To Stockholm, Express

Goteborg (Gothenburg) Central Station, photo:wikipedia

To the north, to the north! There could be no delay if we wished to fulfil our plans and make it on time for the Stockholm-bound train.  It was simple: from Horsens in Denmark we’d only have to transverse Jutland, navigate the Kattegat, arrive in Sweden and hey presto! 

More specifically, we’d catch a train north to Aarhus, do a little sightseeing, take a second train north to Frederikshavn, change for a bus to Skagen, see that, take the bus back to Frederikshavn and be in time for the ship to cross the Kattegat to Göteborg in Sweden.  Once there it’d only be a matter of making our way from the port to the train station for the night service to the Swedish capital.  It was all timetabled.  It was the plan.  What were we thinking?

Perhaps the focus was on the train at the end.  Perhaps I was imagining sleeping cars with polished brass handles, with cheery blue-capped conductors to welcome us in Swedish, with fluffy pillows and starched creaseless white sheets on the berth, with complimentary snacks on the small table in the carriage, all just waiting for our arrival.  With a mere six changes of transport along the way, what could possibly prevent us from waking up, well-rested, to the beauty of Stockholm on the following morning?

My school friend Lachlan and I were eighteen, we had the energy, so what did it matter if our travel plans were ambitious?  Besides, the point of counting on the night train was that it doubled as accommodation which suited our budget of almost zero. 

With an eye on the clock, we knew that hesitation would mean failure.

To the north, to the north! The first train stopped a little too often but it did take us the first forty kilometres to Denmark’s second largest city, Aarhus.   The city features the world’s oldest open air museum, called the Old Town, which is a collection of more than seventy buildings built between 1550 and the late nineteenth century and moved there from various locations across Denmark.  We walked in haste, took photographs and visited each of the exhibits, from clocks to silverware; and we thought of Hans Christian Anderson, quickly.  Set in a pleasant garden it would’ve been nice to stay a while: but apart from on the clocks there was no time.

Aarhus Old Town.  Photo: wikipedia

The second train, 143 kilometres to Frederikshavn became in actuality the second and third trains as we had to change in Aalborg.  We checked the ferry times for Sweden and raced to get the bus for the thirty-two kilometres to Skagen.

To the north, to the north!  In Denmark, there’s no further north one can go than Skagen.  The very tip of the Jutland Peninsula, Skagen is said to be where two seas, the Skagerrak and Kattegat, meet.  Both parts of the entrance to the Baltic Sea from the North Sea, across the former is Norway while across the latter is Sweden; and where they actually meet is a long sand spit with water on both sides.  The spit is called Grenen, meaning ‘the branch’ and it’s the very end of Denmark.  There, waves from the one crash against the waves of the other, as if Norway and Sweden were having a perpetual water fight with Denmark the international observer.  The problem was the sand spit was 4.5 kilometres from Skagen bus stop; but we had energy so we half-jogged there and back, sweating, sweating, with just a few minutes to take photographs and catch our breath at the junction of the seas.  It would’ve been nice to stay a while, but enough looking already: we’ll miss the boat, we’ll miss the boat!

To the east, this time, for the north!  We were just in time for the day’s last ferry to Göteborg.  The vessel was large and modern, and wasn’t it fun to be leaving one country to arrive in another just ninety kilometres away?

We’d done well, I remarked, having made the first five planned transport connections, with just one remaining.  These were words spoken in haste.

It wasn’t only Denmark we’d left behind but also the sun which had fallen unceremoniously into one or other of the seas.  Sweden was dark.  Still, all was not lost.  The train left at a late hour.  There was time to find the station; and fortunately the train was waiting when we arrived.  Surely it was not as nice as I’d imagined it but surely it looked every bit as nice after the hectic day.  In any case it didn’t matter.

The train was sold out. 

Suddenly stranded, we asked at a few hotels but the room rates seemed astronomical, so we wondered if we couldn’t just wait at the station until morning.  The night was more than half done by then.  What’s more there seemed to be other stranded passengers reclining on the benches, preparing for sleep, inside the glass-enclosed terminal area.  The problem: by the time we returned the glass enclosed area was locked.  It must’ve been for passenger safety; and would’ve been ideal had we been inside.

What to do? What to do?  As it happened, Göteborg railway station was undergoing some renovations and just around the corner from the glassed-in area were a few other benches in what was really part of the construction site.  It hadn’t looked appealing initially.  It was a bit dark that side; but as our eyelids grew heavier we first sat, then lay, and finally dozed off, a bit away from the rest of Sweden. 

