“It happens slowly; but little by little you realize that this is the slowness of irresistible change.”

–Harry Mathews, 20 Lines a Day

Is change movement or standing still?  Hours pass if you let them.

There is something comforting about being on a train, the wait for the train to move, the sound of the whistle blowing.  At least you know you are in the right place, that momentarily this is where you belong.   It blows and blows again, and we’re gone.  Speakers announce something –in German or Polish, garbled English that I can’t understand.  The names sound different, look different than they sound.  When the conductor comes to check my ticket, I relax.  I belong right here in this compartment, in this seat.

Another place left behind.  Is the goal the end point or in the middle?  The journey itself offers something, even if the words are foreign on the tongue.

After the bike tour, Getfriend offers us in a prepared-to-go glass, a shot of apricot liqueur to take with us.  The apricot inside a burnt orange, cushion-like, floating in something.  He tells us to suck on the apricot and off we go; the ride is done.  My hotel reminds me of The Shining, long corridors with heavy white doors on either side, big gold keys on heavy chains announcing the hotel’s name.  It is bulky for me to carry.  Back in my room, I down the liqueur in one shot and suck on the spongy fruit.  That night I hear the gilded key locks click click as people come and go making their way to the bathroom down the hall.  The double windowed French doors maw open to the palazzo below.  In the adjacent window, flowers bloom.  I lean out, peering into their lives: laundry hanging, a haphazard curtain, a warm orange glow emanates as the light outside darkens.  A woman passes through rooms and disappears.  And then: there she is again.

Prague or Vienna, it doesn’t matter; in both I am insulated, set apart.

On the train I close my eyes.  Behind my lids I see pictures of bridges.

To travel by plane is less certain, more risky.   Faster.  Less reflective.  In planes, I don’t want to feel movement.  I want to travel by trains alone, but I can’t.  Later I will fly or not go, stay put.

On the train a man and a woman sleep, the sun beats down through the window.  I want to describe the couple in detail, like a picture but it blurs and I don’t want to stare.  I am silent, waiting.  A baby cries in the next car, comforting somehow.  Chuck Berry’s words play in my head although I am not listening to anything; still I can’t get rid of the lyrics no matter.  Well, oh well, I feel so good today.  I just touched down on an international runway. . . .and on.  It is a sign of something.

The prodigal son (or daughter) returning.  Do we all ultimately make our way back: here I am.  In Vienna, Savita references the hotel as home, as do I.  I want to go home after the long day, sun beating down, wind flying, the Danube on my left as I zoom past on the bike.  I want to go home where my clothes –dirty or clean–are stacked on the shelf in the room or strewn across the hotel room floor haphazard.  In Berlin, in my square box of a room, I let the clothes languish in the suitcase.

I am reminded of long ago, on an island somewhere for a job, the clients picking me the unlikely model for whatever it was they wanted to shoot.  Then, Simon and Garfunkel’s “Homeward Bound” playing in my head, missing Sam.  That is all I could see, not the white white beaches where women ran free, breasts sagging with the weight of them or no weight at all.   Babies, age, life.  It didn’t matter.  Still, I can’t help but compare –then and now–on the beach of the Danube river where we stop to put our feet in the water.  Their bodies to mine.  I see surfaces, not what might be.

I have four trains for one journey so I must watch the signs.  My path is circuitous.  My penchant is to arrive early, fearing what might be.  I want to know where I am going, find a direct route to take me from here to there.

Yesterday after the long bike ride in the hills on the train back to Vienna, English Linda chatters about the pitfalls of Trump.  I say: let it be.  Savita from India echoes my thought.  He’s who he is and that is that, she says, definitive.  She chatters to Getfriend, our guide.  He listens, head leaning against the window glass of the train, blurred green behind.

We stop.  Outside the window the platform sign declares: Vychod.  I could be anywhere.  Or nowhere at all.