Railway Friendships

While I waited for the shuttle bus to Terminal 1 at Frankfurt airport, my eyes locked into another pair.  They belonged to an old man, scruffy, hair not combed, unshaven beard, clothes un-ironed.  He too was a passenger, and I felt he did not like me staring at him.  I shifted my eyes away.  He walked passed me, returned, walked passed me, then got into the bus, we both waiting for.  I lost track of him.

I found my way to the train station at Terminal 1, figured out the difference between a long distance train and a regional train, bought my ticket and found a seat.  I had to transfer to another train at Mainz, and the travel time from Frankfurt to Mainz is only 20 minutes.  I had five minutes for this transfer.  Needless to say I was a bit nervous, concerned if I could make it.

I heard a passenger arguing with the TTR, not sure what it was about, but wanted the TTR to clear me so that I could get down when the train stop at Mainz any minute.  I could not see the arguing passenger.  When the train stopped I moved my luggage towards the door, the man I saw at the bus stop was in front of me.  He pointed a bag, I said it’s not mine, he said that was his.  My bag was in front of his one, blocking his access to the bag.  I pulled my bag back; he took his one, and asked where I was coming from.  I said, India.

‘Key se hai’, he said in poor Hindi accent, I smiled and said ‘it’s Key se ho - meaning how are you’?  He said, ‘Oh, whatever’.  We both got out, and the platform I had to find was just on the other side, and he too waited for the same train to come. He sat on the bench, and said that the TTR fined him for getting into an express train.  His ticket was for a normal train.  Then he said, ’oh, it was only money – just a piece of paper; ever since the Americans put ‘In God We Trust’, on the dollar, the money has become cheap. I smiled, and said now money is not even paper, its plastic or electronic digits.  It’s another story he said, and went quiet.

The train to Bonn via Koblenz came; we sat next to each other.  I was not sure if he was curious, or just wanted to talk.  I was not in any hurry, and I obliged as a listener.  He covered a range of topics from sex to international politics.

'You know, my wife and I like sex, but we are old, so, we bought a sex engine BMW'. In German sex is six, I figured.  'The only problem is that I am not allowed to drive faster than 210 km/h', he lamented.  

‘What’s the hurry?’, I was sarcastic.  ‘You are right, I am seventy five years old, my wife died eight months ago, and I have a lot of time in my hand’.  'Oh by the way, how old are you?’.  

‘Fifty nine’, and expected him to say that I am still young.  This is what I hear from elders I meet. ‘I thought you are near one-hundred’, and winked.  He has settled the score.  We both laughed.

It’s about an hour so we had been talking, and I asked for his name.  He said it’s Heiko Hodson.  He did not bother asking for mine.  

Our conversation continued.  He talked about his job in a nuclear plant in Germany which got shut down later; the five day war in the Middle East, at a time when he was based in Kuwait as a Radio Technician; training Zambians in radio-technology in Zambia, and how he convinced a donor that training in Zambia is cheaper than in Germany (and got himself posted Livingston, Zambia as the training coordinator); the Russian student he hosted in Germany without a rent; and the holiday he just had at St Petersburg with her.  On Chinese, he said, ‘they will colonize the moon, and rip all its resources, and leave a mess.  Then you have to see Moon only on old photos.  Mark these words of Heiko Hodson’.  He was categorical, convinced that Chinese will be a force to accept, not just to reconcile with.

As train whizzed along the Rhine, he commented that he has not seen the river levels so high; then expressed relief that flood will not enter his city because the levies are built high; then expressed dismay that the same levies will cause high velocity discharges troubling those downstream.  'No one cares about others,you know'he bemoaned.

Koblenz neared, he was ready to get down, he looked at me and said, ‘you have another forty minutes to Bonn, and I hope you can find some Chappati there’. I said, I will be looking for sauerkraut, sausages and beer.  He wanted to have the last word, and said for me it will be Cognac.    

Here’s my latest railway friendship.  We meet strangers for brief periods, engage in conversations, and then walk away.  These friendships are meaningless, but conversations could be otherwise.  I could see a man with a good sense of humor, information and satisfied with his past.  He wants to talk and I was glad to listen. 

I recalled something I read a while ago, ‘Marry a woman with whom you can converse.  At the end that matters more’.  In his wife’s absence, I was his conversation partner, just for an hour or so of our lives.