{"id":6300,"date":"2019-09-22T10:52:34","date_gmt":"2019-09-22T17:52:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.leftyparent.com\/blog\/?p=6300"},"modified":"2023-05-13T10:45:31","modified_gmt":"2023-05-13T17:45:31","slug":"two-inch-heals-part-4-rail-pass","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.leftyparent.com\/blog\/2019\/09\/22\/two-inch-heals-part-4-rail-pass\/","title":{"rendered":"Two Inch Heels Part 7 – Rail Pass"},"content":{"rendered":"
Andermatt Switzerland<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

It was Wednesday October 3 when I awoke in the chilly male bunkroom of the youth hostel in Chur. Ensconced in my toasty down sleeping bag, and not wanting to surrender yesterday by getting up and facing today, my consciousness was still processing the profound events of the past couple days; the tears, the fears, but mostly the joys. By the time I finally exited my cocoon to acknowledge that yes, life goes on, I was the only one left in the bunkroom.<\/span><\/p>\n

I put on my clothes, and debated trying to wear my hiking boots again.\u00a0 But since I was doing so well in my heels, and there didn\u2019t seem to be a sign of rain that might mess them up, I\u2019d wear them again instead.\u00a0 For the third day in a row I decided not to take a cold shower, but at least used a wet slightly soapy washcloth on some key body parts instead.\u00a0 I entered the main room, and as I figured, my erstwhile travel partner Jack, and my more recent comrades, Jared, Bublil, Peter and particularly Ashild, had already departed.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

I ate my stash of Granola and yogurt, the latter having stayed nicely cool in the minimally heated dormitory room, and pondered the state of my heart and soul.\u00a0 I thought of Ashild, who with her calm and caring demeanor, her good energy, had made the effort to really connect with me.\u00a0 She had even asked to, and written thoughtful words in my journal, like she really cared about me and wanted me to remember her.\u00a0 We had shared moments of real intimacy together, her soft warm rear end on my lap in the backseat of Jared\u2019s car, and walking back from the tavern together.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

It struck me that the connection between us had had a spark of sexual energy to it.\u00a0 People talked about \u201csexual tension\u201d, but there was nothing tense about it in our case.\u00a0 We relaxed and dropped our guard around each other.\u00a0 We didn\u2019t want to possess or consume the other, just be our true selves with each other.\u00a0 We got metaphorically naked with each other, if not physically so.\u00a0 I realized that was how I wanted it to work when someday I got sexually intimate with someone.\u00a0 I wanted it to be both letting down your guard and taking down your pants.\u00a0 Not just that rush of shared lust leading to grappling bodies fucking each other before they thought better of it.\u00a0 And thinking about all my female peers over the years, my best relationships with them all had that spark of sexual energy, of naked intimacy to them.\u00a0 I was happy to just have that spark.\u00a0 Some of them figured I must have wanted it to be overtly sexual, and they made the signals they were open to that, and I would freak out and back off and they would be confused and even hurt.\u00a0 But even the ones that were not available or not really interested in having a sexual relationship, still I would have that spark with them.<\/span><\/p>\n

The hostel around me seemed transformed by my comrades absence, no longer feeling like my temporary sanctuary, just a place with a sad memory of a brief happy time that no longer was.\u00a0 It was the same sense of loss I had come to feel after each of the twenty some theater productions I had been involved in over the previous four years.\u00a0 The connections forged during each production, relationships built around a particular collaborative contribution to that undertaking, would never be quite the same after.\u00a0 In this case, I would most likely never see these people again.\u00a0 There was no savoring a moment passed.\u00a0 I felt compelled to leave, to move forward in search of another opportunity to encounter and connect with others, in the course of this odyssey that I must allow to run its course, exhaust its budget, before I could proudly go home, the triumphant traveler.<\/span><\/p>\n

