Got a ticket on a runaway train

I was on a couple of trains last Tuesday (6 to be exact, over a period of 14 bloody hours!) & mid way through the trip I rather inopportunely polished off my one and only book (who knew those Yr 9 speed reading classes would come back to bite me on the ass?!), so I started randomly jotting down thoughts on brochures I found around the cabin. Soon tired of this activity as well so there wasn't great reams of text, but I thought I might transfer a bit in here so when I inevitably lose the scrap paper, I'll still have a copy of my delirious ramblings in cyber space somewhere. They're in no particular order - chronological, metaphysical, theological or otherwise.

Germany is bleak & vast & I am not sorry to be easing myself from its steely grasp. It is perhaps strange then, that my 2 favourite of its cities lie to the bitter North - yielding those extremes of climate I protest to find so unbearable today.

Sliding in elevated menace through Berlin, I am once again convinced I could live here simply for the graffiti alone. A restless, dirty, pierced teenager rebelling beautifully against its privileged upbringing. Ecstasy.

A stately, crumbling family manor, all dark curtained corners & fading passages - & there sits the heir, aloft in one of its crowning towers - tattooing her skin with a 50cent pen.

The snow streaked fields point towards Hamburg - a chilly city suits a troubled soul. I am no doubt a little late coming around to Paul Kelly, but I got there in the end. Again that genteel edge, machine forged steel, pricks & teases & jabs as only a German city can. I'm told the region is much derided nationally as harbour to the dimmest of the country's progeny. I can't say, but I suppose I can understand why those to the South might be suspicious of their motives. It's very proximity to Denmark makes me uneasy. But the brooding swell of the Northerly winds & the distant bellow of ships in the port remind one so much of some ancient Gregorian chant, I'm inclined to be seduced by it's shades of mortar again & again.

In case you're interested, the book I devoured on the train was John Steinbeck's 'To A God Unknown' - not usually a big Steinbeck fan, but a friend convinced me to give it a try and I'm glad he did.