Another account of a journey part I

"Wenn einer eine Reise tut, dann kann er was erzählen." is the beginning of a small verse of Matthias Claudius, a German poet and journalist. In free translation it means "If someone does a travel, he can tell something." - in German it sounds equally awkward but this formulation keeps the metre and allows the rhyme with the second part "Drum nähm' ich meinen Stock und Hut und tät das Reisen wählen." - "So I would take my stick and hat and would chose travelling."

This is exactly what I once again did yesterday when flying from Lund to Germany. And indeed there are a few small stories to tell. The first thing one always notices when travelling with public transport are the people. Especially at train stations there are a lot of different - sometimes interesting - people. Hounded people, annoyed people, people with beaming smiles, people with excitement and wonder in their eyes. Business people, free riders, poor people. While I was waiting for the train (I scheduled rather generous time slots to make sure I get my plane) one of the latter approached me at the train platform and involved me in an ... interesting conversation. He tried to convince me to give him some small coins in a mumbling Skånish Swedish and I tryed to convince him to speak more slowly so that I could understand him. Eventually we established a kind of mutual agreement and he wandered his ways wondering at a few euros as I did not have any crowns with me anymore.

View from the train from the Öresundsbron.

After waiting for around 15 minutes I finally entered the train and searched for a place to sit. All of the suites were already occupied to with more or less sated amount of people so I chose one of the few places opposite to the prettiest girl in sight. ;) Unfortunately she was busy with her phone all of the time - as many people are nowadays. (Einstein ...) So I let my sight wander out of the window. Unfortunately this was not as pleasant as I thought as the Swedish train windows seem to have a grinding that distort view even worse than German train windows do so I could not stand the sight for long. So I looked for another highlight to make time pass faster (the train was going unpleasantly slowly as another train in front of ours had some trouble - the generous schedule already paid off) and as soon as he entered our compartment I noticed that guy. The guy with the phone who lets the whole train participate in his conversation - this in Arab or something like that. The highlight however, was, when - he was still talking on his phone - his phone rang. Well, his second phone. At this point at the latest I could not hide a smile anymore.

Just in case I turned my attention back to the window, briefly passing the pretty girl opposite to me. She actually smiled back! :) However, after she returned to her phone I made a scientifically quite impressive observation! By now the train was going so slowly that it almost came to a hold and I noticed that the distortion by the window was not as severe as before anymore when we were moving faster! Thus - besides chromatic and spherical aberration - this phenomenon shall henceforth be calleth velocity aberration! ;)

Concluding with this rather impressive scientific revolution a shall continue this account of a journey another time with the supermodel youth parade, the reason why Scandinavia is perceived a region of cold and dark and small children enthusiastically exploring the extents of an airport terminal.