I returned to the bunkroom where my red, metal-framed Kelty backpack, my one enduring comrade through all my experience to date, sat propped up at the end of my now former sleeping place.\u00a0 I sorted and stuffed the various components of my kit into their spaces within the sections and subdivisions of the nylon bag.\u00a0 My two changes of clothing, toiletries, first aid kit, food, metal combo knife\/spoon\/fork\/bottle & can opener, water bottles, maps and youth hostel guide, rolled up and yet to be used tube tent, poncho, knit cap, sunglasses, journal notebooks, and other stuff.\u00a0 Since I\u2019d decided to wear my heels, I\u2019d have to hang my hiking boots on the back of my pack.\u00a0 With my sleeping bag bungeed to the aluminum frame below, it all added up to just over fifty pounds (about 23 kilos if I was thinking like a European).\u00a0 In my jeans pocket went my \u201cpetty cash\u201d bills and coins, my small compass and my latest Swiss Army knife (having lost one already).\u00a0 The bulk of my money in American Express travelers checks and my crucial documents – passport, rail pass, international student ID card, driver\u2019s license, youth hostel card, list of phone numbers and addresses – fit into the thin nylon money belt that I wore around my waist day and night, only taking it off to take the occasional shower, so for me not for three days since I left Munich.<\/span><\/p>\n

I thanked the hostel staff for their hospitality, asked for directions out to the main highway, shouldered my heavy pack with my big black boots dangling, and headed out the door and down the now familiar one-way road, where I had weathered my encounter with the police, pondered the abyss of incarceration or worse, and gotten my comrades safely home that previous night, only to say goodbye to them.\u00a0 A Beatles’ song, as they often did, fired up on my mind\u2019s jukebox, from that amazing sequence of strung together songs and song fragments from their <\/span>Abbey Road<\/span><\/i> album.\u00a0 In this case the sequence of <\/span>\u201cGolden Slumbers\/Carry that Weight\/The End\u201d<\/span>, with bits of the evocative lyrics triggered by my situation…<\/span><\/p>\n

Once there was a way to get back homeward
\nOnce there was a way to get back home
\nSleep pretty darling do not cry
\nand I will sing a lullaby<\/p>\n

Boy, you’re going to carry that weight
\nCarry that weight a long time<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Concluding with wisdom that haunted me…<\/p>\n

And in the end,
\nthe love you take,
\nis equal to the love you make<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

At least I was carrying the non-metaphorical component of that weight downhill at the moment! Maybe three miles total down and through cozy little Chur for one last time and out to the main route south.\u00a0 On the way I found a store and bought a pair of leather fleece lined gloves, an important logistical milestone.\u00a0 Hitchhiking\u2026 let\u2019s do this!<\/span><\/p>\n

I waited a long time by the highway outside of town on a chilly but sunny morning.\u00a0 I was grateful for the sun, particularly on this day that I planned to be hitchhiking and so I did not want it to rain.\u00a0 The traffic was light, and the cars and trucks that zipped by seemed unfazed by my protruding, thankfully gloved, thumb.\u00a0 I was truly on my own again, about to \u201chitchhike across the Alps\u201d, as I had written in my latest postcard to my mom.\u00a0 Having consulted my now familiar Western Europe map, it was about ten kilometers down this highway from Chur to the south along the Rhine river and then west across the middle of Switzerland through its iconic mountains, to Geneva.\u00a0 There I figured I could best catch a train back to Munich to try again to hook up with Angelica and Helmut.\u00a0 My goal for the day was to make it to Geneva, but failing that, at least to Andermatt, a small town just big enough to appear on my map, about halfway between Chur and Geneva.<\/span><\/p>\n

Since I had started hitchhiking the previous fall, the 100 miles back from college in Kalamazoo Michigan to my hometown in Ann Arbor, all the rides I had gotten were from male types, usually from my age cohort.\u00a0 This day was the first time that it was a woman who finally pulled over and offered me a ride.\u00a0 She was dressed casually and probably in her forties.\u00a0 She spoke some English and after a brief quiet moment as she started down the road again she began to interrogate me with questions in a friendly sort of way.\u00a0 Feeling alone, though not unhappily so at the moment, I really opened up and spilled out my Europe trip story and eventually highlights of my whole life\u2019s story.\u00a0 She listened attentively, nodding at all the right places while she kept her eyes on the road, and then began to respond by sharing some of her own story.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Her name was Genevieve, and she wove her narrative of being married and a mom with four kids all younger than I was.\u00a0 Her husband was an executive for a big European company and currently out of the country on one of his frequent long business trips.\u00a0 She definitely was part of that cohort of my aunt Pat\u2019s generation, the cohort of my mentors, which included the head of my YTU theater group Robert and such key voices of my \u201cGreek Chorus\u201d as Paul Simon and John Lennon.\u00a0 They all spoke to me with what I felt was great insight and wisdom.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

