Germany Diary: Train to Berlin, New Year’s Eve 2019
By: Liam Heitmann-Ryce
Tags: Adventure, Creative Non Fiction, Trains, Travel Writing, New Year

Germany Diary: Train to Berlin, New Year’s Eve 2019

A simpler time, another place…

Image courtesy of the author

I think we should not be afraid to go down our own path just because it is a unique one that has not been travelled before. It is easy to take the path the system intends for you. But easy isn’t always right.

— Martin, random train guy

So that message was written by Martin, who is currently hunched over his big woolly jumper with headphones clamped over his ears in an attempt to get some sleep. I should probably do the same, but I wanted to at least write something today, given that it will be the last chance I have to do so in this decade. I am really pretty tired and I feel a bit queasy, both of which the result of last night’s abysmal lack of sleep.

I was terribly worried about the proven unreliability of the public transport in Bonn, fearing that I would not be able to get to Köln Hbf for my 10:15 Flixtrain to Berlin (which was delayed by 30 minutes anyway…), so I just couldn’t get to sleep. I eventually drifted off at about quarter-past midnight, only to wake up sweating at 05:35, fall back asleep at 06:00, and then bolt up at 07:35.

I missed one train Bonn-Köln connection by 20 seconds and got on the next one six minutes later: a high-speed service for which I didn’t have the correct travel pass, and nearly got fined €30,50 as a result. My Commerzbank card didn’t work, thank God, so the ticket collector simply let me off with paying the additional €11,50 fee to cover the cost of the ticket.

Quite an annoying start to a long journey, then, but I did chat with an Electrical Engineering student for about 20 minutes, a friendly Kölner local with reddish curly hair and a nose-ring; he turns 24 in January and he thankfully looked as sleepy as I did. The platform was totally packed with couples and small pockets of people huddled around discarded rucksacks or cocooned in headphones, and it was a bit of an operation for all of us to bundle into the train.

The compartment I got was the makeshift Restaurant car, furnished with fold-out tables (one of which I am writing on now as the train wobbles beneath us) and school canteen chairs that are acceptably comfortable but slide around on the gritty floor.

Image courtesy of the author

My thinking here was to grab the first seat I could definitely secure, rather than risk wandering down the carriages; Martin, sitting beside me, shared the same plan of action. He is 27 and has pale pebble-green eyes with a small perimeter of pink fatigue around them; he seems to be about 6' tall and he has very broad muscular shoulders. I asked him if he did any sports and he answered with American football, only for a while, but this quickly explained his large frame. His hair is long and curly, just about shoulder-length, though is now tied in a tight bun on top of his head — it is light brown at the tips, almost the same shade as his coppery red beard, but much of it is otherwise dark brown.

Martin has just revived himself again. As he lifted his face from the DIY pillow that is his jumper, his cheeks had an imprint of the thick cable threads running across them in shallow trenches. They are mostly lost within his beard.

Out of the windows there isn’t so much to see as it has been universally grey and misty across the entire span of the journey so far, but we are passing a lot of trees interspersed with growths of white, detached houses — it is the kind of soft gloom one appreciates when protected by a hot train carriage as it rocks and rumbles across the country.

I think I am going to stop here, as the train’s wobbling is rather annoying now… And I want to chat with Martin again when he next revives himself, having disappeared into his headphones, so I shall close here for the final time in this decade.