As it happened I awoke to the sound of a dog barking and footsteps and a torch being shone about, here and there.  It was scary.  Fortunately it was just the security guard and he didn’t seem bothered that we were borrowing the benches for a bit.  Fortunately his German shepherd was on a leash.

The worst was yet to come.

It can’t have been much beyond first light when I woke, stretched and looked about.  Everything seemed a bit shivery, a bit achy, but otherwise fine; until my gaze fell upon the adjacent bench where Lachlan had been sleeping.  The bench was empty!  I told myself not to panic.  It didn’t work.  My mind was racing.  I pictured explaining to his parents, describing exactly how it was that their son had vanished!  It was probably only for several minutes but it felt as hours, until….

There he was!  Sound asleep on another bench inside the enclosed glass area.  I tried the door and found it open: I think it’d actually been open the whole time.  Breathing heavily with relief, I thought not to wake him and found another bench inside, where thankfully there was heating, for although it was summer the night had been chilly, and went back to sleep.

I got my revenge.  When he woke again a little later he went to the bench where I’d been sleeping to find it empty!  His turn to picture a little awkward conversation with my parents!  ‘I last saw him on a bench in the construction site area at the train station in Göteborg…..’

I’d thought not to wake you, Lachlan explained, as we sat consumed by the Swedish countryside, exhausted, on the day train bound for Stockholm.  The train engine sounded: to the north, to the north, to the north.  And we fell asleep….

Lesson one: when in Denmark and Sweden take the time to enjoy it.  Lesson two: a train station is not suitable accommodation.  And I promised myself I’d never sleep at a train station again.  And I never did, unless of course you count that one time in Bucharest.

The End of Denmark at Skagen.  Photo: wikipedia

Of course 'fast' is not the only way to travel.  There is also rugged, over-the-mountains travel and moderately-long-ship-journey travel and back-and-forth-sort-of-time travel.


This article also published in Star Magazine, here: To Stockholm, Express

Metro Dreaming

Now that it’s apparent that CNG drivers were only using the meter as a special tribute to the Cricket World Cup and Dhaka’s back to her usual self, it’s hardly surprising when inching through the jams that one’s thoughts are sometimes given over to the metro dreaming.  With the regularity of newspaper announcements on the subject I can’t be the only one.  But what sort of metro will it be?

The number and width of the rails, the carriage and platform dimensions, above ground, below ground: let the engineers tackle such trivialities.  More important are the cultural dimensions, for in any city the nature of the mass transit system is a window into the community’s psyche.  A metro system is far more than transport.  It’s a cultural statement.

In Switzerland trains have a habit of leaving early while Tokyo is renowned for employing ‘pushers’ whose job is to shove more people into each carriage before the doors close; and in Stockholm’s tunnelbana the stations are so imaginatively decorated they’ve become a tourist attraction.  It’s said to be the longest art gallery in the world; the Moscow Metro disputes this. 

Will Dhaka’s version resemble Sydney’s trains where businesspeople sit in neat rows ignoring each other or incline towards Kolkata’s trains where groups of commuters pass uncomfortable hours by playing cards, chatting and sometimes thumping out a drum beat on their books or briefcases while singing aloud to entertain the whole carriage?  It’s not only passengers who can sing.  There was one occasion, highly unusual, when a conductor in Sydney decided rather than simply listing the names of the coming stations over the PA system he’d sing them operatically.  It got everybody smiling; though being Sydney there’s every chance he got in trouble for not being sufficiently mechanical.  Could singing conductors work in Dhaka, perhaps with tabla and harmonium?  How about rhyming station names to promote poetry?

In the Ukrainian capital Kyiv there’s the history of the Cold War in the metro, with the Soviet-constructed stations built to double as bomb shelters in the case of nuclear attack.  The escalators are long, steep and rapid; the platforms far enough under the earth to wonder if it shouldn’t be getting a little hotter down there.  One of the deepest stations in the world is in Kyiv, Arsenalna at 105.5 metres below ground.  For a cheap set fare for which a blue plastic token is purchased, any length of journey is allowed.  Now that’s equality!

In Ukraine commuters were chivalrous.  For gentlemen to stand up for ladies was expected behaviour and any sitting male risked being publicly rebuked if they made a woman stand.  A chauvinistic practice to be sure, and I made that point on the bus with my friend Tanya, when I’d stand at the stairs as we got out and extend my hand for her to help me down, just to show it could be done the other way around.  But in actuality it was quite impressive, chauvinistic or not.

