Some Lines There

When I was travelling back from the Venice Biennale  completely on my own - I had to leave earlier than the rest of my academy class for I wanted to catch Raimund Stecker's speech at the Barnett Newman Symposium in Düsseldorf - I had to share my sleeping car from Milan to Düsseldorf with five other people. There were a couple from Southern Germany, a Dutch student and two men who obviously knew each other. One of them was rather remarkable in that he was scarified in his face. I could see the couple exchanging glances with one another saying: "How could we spend the night with someone like this?! And thank God we will be leaving early in the morning."
All of us soon went to sleep and the second man left quite early in the night. When I was up again, the couple had got off the train and the Dutch student had left also, probably to refresh herself. Thus  only me and the scarred man were left. We got into a conversation, he addressed me in German, but to my shame I did not realise it, and so we went on in English. It turned out that he was from Nigeria and he was a Roman Catholic priest coming directly from the seminary in Rome travelling to Dortmund as the vacation replacement of the local priest. We had a very nice chat and the one thing that stuck in my mind was that I was impressed by the very low life expectancy in Nigeria. While he stated that most people in Nigeria die at the age of 40 and most people there are lucky to know their parents let alone their grandparents, I told him that I had known my great-grandfather, who had died at the age of 90.

Trust

Finally I'm coming around telling more train stories. Some time in the late 1990s when travelling from Recklinghausen to Münster, I was approached by a Muslim missionary. Straight away he told me: "I can see that you have a great trust in God." I retorted that he might be very right. He definitely wanted to proselytise me but I gently declined after trying to discuss  Lessing's ring parable with him.

Things to get excited about on the Tube- twenty years later

This may mark the beginning of some train stories - travelling by train is or used to be a far more exciting journey than any other vehicle could provide. I do most vividly remember this incident and as it was both silly and dangerous - at least according to a French friend, who had been living several years in London - it is worth telling. 

In April 1991 - being pregnant in the sixth month, though nobody but my boyfriend knew - I spent 10 days in London on an excursion of the fine art department of the Westfälische Wilhelmsuniversität Münster. On a Saturday afternoon I, completely on my own, met those three guys, who were about my age, ie late teens/early twenties. They did look like, to use a neutral term, football supporters, but found it exceedingly funny amongst themselves to tell me that they had just been to Kew Gardens. And soon they had an even funnier idea, which was to find out where I was coming from. I heard about every European nation, Netherlands, Italy, Spain, Sweden and even Ireland - I wasn't aware of the fact that I looked so mundane. One country was missing quite blatantly, but probably one they did not connect with women on the Tube they were trying to chat up. So finally they gave up and asked me and I told them with a smiling face: "Germany".