It’s very annoying. At least if you consider the unreasonable demands: behind me someone has been making themselves important on their cell phone for half an hour, in front of me a woman is smacking her lips loudly while devouring her sushi, a baby is crying somewhere, and a slightly flatulent smell hangs in the air. And someone is probably annoyed by the noises my keyboard makes. A train ride like this can really put you in a good mood.
As I type this, I’m sitting on a train on the Western Railway line. Like so often. I drive from Innsbruck every week Wien and back again. I work in the capital, the rest of my life takes place in Tyrol. We’re currently circling Vienna and driving through pretty little towns like Rekawinkel because the other, fast route is still suffering from the after-effects of the flood.
A carriage like this on a train is quite a strange place. But also a very exciting one. You get in, stow your luggage and set up your seat – for frequent travelers this usually follows fixed rituals. You can recognize occasional drivers because they are rushed, constantly looking back and forth looking for storage space, seats, toilets and who knows what.
Pierre Bourdieu, the French philosopher who was well versed in subtle differences, once wrote that the ability to dominate a space depends on one’s capital – that can be economic, social or cultural capital. Of course this can be applied to trains. On the one hand, as a frequent train traveler, I have the advantage of knowing exactly where I have to go and how I should behave when I’m there. And on the other hand, I also know exactly where it is best to reserve a seat in the carriage so that I can have as much peace and quiet as possible.
And despite all the precautionary measures, a train journey like this can quickly become unreasonable. The Czech writer Jaroslav Rudiš, one of the biggest train fans I know, once said that a delay is great because then you have more time to spend in the carriage. I don’t really know what to think about it.
In the best of times, it’s been a while, I have Innsbruck It didn’t take much more than four hours to get to Vienna. Recently it was more than seven hours. In addition to the route before Vienna that was destroyed by flooding, there was construction work on the western route, a bomb threat at Linz train station and then of course the damned German corner, i.e. the section between Salzburg and Kufstein via Rosenheim, about which I will be outraged more often at this point.
So a wagon like this is a regular social experiment. A group of people come together and have to endure a few hours together. We have nothing to do with each other and we still have to design this space together. Before we all sat in front of laptops and wore noise-cancelling headphones, we sometimes even got to talking. That’s long gone. We sit in our seats like zombies, watching each other from time to time, assessing (or condemning) others and getting a pulse when it looks like we’re going to be late.
By the way, the pulse thing is no joke. A few years ago, my colleague Claas Tatje wrote about a study from the greater London area in which brain waves, heart rate and blood pressure of commuters were measured. When everything goes well, they were very relaxed. But even slight delays caused extreme pulse fluctuations. There have even been situations in which stress levels were measured that corresponded to those of fighter jet pilots.
Now imagine this: an entire train car full of bundles of nerves that have the pulse of fighter pilots. It’s actually a miracle that everything usually turns out well. But somehow we always manage to do it again.
We are currently in Amstetten, a bunch of people have piled onto the train, all looking for a place. And now there is a woman sitting next to me who is obviously ill-prepared for the journey: no headphones! Tshs. Anyway, I’m just imagining her being annoyed by my typing – yes, yes, I’m typing really loudly. And in order not to endanger the fragile peace in the carriage, I hereby say goodbye. See you next time.
It’s very annoying. At least if you consider the unreasonable demands: behind me someone has been making themselves important on their cell phone for half an hour, in front of me a woman is smacking her lips loudly while devouring her sushi, a baby is crying somewhere, and a slightly flatulent smell hangs in the air. And someone is probably annoyed by the noises my keyboard makes. A train ride like this can really put you in a good mood.
As I type this, I’m sitting on a train on the Western Railway line. Like so often. I drive from Innsbruck every week Wien and back again. I work in the capital, the rest of my life takes place in Tyrol. We’re currently circling Vienna and driving through pretty little towns like Rekawinkel because the other, fast route is still suffering from the after-effects of the flood.
