From the Munich-Berlin overnight train
On slow travelling, being alone in unfamiliar places, and talking (or not talking) to strangers.
The discomfort zone
It’s possible that it’s the getting somewhere I anticipate the most. That may explain why I tend to make as much of the journey as possible, draw it out more momentously toward its destination, especially after I’ve been in one place for a while. (Well, as long as practical considerations allow, like when it isn’t actually more expensive to take the train than to fly.)
It’s not that I don’t like flying; in fact, a period of absence from airports makes me quite fond of them. Being sucked into one and spat out another—transported with relative immediacy to different sights, sounds, and smells—jolts you into reorienting yourself and recalibrating your perspective, even if initially only in the most literal of ways. Generally, though, I prefer watching landscapes undulate past me on trains, buses, and boats that I can board directly with minimal fuss: no check-ins, no worrying about losing my luggage, no having to separate liquids and electronics for security scans. I figure the extra hours added to the extended journey equal the hours of procedural tedium at airports anyway; and they feel earned, somehow, as if I’ve bought myself more time in a day to read and write and just think. And in these times, going the long way round at least eases the guilt of travel a little.
So, I made my way from Munich to Berlin on an overnight train ride—the ten-hour meander, not the four-hour express. It was the cheapest leg available, since I was buying tickets at the last minute; and I thought I might as well save on a night’s accommodation. That morning, after checking out of a hotel in Munich, I left my backpack in a locker at the central station, took the 10 a.m. train to the alpine town of Berchtesgaden near the Austrian border—to get to the Eagles’s Nest, a mountain retreat once used by Nazi party members—and returned to Munich the same way, arriving at 9:15 p.m. I took a hurried shower at the station—look out for Mr. Clean!—then caught the 9:51 p.m. train out, arriving in Berlin just before 8 a.m. the next day, and waited two hours at a cafe before I could check into the Airbnb my friend, who was flying in from London to meet me, had booked for us.
I find it weirdly satisfying to put myself through the paces when I travel. The demands of being on the move invigorate me. There’s something about the straining my body that makes it feel used and useful—a welcome reminder, perhaps, that I’m in control of it, that I can make it do what I want it to do, and that it can withstand some wear and tear from sustained activity. The tightness in my right shoulder from always carrying my backpack on my right side. The clawed tension in my feet and the swelling in my calves from really using my legs again (I make myself walk as much as possible when I travel, so I pay closer attention to my surroundings). The lack of sleep from trying to squeeze in too many activities in a day while keeping up with other time zones for work outstanding, and trying to accommodate the sleeping cycles of others when I stay in hostels. Even the occasional angry red spots that mar my skin from bug bites of undetermined origin (luckily so far, nothing antihistamines haven’t help)—not letting them bother me too much can feel like a small triumph.
All that contrasts with the practiced ease of my routine at home, which I equate with comfort—the kind that can gradually slide into complacency if I let it. It’s all too easy to take home for granted. There, I don’t always feel the urgency to explore new places as much as I can, because I can put it off until tomorrow, and tomorrow again. And there are things I cease to see because I see it every day. I once wrote: “Home is home. Something tugs at me here, still, even though I’m not quite sure what it is. In a way, maybe it’s the absence of an easy love for it that makes me want to find even more reason to embrace it. It must be because I just haven’t seen enough of my own country, I tell myself. Maybe my perspective has been blunted by familiarity, and I’ve yet to open my eyes to this place fully.” And I try to do that by telling stories about Malaysia. It forces me to keep my eyes open, to try to understand the things I’ve always seen. It unfurls me when I start to coil, too much, into myself.