There is something about being alone, especially when you\u2019re a traveler in a foreign place, and encountering someone else who is also alone, at least for your encounter.\u00a0 If there is a basic trust established and some indication of shared values or worldview, a fairly deep connection can be made fairly quickly.\u00a0 If I had been traveling with Angie or Jack, or she had been in the car with her husband or kids, neither of us might have been as forthcoming.\u00a0 It somehow would not have been appropriate to share so deeply with a stranger in front of one\u2019s regular companions, like you were being unfaithful to them somehow.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

It again struck me, it was that little sexual spark at play.\u00a0 She was married, double my age, but we could still have that little bit of spark between us.\u00a0 She was one of those people that enjoyed dropping her guard if the person she was with, even a stranger like me, made all the right signals that they respected who she was, would not judge or take advantage of her, and was truly interested to hear her story.\u00a0 As long as no one explicitly acknowledged that spark, and it was thoughtfully modulated by both of us, then we could get metaphorically naked and conversationally pleasure ourselves in front of and by means of the other.\u00a0 She would reveal something, I would make a knowing remark acknowledging and appreciating a bit of her metaphorical nakedness, thus a moment of shared intimacy.\u00a0 Then I would reveal something of myself and let her enjoy and comment, and then I would enjoy her comment but not let the feedback loop get cycling too hot.\u00a0 In and out we\u2019d go.\u00a0 No consummation, no final \u201corgasm\u201d, just stimulating \u201cforeplay\u201d.<\/span><\/p>\n

She dropped her guard, disrobed her psyche a bit, and said she missed her husband when he was away so much.\u00a0 I nodded and thought for a moment, properly acknowledging and respecting her revelation.\u00a0 Only then I would respond, letting down my own guard, getting a bit metaphorically naked, saying that I missed my travel partner Angie.\u00a0 She would sigh, then a bit boldly inquire if Angie had been my girlfriend.\u00a0 I would sigh and reveal that she was just a friend, but I had hoped that maybe something would come of our travels together.\u00a0 She would make a sad face and nod.\u00a0 It was all verbal and nonverbal cues, it respected boundaries, but it was intimate and had that delicious little spark dancing between us.\u00a0 Then one of us would break the spell before it got too strong by commenting on say something we saw out the window.\u00a0 In and out.<\/span><\/p>\n

Genevieve said she lived close by, and as the hour was now close to noon, she asked if I would like to join her and her kids for lunch at her house.\u00a0 I was so touched by her offer, her sharing of her life, her house and her table with a traveler, and though it might limit my ability to get across the mountains that day, I felt compelled to accept.\u00a0 She drove me to her beautiful house in the little village of Reichenau, up on a hill overlooking the coming together of two headwaters of the Rhine river, after which it continued north, spreading into the Bodensee then west forming the border between Switzerland, Germany and France.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

While she worked on getting food ready in the kitchen, I sat at their dining room table with her four kids, a teenage daughter and her three younger brothers.\u00a0 The daughter and her oldest brother, who had both learned a fair amount of English, engaged me in conversation, curious like their mom about what brought me to travel through Europe and what it was like where I lived in the States.\u00a0 Her younger brothers listened and did their best to cobble together a question or two in my language as well, like how heavy my backpack was.\u00a0 I tried to answer all their questions enthusiastically with simple words that they might understand.\u00a0 The lasagna Genevieve served was delicious, and I ate it feeling like an honorary, if temporary, member of the family.<\/span><\/p>\n

After eating and continued conversation, she offered and took me farther down the road west to the nearby town of Llanz, where she felt I would have better luck catching a ride west across the mountains.\u00a0 In just a short span of several hours I had bonded with her and her kids so much that I was already feeling that sense of loss again.\u00a0 But I was beginning to feel a certain level of growing confidence that the universe would somehow provide for me.\u00a0 I just needed to put out my thumb and be patient.<\/span><\/p>\n

