Bought some train tickets for Brașov. I’d say NBD, but it’s a pretty BD.
This is Brașov, nice and cozy inside the Carpathian arc, southeastern edge of Transylvania.
Of course I’ve never been, where would we be if we took a few hours to see the places that are right there, instead of taking them for granted?
Nevertheless, I must have spent a few thousand hours in train cars. About a thousand would be the conservative estimate corresponding to the years of medical school, during which I’d travel between my hometown and Bucharest 2-5 times a week. I was not enthusiastic about the anatomy lecture at 7 AM on Thursdays — after which we had a huge “window” until late-afternoon’s English lab. To be fair, the anatomy prof always showed up, which can’t be said about the English prof. That kind of unmotivated unannounced absence I still resent (my time perception be warped like that). When that happened, I’d get home pretty defeated (and starving — the train tickets would consume most of my allowance and, seriously, carrying food for the whole day alongside an anatomy atlas etc. is not very practical). Oh, well. Water under the bridges over Dâmbovița.
Not counting a couple of times to Sibiu (once through a peak-summer day), a few dozen times to Craiova. Almost always local trains — not quite the same, functionally, as commuter trains. Those were mostly 5-AMs to and 6-PMs from Bucharest, filled with dazed faces and cigarette smoke, dark and quiet.
Not counting Savannah to Charleston and Memphis to New Orleans on Amtrak.
Not counting Canadian railways — zero hours on those trains. I did have a plan, once upon a lifetime, to travel between Toronto and Montreal (or was it the other way around?) but apparently taking a few days off work was out of the question. I lasted one more month after I was informed of the informal no-vacation policy. Having failed to anticipate that, I had booked flight tickets. Enshittification was not a thing yet, so I was able to get a refund to my account with the airline. That provided a reason to travel back home for the first time after almost a decade of “no, I’m not homesick.”
A possible advantage of alexithymia is that if you don’t know how you feel, you can try convincing yourself that maybe you don’t feel at all.