On the other hand, one of my colleagues in Kyiv, Valery, complained that on the metro people played music so loudly he couldn’t concentrate on his reading.  I thought he was being oversensitive, imagining a Sydney scenario with someone listening to their headset at high volume such that the drum beat resounded slightly in the adjacent seats.  But no, he meant a guy with a ghetto blaster, no headphones, pumping Russian rap at a deafening level, so I discovered.  In general Ukrainians had a high level of noise tolerance; and in Dhaka too I can’t imagine many music-related complaints.  People might tend to enjoy it.

Dhaka possibly doesn’t need the peak hour Kolkata train scenario: those passengers hanging out the door, hanging onto other passengers, one of whom in the inevitable chain has an actual grip on the train itself, though already here the trains feature the air-conditioned top class passengers perched on the roof.  Sydney trains meanwhile document changes in national dietary habits over the decades, in the form of the three-person seats which have somehow reduced over time to fit approximately 2.5. 

The underground metro of Kolkata is a little like Stockholm’s, a tourist attraction, be it for a very different reason.  There’s a really interesting human phenomenon which occurs at the terminus stations.  I saw it several times, what could be called the Dum Dum Phenomenon.  Along the platform at the precise points where the doors of the carriage of the new, empty train are due, people cluster like grapes on an otherwise empty platform.  For the most part they stand politely and quietly.  The train arrives.  At the split second the electric doors open the businessmen commuters transform into something of a rugby scrum, pushing and tiger-wrestling into the carriage in a seat-finding free-for-all.  The best part comes at most fifteen seconds later when the participants are sitting upright and sedate, unfolding newspapers and reading glasses, the absolute model of gentility.  There’s a kind of instantaneous collective amnesia about it: the just completed seat-scramble simply did not happen and is visible only vaguely in the resigned despair on the faces of the businessmen who didn’t push quite hard enough and have to stand. 

The Dum Dum Phenomenon may be a comment on colonialism: the scramble for resources followed by the victor suddenly behaving like an aristocrat.  I suppose it’s better to be orderly but those brief metro scrums are mildly hilarious so perhaps in Dhaka something could be organised irregularly, like a Scrum-Sunday tradition when train boarding decorum is outlawed, to keep things a little boisterous and fun.

In Kolkata they try to keep it clean, the metro, be it a kind of subtropical-clean; and it can’t be easy when you’ve got an enormous black bull taking a rest beside the ticket window.  I certainly wouldn’t like to be in charge of sweeping around him. Clean is an uncontroversial desire for any metro.

I’d like to walk under an inspiring quote from Nazrul, Rabindranath, Sufia Kamal or their fellows at every station entrance; and it’d be nice if the stations featured Bangladeshi architecture on the outside and village-style interior décor.  How about bamboo thatch decoration along the carriage ceilings?  Could there be a section with a tin roof to catch that monsoon rain sound that’s so divine?  Would it be at all convenient to have sitalpati or woven mat upholstery on the seating, which would certainly be cool on the hot days?  And if spitting is not to be banned perhaps each carriage could feature ornamental made-in-Dhamrai brass spittoons in the corner? 

Outside the station entrance it would be nice to see some permanent well-spaced tea shops, also selling fuchka and chatputi snacks, to make the metro a social place, and perhaps each station could reserve room to provide a number of real beds for Dhaka’s homeless people such that they don’t need to sleep on the ground.  Whatever the eventual model, there’s one characteristic from the Tehran metro that doesn’t need emulation.  It’s up and running now and most probably fine.  I’ve not seen it but I do recall in the mid-90s the only thing running in Tehran was the joke about the city’s metro which had been ‘under construction’ for several decades! 

In Tehran they finally got there and so one day will Dhaka.  It’s going to be a tough job trying to incorporate the enormity of Bangladeshi culture into several hundred square metres of platform and a fleet of carriages.  The engineers have it easy.  But for now there’s little to do but head out onto the roads.  For now, there’s only the metro dreaming.




Announcement: "The following metro service is an express service.  First stop is with the knitting ladies in the bowler hats, thence all stations to a promise is a promise, followed by the Russian kitchen revelation.  This metro service will terminate at the village of changing perceptions.  Please enjoy the journey."

This article also published in Star Magazine, here: Metro Dreaming

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