A man on a train

by Milena Beltser (Ukraine)

Making a local connection Germany

I opened my eyes and found myself on the same train we had run into like crazy just an hour ago. We barely caught it. The Berlin-Frankfurt way takes less than 7 hours by train and I hopedto sleep at least a few hours. This trip didn’t fail to amaze me all the time. My elder brother, Serhey had turned sick the day before and now he was sleeping on the next seat with ease as he had slept on trains all his life. We already seated ourselves as I doubted whether this was the train we had been waiting for. “We saw the train number, didn’t we?”. And then I turned around and asked loudly even though I’m usually shy, “Is this the train to Frankfurt?! Please tell me that this is the right one”. A man sitting behind us stared at me, it took him a few seconds to understand that the question was for him and answered, “yeah, it might be going to Frankfurt..”. Just hearing the word Frankfurt calmed me down. As I sat down and recalled to thank him the man behind me said quietly «but to be honest I doubt it now too”. I was perplexed and turned around trying to read his mind and guess whether it was a joke or we were in trouble. Then he got less serious and grinned mischievously. “Well, don’t worry, I take this train every weekend”. After a moment, I laughed “you made me worry, you should have seen how serious you were!”. Then I had 3 hours of futile efforts to fall asleep and 10 variants of uncomfortable postures. “Excuse me? ..” I turned around. I noticed that his guy had brownish hair and light warm eyes. "Is this your first time in Germany?" he asked. “Well, we’ve been in Germany a few times, but never to Frankfurt.”. “Oh, it must be great to travel a lot, I’m sure you will like Frankfurt,” he replied. Then I asked: “Do you often go there?”. I took notice that he was wearing the a suit, what left me without doubts that he worked there like everyone else here who visited Berlin at the weekend, but I preferred to hear it from him. He smiled, “Oh, yes, I spend every weekend in Berlin.” His German accent did not make the conversation easier, like my Ukrainian one, I suppose. But in some miraculous way in a whisper, we found common ground, discussed many things and made fun of the beginning of our acquaintance when I was so scared that we had taken the wrong train. He talked about his favorite places, “.. and Starbucks under Central Bank.”. I laughed, “Are you kidding me? Do you recommend me Starbucks of all the places in Frankfurt?”. “You have no idea what you’ll lose if you don’t spend a morning of the working day there, you’ll see”. His advice seemed strange to me, but when we left the station at 6 in the morning headed for the cafe. 6:50 this city moved me, unexpectedly. It was an early morning, we were tired after the third night of the trip and we headed for the Starbucks right from the station. Seryozha was still ill. We took two coffees. Cold for me to wake up and warm enough for a sick one. There were also respectable gentlemen who dropped into the Sturbucks. It was obvious that they often had breakfast here and knew each other. We saw some hasty bank employees through the large windows. 7 am, everybody is ready for work. Silence, sunbeams, bitter cold. A random episode of conversation with that man came to my mind. *** I squeezed the notebook in my hands. “What is this notebook for?” man asked. “I`m doing some sketches of portraits .. and make short notes of travels”. He was impressed “Will I be shown in one of them?” he made puppy eyes, I laughed. “Maybe” but I knew at that very moment of course he would. *** I had a strange opinion that people who like the same places are probably mentally close in some way. He was right, this place is special.