It was a long wait until a young Swiss guy pulled over and offered me a ride a few more kilometers up the road to the next little town.\u00a0 Not much of a lift, and possibly problematic if I got stuck somewhere when it got dark without accessible inexpensive lodging.\u00a0 But the hitchhiker\u2019s etiquette is not to refuse a ride, any ride, so I accepted with as much gratefulness as I could muster.\u00a0 After he dropped me off, another long wait there, and I was beginning to worry about losing my light before getting somewhere I could find a place to stay.\u00a0 But I was finally picked up by a middle-aged American woman and her young adult daughter driving to Andermatt, about 60 kilometers down the road.\u00a0 I did not have a watch, but given that it was late afternoon, and the sun went down earlier behind the mountains, I quickly decided and announced to them that that was my destination for the day as well.\u00a0 They shared with me that the daughter had been living in Berlin and her mom had flown over from Seattle to join her and now travel around together.<\/span><\/p>\n

As we approached Andermatt from the east, the two-lane highway became a series of switchbacks winding up into a high mountain pass with the little town in the valley on the other side.\u00a0 It was a ski resort town with a population of maybe 1500 but also 1000 beds for guests in little hotels, zimmers and pensions, with this being the off season.\u00a0 I noted it actually had a train station, and since my rail pass was good starting the next morning, I figured I might not need to spend another day hitchhiking.<\/span><\/p>\n

The three of us easily found a reasonably priced \u201czimmer\u201d, a German word for room or chamber and generally a private house with bedrooms to rent for the night, the two of them in one and I in my own.\u00a0 We decided to share an impromptu dinner together with the cold meat they were carrying plus a loaf of bread I bought at a small bakery in town.\u00a0 We sat in our host\u2019s main room, talking about our lives and our travels late into the evening, again the universe providing me with an opportunity for conversation and camaraderie which I seized for all it was worth.\u00a0 It was after midnight before we said goodnight and retired to our rooms.<\/span><\/p>\n

Mine was a cozy little bedroom with a view of the mountains between the adjacent buildings.\u00a0 The bed had what looked like a huge floppy feather pillow that covered the whole bed, and was in fact a thick comforter used to cover you and keep you warm.\u00a0 It was a cold night and I was happy to snuggle myself under it, and rather than being consumed by loneliness, I felt instead the bounty of the universe that I had sensed earlier.<\/span><\/p>\n

In the morning I said goodbye to mom and daughter, wished them well on their journeys, and very theatrically hoisted my heavy backpack on my back, again playing the self-sufficient and unflappable world traveler, for their consumption at least.\u00a0 If I could not yet truly be that person I wanted to be, at least I could pretend for others who I left behind and would have no further opportunity to divine the real truth.\u00a0 One final too casual wave of the hand and I set off for the train station just across town.\u00a0 I was eager actually, to try out my rail pass and find my way back to Munich to hopefully now hook up with Angelica and Helmut.\u00a0 Having learned by now not to buy the pricey food in train stations, I bought my new favorite breakfast of yogurt and granola in a little grocery store and ate it in the cute little pocket station waiting for the train.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

I quickly learned how totally cool my rail pass was.\u00a0 I did not have to wait in any ticket lines or get a ticket at all, but could simply board any train, and show my pass to the conductor when he came by asking for tickets.\u00a0 As long as I wasn\u2019t sitting in a first class compartment I was good to go.\u00a0 For the next two months all the trains of Western Europe would be at my unlimited disposal.\u00a0 It felt like I suddenly had this great power bestowed on me to go anywhere I wanted, except home of course.\u00a0 Between hitching and the pass, I figured I could get just about anywhere at no additional cost, ever concerned as I was about my budget!<\/span><\/p>\n

Based on the schedule board at the Andermatt station, the next train due in that morning was headed north to Zurich.\u00a0 From there I figured I would find a train to Munich.\u00a0 Like most of the train rides I took throughout Switzerland it was a picturesque ramble around and occasionally through mountains, across deep gorge spanning bridges, and through high alpine or lower elevation river valleys.\u00a0 Three hours later I stepped off the train in the much bigger Zurich station.<\/span><\/p>\n

