Business as usual

My business trip sucked for various reasons, not the least of which are my recurring bouts of migraine that have taken on rather hellish proportions at time.

However, on my way back through the Frankfurt pedestrian zone I got a rather beautiful present:



Looks good on cats AND mons!

Wearing that opened a floodgate of people talking to me and soon I had acquired a Romanian guy who - like me - needed to find the train station, - unlike me - explained the parking situation in Bucharest in great detail and exclaimed: "Isn't it wonderful" whenever spying a skyscraper (also unlike me).

Left the Romanian guy at a shop where the shopkeeper offered to beat up any thief who would so much as look at my luggage while I traded some money for a big bottle of water (that I didn't touch during the train ride but which provided ease of mind inasmuch as you know you can always have a drink if you want to which you always want if you have NO bottle of water).

On the train as always there were people yelling at each other - strangely enough they had made peace by Mannheim. That peace was greatly disturbed in Stuttgart when at least 200 old ladies entered the train (and here I roughly use "enter" as in "pirate"). Since all of them were somewhat hard of hearing, the seating arrangements needed to be discussed in earth-shattering volume (only one person had the reservation with the seat numbers and kept yelling them while the ladies swarmed all over the place). Then the crutches needed to be put away (only one lady was tall and spry enough to do that). And when they all had found a seat, they all got up again to gather round one lady who told them dirty jokes about whores (I swear I am not making this up).

Meanwhile, I tried to read How to be good by Nick Hornby *note: is that better, Marco? :)* which I didn't care for that much. That and I did the crossword puzzle in the SZ-Magazin where I just now took part in the competition to win the ATV (look at the ad on the left but don't enter the competition, I want to win, if you win and turn up in front of my apartment with the thing there will be some serious wailing and teeth-gnashing going on).

Then I looked out the window - I enjoy doing that on train rides as opposed to car rides because you do get to see things instead of looking at only bushes and trees. It's like looking at a little model train station with static little people, but these people are actually alive... I always think that's strange - like looking into a window or seeing a snapshot of somebody you don't know doing whatever it is they're doing at the moment. It's like you have something in common for one second; while you're riding the train, they're sitting on a bench / dining / shopping / talking and once that second passes you'll go different ways and never meet again your whole life.

That ties in with another idea that I have which I call:

What's George doing now?

Sometimes I stop in my tracks and think: "What's George Clooney up to now?" and then I look at the watch, try to roughly guess where George is located and what the time difference is and then imagine what he's doing now. "Oh, it's breakfast time - George must just now have opened the fridge to take out milk to pour on his cereal." Or something. Doesn't need to be George - though it originated the one time I watched the live E.R. episode and I KNEW what George was doing at that moment.