One of the most interesting places to observe people; somehow you are forced to watch them. In a certain timeframe the people sitting next each other have the same goal: reaching a particular destination. During this time some read books, most of them listen to music but a lot of people just stare around. I love meeting people in the train, people I don’t know just to chat a bit. Not every time I take the train of course - but sometimes would be nice. It’s my social side which thinks that it’s a human feature shared by all cultures in the world which says: when two or more people are stuck together in a wagon it would be the most natural thing just to start talking. Surely you don’t talk to everybody, but sometimes to some people – seems natural, doesn’t it? I travel a lot by train and I can’t help myself but observing the atmosphere, the people’s moods and behavior. Having a nice chat while travelling isn’t a frequent experience I can write about, it’s rather seldom. My eyes wander around I see stressed, unsatisfied moody faces. Noisy headphones or young people who are having loud conversations are breaking the awkward silence. While the wheels are juddering and the landscape is behind us faster than the eye can realize, the people around me don’t show any social attitude. “ Excuse me “ and “ Thank you “ may be the most frequent words said in a train depending in which country you are travelling, but that doesn’t even sound nearly like small talk, does it ? I began hating trains they let me realize the failure of mankind’s social competence nowadays. Living in a developed country where basically everybody has shelter and nobody starves to death nor do we have a war going on here – I can say that there are no immense local problems at the moment which could cause this sorriness and sadness of my fellow train passengers. This observation didn’t take place lately; it has been ages ago since I was a little life loving pupil asking people in the tube on my way to school why nobody was smiling and whether there is any strict law saying that you are not allowed to have fun in a train or a tube. On the other hand many people are nice when you talk to them and when you take the first step in “social competence” but that doesn’t keep them from being same sad stressed and unsatisfied the next day. My dreamy little heart is as usual too sensitive towards the atmosphere in a train but after having experienced quite the opposite of what I was describing when I was in Rome, life gave me another angle to observe things. The elderly ladies smiled at me and were very kind – my heart was flattering and I began thinking that maybe it’s not the whole mankind which has no social competence maybe it is just the place I live in maybe just the mentality I grew up in. Being a little bit too much myself in the Italian train (applying make-up using perfume ) didn’t discourage my follow passengers to talk to me (in Italian which I barely speak) and they kept up the conversation even though they might not have understood all of what I was trying to say. You remember such “unimportant “little things after you are back in your daily life watching the stressed and sorrowed people around you. You remember that on some places on earth people are not afraid of chatting and laughing a bit. You might not remember what those people exactly told you but you won’t forget that you laughed with them in a particular timeframe when both of you had the same goal and the same destination – sounds really normal and natural and above all it sounds very human.
Being self-critical as always, I must assume that maybe I’ve adjusted myself to the introverted cold mentality of my environment and my outer appearance might not say: “hey let’s chat you seem nice”. Humm but I am also person who smiles before she does anything else …which shouldn’t make me frightening for others, right?
Everybody has a bad day sometimes a bad month and some might even have a bad year – but it can’t be all of you guys out there at the same time. I don’t think people should end up talking all the time they enter a train but a fresh smile , a little chat or a nice conversation once in a while would make these unimportant 10 minutes of your life more pleasant and who doesn’t want to have a pleasant time when s/he has nothing else to day anyway ?
Passenger Train Painting - Passenger Train Fine Art Print -
Bob Dornberg