Liberated from the ticket lines by my pass, I had also liberated myself from encountering the occasional helpful ticket agent who perhaps spoke enough English to help me navigate the extensive and complicated European rail network.\u00a0 So instead of waiting in often long lines to maybe get (though possibly not) an agent that spoke some English, I did my best to read the train \u201cAbfahrt\u201d (departure) board and consult the rail network map I had brought with me along with a perhaps more detailed rail network map I found posted on the station wall.\u00a0 I loved the way the electro-mechanical board would reset itself every couple minutes, all the character positions in each row spinning and clicking through all the possible numbers and letters like slot machines and finally constructing character by character a new destination, departure or arrival time.\u00a0 Based on the various information displays I consulted, it looked like there was a train leaving shortly headed east to Innsbruck Austria and from their change to Munich.\u00a0 Lacking any additional consultation with perhaps a helpful human, I jauntily found and boarded my train.<\/span><\/p>\n

What I was yet to learn about European trains was the fact that in many of the larger long-haul trains certain cars in the train, most Europeans that spoke English called them \u201ccoaches\u201d, went to a particular city but others did not.\u00a0 In major stations, coaches would at times be detached from train A and attached to train B to get to destination C.\u00a0 You might be on a train going to Innsbruck, but the coach you were on was going to a different destination.\u00a0 An on the ball conductor would make the effort of notifying riders, based on their destination, what coaches they should be on.\u00a0 But me with my rail pass, rather than a ticket with an explicit destination, sometimes the conductors would not ask my destination or I would forget to share it with them.\u00a0 I learned this the hard way some six hours after departing Zurich when the coach I was on did not pull out of a station stop with the rest of the train to Innsbruck.\u00a0 Ironically I ended up back in Chur where I had been two days before.<\/span><\/p>\n

Now into the evening, I found a train leaving in an hour or so north to Lindau just over the border of Germany.\u00a0 From there it looked like there was a direct train to Munich.\u00a0 I exited the station to make my grocery run.\u00a0 It felt weird to be briefly back in Chur where I had just made such memories of connecting with fellow travelers and navigating my traumatic encounter with the local police.\u00a0 But soon I was on my train again, headed north along the Rhine river valley back towards Germany.<\/span><\/p>\n

When I finally debarked from my train in Lindau, a quick look at the \u201cAbfahrt\u201d board told me it was now 8pm and the next train to Munich was not until 9am the next morning!\u00a0 There was no youth hostel in town and I was tired from my long day of riding the rails and the thought of spending the night in the train station did not appeal to me in the least.\u00a0 But what I did notice was there was still the counterpart train coming from Munich to Bern stopping here in Lindau shortly. With my pass, thus ticket cost not a factor, I could ride that train to Bern, and then back through Lindau in the morning and on to Munich.\u00a0 Better to overnight on a moving train than in a dreary train station!\u00a0 I would later learn from some of my fellow travelers with rail passes, that this was a standard trick when all else failed.\u00a0 Using long back and forth train rides as an impromptu overnight lodging of sorts.\u00a0 With luck, finding any empty bench in a compartment with a place to stretch out and sleep if you were lucky enough to find one, or at worst a single seat to close your eyes and maybe semi-sleep sitting up.\u00a0 So after crossing Switzerland\u2019s mountains, through mountain tunnels, across gorge spanning bridges and through its valleys all day, I was going to do it again, twice even, until I would pass back through Lindau tomorrow morning around 9am on my way finally to Munich.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Before my train to Bern departed, I called Angelica and Helmut\u2019s number, and was so gratified to hear Angelica\u2019s voice answer on the other end.\u00a0 Her English was somewhat limited and it was a confused conversation.\u00a0 I managed to explain to her my situation and that I should be on the train from Bern tomorrow getting into Munich after lunch.\u00a0 She managed to convey that she and Helmut would pick me up at the train station when I got in before my phone ran out of money and cut me off.<\/span><\/p>\n

Now dog tired and thoroughly frazzled, I boarded the first leg of my overnight train odyssey\/lodging.\u00a0 Unfortunately for my plan, the train was fairly crowded. It had originated in Munich and had accumulated a lot of passengers by the time it got to Lindau.\u00a0 So as I walked the narrow hallway along the second class compartments looking for one with untaken seats to maybe sleep in, I found none.\u00a0 In the process I did encounter some other American guys my age, also with their backpacks, also headed for Bern.\u00a0 I joined them in their compartment, the four of them and I and all our big frame packs, our long hair, and our instant camaraderie as fellow \u201cfreak flag\u201d backpackers.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

