The Train to Bratislava

I am aware that her and I are no longer moving.  Or the rest of us, for that matter.  Still, I don’t look up.  The fat copy of The Pale King in my hands has only begun to reveal itself to me, and I already know that we must be at the Slovakian border.  They change conductors at international borders.  The thought occupies the organic part of my brain while the machinery elsewhere reads on, and I lose a couple of sentences to the inattention.  Probably would’ve changed my life, and now a few more sentences are sacrificed to solipsism.  I don’t reread them.  David Foster Wallace killed himself.  So did Hemmingway, Hunter S. Thompson, Sylvia Plath.  Petronius, Spalding Gray, and that Pollock who wrote The Painted Bird whose name I can no longer remember.  Do great writers pay higher life insurance premiums?  Is wordsmithing hazardous work?  I can’t help but wonder if the author dying of natural causes curses the lack of control.

She’s pouring over her Julian Barnes like she’s dusting for clues.  The fore edge of her book–that many-fingered appendage opposite the spine–is pristine, while mine is covered in grimy striations, despite me being only sixty pages in.  I’m like a child, perpetually dirty hands, mud caked under my fingernails and buried in creased skin.  The train bursts to life with a distant, breathy, hydraulic exhortation, and Austria falls further behind with gathering pace.  My nose twitches, the faint smell of something just beyond identification.  A fat man–tremendously fat, a mushroom cloud of flesh pouring over the elastic band of his bluejeans–sits next to me.  Dammit.  He used to tuck his paunch in behind his jeans, but he realized 36 waist jeans are much cheaper than 48 waist jeans, so now he lets his expanse spill over.  He did have to buy a new belt, though.  As I pack my book away in what uncharitable souls might call a man-purse, I contemplate the Slovakian countryside.  I sneeze into my cupped hands, and then immediately regret it.  I’ve been trying harder to sneeze into the inner crook of my elbow, in order to minimize the spread of germs.  My nose still itches, and I can feel my sinuses clogged, and I know that whatever plant that lives in Moscow and attacks me all summer long must also live in Central Europe.

The morbidly obese man next to me is starting to bother me.  Fucking whale, I mutter internally, and instantly repent.  The thought is still there, however, and one of the man’s rolls of fat, viscous and veined, is pushing against my elbow and I know he’s mad that I’m taking up any of the armrest and he’s convinced himself that he’s big and I’m small and that he needs the space and I don’t but I want to stand up and scream at him You are a big fat fucking whale.  I continue to feel bad.  We make eye contact, and I smile hollowly.  He has a short stubble beard, and I figure he grew it out to mimic a jawline.  Slovakia is nice, I suppose, but I’ve noticed a pattern regarding the differences between Eastern Europe and Central and Western Europe.  The nice parts of Eastern Europe are just as nice as the nice parts of anything westwards.  However, shitty in Eastern Europe is simply much more commonplace.  Unfair.  Xenophobic.  Culturally relativistic.  The 350-pound man smells like a giant baby.  Talcum powder and wet flatulence.

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The train from Vienna to Bratislava really shouldn’t take this long.  Look at it on a map.  If I were to sneeze in Vienna, there’s a good chance that people in Bratislava would get wet.  Bratislava is the inner crook of Vienna’s elbow.  Or vice-versa, if one is Slovakian and given to offense.  The reason this goddamn train takes so long is that it stops in every cookie-cutter southern suburb of Vienna on its way.  To be fair, though, it only cost fourteen Euro, round-trip, 28 Euro between her and me.  I’m developing a fondness for trains.  It manages to combine cheapness with a complete absence of responsibility.  I just show up on time and keep my hands to myself.  I reach into my man-purse–I admit it, but hey, fuck you–and pull out a beer that was once cold, but is now just wet.  A complete lack of responsibility.

In Berlin, I learned that listening to strangers speak German outside your door is a little bit unnerving.  The guttural nature accented by sharped-edged consonance.  I’ve seen too many World War Two movies, I presume, but if there had been a couple of barking dogs and an air raid siren, I probably would’ve packed my bags and fled for Denmark.  They will smile and ask if they can help.  Probably, I don’t know, they will naturally ask in German.  Their smile will be returned like an overdue movie.  "English?" and the question will sound like an apology.  Their smile will invert and their eyes will cloud over and they will grudgingly answer affirmatively.  After all, if it wasn’t for a couple of stubborn cities to the east, English would be an esoteric tongue spoken by a bunch of Johnny-Come-Latelys on the other side of the world. 

I briefly saw a piebald sausage in a paper tray before it disappeared under a cascade of ketchup, finished off by a flurry of curry powder.  Currywurst, the Berliner’s preferred dish.  I didn’t like most sausages.  I don’t like most sausages.  I enjoy ballpark franks at a baseball stadium, but only because I’ve had four beers.  I buy a hefeweizen and watch its golden clouds swirl about tornadically.  All-in-all, it doesn’t matter what sausage it is.  It could be a human finger–that much ketchup, and anything and everything will taste the same.  She’s in it for the fries, and she tucks jaw-length blonde hair behind her ears, her eyes intent on a German broadcast of a Swiss and Czech playing tennis. 

Berlin lost a lot of its history due to World War Two.  Same with Munich.  In Berlin, the monuments are pockmarked and gouged by seventy year-old bullet-made blemishes.   In Munich, the monuments were rebuilt completely.  The same cannot be said for Prague.  Standing on Charles Bridge, watching the blood red sun backlight the spires of Prague Castle, and you’ll feel like you’re in a fairy tale.  But then you’ll hear people speaking Russian, and German, and Chinese, and Japanese, and, worst of all, American English, and you realize that you have to share your fairy tale.  It bothers for a moment and you’ll rub your temples but then Screw it.  What a beautiful city.

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The train tracks are multiplying, like some impossible meisosis.  The fat man is a stirring bear.  She puts her book away.  We lightly leap from the train to the platform and then gaze around.  We gaze around, knowing where we are, but more than a little lost.  "What is there to do in Bratislava?" she asks, as we exit the train station and head for the river.  I rub my sinuses and laugh.  "Who knows?"

Berlin:

Prague:

Vienna:

Bratislava:

Salzburg:

Munich: