A Woman in a Train Station is Talking
She is talking to herself. She is talking to you.
Last summer - give or take a few months - I was sweating through a milkshake in a poorly air-conditioned and uncharacteristically dingy Upper-East diner. Darcey had just come down on the AmTrak from Boston to meet me for a weekend. We were both shvitzing - we’d dumped her bags in my room and raced to find any building or beverage to fend off the heat, which is why we’d ended up at so a mediocre a location. Darcey barely noticed though - she was quietly frenetic off of her trip into the city, eyes wide and bright – ‘There’s just something about a train journey,’ she had said. ‘There’s just something about it.’
A year into travelling back and forth from Edinburgh, I couldn’t disagree. Even now, halfway through my degree, my skin crawls when I start considering all the vomit I’ve spewed onto notes app pages, word documents, emails I don’t send. I literally shudder to think of the countless passengers sitting next to me, sneaking a glance at my most pathetic and detailed traumas. Seriously - if you want to get me talking about my childhood, get me on that train, baby!
Right now, I’m about to get on a train to Lille. We stop for an hour, I’ll have to somehow scramble my way to a different station, and then, I’ll be on my way to Calais. Between now and then, I’ve got six hours to kill. And I’m thinking – the way I do every time I get on one – about what Darcey said. I don’t know what it is but, I have to admit: there’s just something about a train.
Part of it must just be that it forces you to stay static for a long time. Not to get all, we live in a society, but like, it’s increasingly rare to get a good few hours sans service, wi-fi, et al. You’re forced to physically sit in one place for an extended period of time, but you also know that you’re actually travelling a great distance. You can’t help but think about where you were and where you’re going. It starts with Point A to Point B, and ends with sobs in a grimy, gently shaking bathroom as you realise that you used to feel like an adult in a child’s body but now you feel like a child in an adult’s body. Or whatever. For me (and Darcey), a train journey has always served as a purposeful mandate for existential reflection.
I’ve already taken two different car rides and a tram to get here - technically, my journey started at 7:15 this morning, and won’t be over until 10 tonight. But right now I have an hour or so to kill, and so I sit in the Montpellier station, softly murmuring these sentences out loud, praying that no one around is too fluent in English.* The usual choke in my throat that forms my travel anxiety is present, sure - not being able to speak French definitely adds a certain panache. I’m glancing up every thirty seconds or so to check that my train hasn’t magically disappeared. I can’t give my full attention to Hamnet, which is a true tragedy, because it’s one of the most gorgeously written pieces of prose I’ve gotten my hands on in years. So, I’ve given up on reading, and am going back to my second favourite pastime: talking about myself.
First of all: where have I been? Truth be told, I was supposed to stay an extra week a La Coutarie. I moved my journey up a week - I couldn’t really tell you why. I really loved the farm, and I really enjoyed my time there. But there was a day last week when I woke up and looked at the flowers on my desk and realised that they had dried out. And I knew that it meant that it was time to get on a train again. I’ve sat with myself long enough - it’s time to wrench myself out of the navel-gazing trench, and start looking forward again.
Where am I going? To Calais; to do some volunteering. I can’t really see myself writing about it - I think trying to keep a vaguely (vaguely) upbeat tone to a newsletter on the migrant crisis is not exactly the vibe. If the next substack article is titled Poverty Tourism: Sending Love from Traumatised Families! You’ll know something is up. But hey - I’m back on the 16th of June, and if you wanna know what it was like, we can hang out and I’ll tell you all about it.
Where am I now? Ok, rode out the clock and just got on the train. Lowkey obsessed because it’s a double-decker, and I’m on the top watching the French countryside fly by. It’s 5 minutes past 2, and I’m on here until 7pm. There’s a baby crying in my carriage, because of course there is, but I’m hoping the French people around me will be more visibly disapproving so that I don’t have to be the bad guy. In a few minutes, I’m going to put on my songs i listen to mourning my lost youth playlist (SHAMELESS spotify plug obvi), and fully commit to my music video moment. Just the girlie vibe of feeling like everything is the way it has always been and also that nothing will ever be the same again. Why does growing up feel like tearing apart?
So… what’s next for MädChen? Will I ever change the name to something less cringey? (Probably not, sorry everyone!) I think I’m just going to keep writing little things for now, and see what happens. As we all know, there’s nothing I love more than the sound of my own voice, and so I’ll probably just put up little stories if something interesting happens to me, or little pieces of prose that I pour my heart into and then pretend that I had no emotional investment in if you ask me about it in real life. Maybe a bit of fashion commentary, maybe a trend forecast or two - you never really know with MädChen…
But basically, I’m done with my goat farm updates lols, so if you were just here for goat content (incredibly valid) this is the end of the road for you and MädChen, I’m afraid. This is the last of my travel updates (if you can call this a travel update). Otherwise, put your gorg little email address in this incredibly convenient box I’ve provided below, and maybe, every so often, you’ll get an email or two!
*Terrible habit but if I don’t read what I’ve written out loud after writing it, it literally will not make grammatical sense lol