As our train snaked its way through the now dark mountainous country outside the train window, we talked for an hour or two, talking \u201cshop\u201d mostly, about all the aspects of backpacker travel through these realms.\u00a0 Hitchhiking, riding trains, hostels, cheap food and activities, and so on.\u00a0 I learned from them that there were big boats you could ride up and down the Rhine and Moselle rivers between Mainz, Coblenz and Trier, for not much money.\u00a0 Finally, the rush of adrenaline from sharing with members of my cohort having subsided, I\u00a0 mostly dozed off until we got to Bern.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

When we got off in Bern we had several hours to kill before our respective departing trains, including mine back the way we came and on to Munich.\u00a0 We decided to go down into the lower level of the big Bern station and look for a place to rest for the interval, and found an obvious area in the corner where others were doing the same.\u00a0 It was a mix of young backpackers like us, some middle aged European men, and a few older men, who for lack of a shave, looked like they might be homeless.<\/span><\/p>\n

We got to know one of the homeless guys, Karl, who had pursued us at first asking if we needed help finding a place to sleep or something to eat.\u00a0 We shared with him our situation and some of the remnants of food we had in our various packs, as we sat on the rubber mat floor and joked about our \u201caccommodations\u201d.\u00a0 He asked us If we wanted beer, and we all acknowledged that that would be wonderful, but of course figured it was impossible at two in the morning.\u00a0 Karl said he would get us some and he took off and said he would return soon.\u00a0 We looked at each other and laughed at the thought that this \u201cbum\u201d was going to find and be able to purchase beer in the middle of the night and then share it with us!<\/span><\/p>\n

But a half hour later we all went crazy when he reappeared carrying a bag full of six or seven bottles of beer.\u00a0 I noted to myself at least that it was sad that it took all that to get us to really be friendly with him, all of us kind of shining him on because we judged him to be homeless.\u00a0 Sharing the beers got us going, and the conversation with Karl and us backpacker types ranged on all subjects for the next couple hours.<\/span><\/p>\n

First it was music, a topic on which everyone had a lot to say, but no consensus was found.\u00a0 He shared with us the American singers he liked: Frank Sinatra, Ray Charles, some women singers we had never heard of, and which he was shocked we hadn\u2019t.\u00a0 We shared with him the iconic musicians from our own generation\u2019s musical pantheon, including The Beatles, Simon & Garfunkel, Stevie Wonder, etc.\u00a0 He kind of grudgingly acknowledged our preferences, as if he thought we were slaves to the current fashion, rather rather than real music lovers.<\/span><\/p>\n

Then we talked politics.\u00a0 Looking at all our white WASPy faces perhaps, he shared with us that a big problem with the world, still today, was the Jews.\u00a0 He thought that Hitler had been the only leader bold enough to have the real answer.\u00a0 We were shocked and stunned into silence, casting furtive looks at each other as if to say, \u201cOh my god this guy is a Nazi!\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Noting our body language and non-verbalized recoil, he tried his best to recover by lauding Americans as some sort of saviors of the world.\u00a0 He noted with irony that we won World War II only to lose the post-war world by not having Patton invade Eastern Europe before the Russians did so.\u00a0 He loved Patton and was pleased when I said my dad served in his army during the last year of the war.\u00a0 He also said categorically that he felt there was no hope for the world, no hope for \u201cgood people\u201d, putting himself and us in that category.<\/span><\/p>\n

Too chicken given the circumstances, and given the basic protocol of not offending one\u2019s \u201chost\u201d (who provided the free beer), I did scramble up the courage to say emphatically that I did feel there was hope for the world, that our generation was profoundly different than our parents and we had a vision to change things once we were in power.\u00a0 He smiled and said that I was saying that only because I was still young.\u00a0 The discussion went back and forth for more than an hour, with my comrades finally joining in to try to help me defend this idealistic position as best we could.\u00a0 Even though I figured we were not going to change his rooted mind, I wanted him to at least know there were some people out there who had not given up and were fighting for hope and change and a better world.\u00a0 People who were not secretly on Hitler\u2019s side.\u00a0 Then finally the announcement on the public address that the train to Munich was boarding.<\/span><\/p>\n

Now wielding my laminated plastic card that told any conductor in Western Europe that I could ride their train for no additional charge, I was quickly learning the axioms of \u201crail travel 101\u201d.\u00a0 One was of course, don\u2019t buy food in train stations or on the train, it could cost at least twice as much as buying it at a store outside the station.\u00a0 This of course took some planning ahead, but hey, that\u2019s what you do to stick to the six dollar a day budget.\u00a0 Another, on display here in Bern, was that if you boarded a train at its start point, particularly if there wasn\u2019t a crush of passengers, you could have your pick of seats.\u00a0 In this case I could lay claim to an entire bench seat for sleeping, at least until newly boarding passengers came into my compartment and cajoled or shamed me into surrendering two of the three seats I was \u201cbogarting\u201d, to use the dope smoking lingo, which many of us hippiesque backpacker types used.\u00a0 Yet another was to tell the conductor what your destination was, so he could assist you with not ending up on a train car that would be switched onto another train and not end up at that destination.<\/span><\/p>\n

Following that last axiom paid off in this case.\u00a0 When the conductor came by asking for tickets and I showed him my rail pass, I told him I was riding the train through to Munich.\u00a0 Good thing, because after that encounter, a big noisy family had decided to share my compartment. I had moved to another coach where I found a compartment with a free bench seat so I could continue to sleep horizontally, rather than struggle to sleep vertically, which had been the whole point of taking this long back and forth overnight journey in the first place.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

I was way past tired now, but our disturbing conversation with Karl the recalcitrant Nazi had my mind percolating.\u00a0 I pondered war and peace and the world situation going forward, particularly the brewing troubles in the Middle East, and whether I and my generational comrades could really make any difference.\u00a0 Were my own radical ideas simply the naive posturing of some sort of dilettante overgrown kid?\u00a0 Was there really hope for the world?\u00a0 I decided I was going to keep behaving as if the latter were the case!<\/span><\/p>\n

In a light sleep when the train finally got into Lindau the conductor was on the ball enough, as well as nice enough, to wake me and give me a heads up I was in a coach that would not be going on to Munich.\u00a0 I thanked him profusely, shouldered my pack and staggered sleepily forward to a train car that was headed to my destination, though not finding a compartment empty enough where I could stretch out.\u00a0 Sitting in an upright position sharing that side of the compartment with someone else, I managed to go back into a half sleep until finally the light of the new day illuminated the coach, and the picturesque Bavarian countryside we were traversing beckoned my mind to open still tired eyes and peer out.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Though technically awake, eyes open and looking out at the weekday world going by, it was still a jolt into full consciousness when the conductor rattled open the compartment door to announce \u201cMunchen!”\u00a0 When I finally staggered off the train, I had spent most of the last thirty hours crisscrossing Switzerland by rail.\u00a0 On the platform, I noticed a short perky woman smiling and waving at me next to a taller and more reserved, but also smiling man.\u00a0 Their faces clicked with my memory of three years ago, it was Angelica and Helmut.\u00a0 I gave them a sort of subdued wave back and walked towards them and did my best to smile, in my current trance state certainly happy to not be on my own for at least the next few days.<\/span><\/p>\n

Click here to read next chapter<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It was Wednesday October 3 when I awoke in the chilly male bunkroom of the youth hostel in Chur. Ensconced in my toasty down sleeping bag, and not wanting to surrender yesterday by getting up and facing today, my consciousness was still processing the profound events of the past couple days; the tears, the fears, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[1783,1774,289,368,515,1775,1661],"class_list":["post-6300","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-adventure","tag-1970s","tag-autobiography","tag-backpacking-through-europe","tag-coming-of-age","tag-human-development","tag-memoir","tag-travel"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.leftyparent.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6300","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.leftyparent.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.leftyparent.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.leftyparent.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.leftyparent.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6300"}],"version-history":[{"count":15,"href":"https:\/\/www.leftyparent.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6300\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7587,"href":"https:\/\/www.leftyparent.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6300\/revisions\/7587"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.leftyparent.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6300"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.leftyparent.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6300"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.leftyparent.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6300"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}