I’m not sure what I expected on the overnight train When I boarded at 12:56am (or 00:56 which sounds like a time that doesn’t exist), the conductor showed me to my bunk and asked if I would like coffee or tea in the morning. Do you mean that you will wake me up? Yes, she replied. How exciting to have a wake-up beverage before my 7am arrival. Plus, my anxiety over not waking up was relieved.
However I did not anticipate the knock on the door at 5:50 to hand me my ticket. Did I miss a time zone between Innsbruck and Graz. I looked at my watch, then my cellphone, then my watch again. No, I hadn’t. Back to sleep. Fifteen minutes later came the tea. Somehow I expected to be awakened at 6:45 with tea an a fond farewell. Guess they thought I was beautiful enough without my beauty rest.
What you see in the dawn’s early light when you don’t want to make eye contact with your cabin mates
The four of us spent the last 40 minutes staring into space, or out the window, trying to ignore the obvious–that we were face to face like in Level 42’s “Something About You” video biding our time silently till Graz.
Written 6/28/2014