to the netherlands, because Aldi is much better and cheaper there: “Magarine für 17 ct - wo gibts das noch in Deutschland.” He makes his neighbor help him to get a huge Aldi shopping back up from somewhere between all the squeezed in feet and gets a box out: “Muscheln.” That was supposed to be his dinner and now he’s stuck in this.

In the middle of a monologue about how germany should legalize dope and how things would get better in the country if there were coffee shops spreading in Germany he shouts: “Man, wir sind ja schon in Viersen, da ist ja schon das Teppich Paradies”.

I get off the bus my train has left. There is one one hour later, which turns out to be ten minutes late. In Mönchengladbach I miss another train, because it leaves from a different platform than indicated. The next one, again one hour later, is 5 min late. It is should arrive at the Köln-Bonn airport at 19:49 h. I get there at 19:57, my flight is scheduled for 20:15 h. I take the chance to get some workout and do an orientation run: train station - terminal 2 - terminal 1 - terminal 2. My flight is 45 min late and they let me check in at 20:10 h.