It Could be Sarospatak or Anywhere...

It Could be Sarospatak or Anywhere...

A friend visited me recently, shortly before his visit I'd

collected my photos of trains, trams and stations into one file and on an impulse had shared it with him. During his visit he made it clear that he, and the members of his railway enthusiast club, had no interest in my 'holiday snapshots' whatsoever. 
It didn't surprise me. I'd  deliberately not provided any numbers, no names, dates, timetables, locomotive or rolling stock details.

It was clear that, despite a romantic connection with a recently retired train unit, his interest in railways ends pretty much where mine begins. 

I do like trains and station architecture, I was, as a boy, a trainspotter but public transport would not exist if there were no public to be transported. Trains, boats, planes and waiting rooms are  where stories happen. They have their own histories, they are an important part of our cultures but it's people who make history. Without a context a locomotive, 
or airplane, however well designed and engineered, is just a collection of metal and plastic.

Bus and train stations, air terminals, harbours and motorway service stations provide the stages for endless dramas. Trains, boats and planes are the tools that move the action along. This is the idea behind the Dutch television program 'Hallo, Goodbye'. At Schipol, Amsterdam's busy international airport, there is no shortage of stories. People are interviewed at the arrival or departure gates, it's all a bit too sentimental for my taste but nonetheless a simple and good concept. 

Far away from the chaos of busy international air terminals and TV cameras, on remote stations or all-night motorway cafés there are no explanations, the stories are therefore that much more mysterious, more intriguing. In desolate airport lounges or draughty waiting rooms you witness small slices of lives, excerpts with no beginnings and no endings, raising questions but no answers,  only speculation.  

Forget your own discomforts for a moment, the bleakness, the icy cold wind, the lack of coffee. Look around and let your imagination run free.

A grandmother and a small girl standing each side of a double bass.... an ideally unsuited backpacker couple, she dressed like a Barbie doll, he like a scarecrow.... an old man wearing bedroom slippers is reading a three day old newspaper... a younger man is either seriously ill or just returning from the mother of all stag nights...a family eating an improvised meal are dressed up in their finest Sunday clothes...a man looks so much like a spy he couldn't possibly be one... a beautiful young woman is sitting alone in a corner of the shabby waiting room looking like she could burst into tears at any moment...

or … the place is deserted. there's nobody around, not even staff. Has something happened? Is something about to happen? Does anything ever happen?

No facts, no figures but plenty of fuel for fiction and fantasy.

Oh - and don't worry - if you're not much of a traveller, a trip to obscure places with strange sounding names may not be neccessary.

Just a couple of years ago the central station in our town was reconstructed. The city council and the national railway company were obviously aware of the dramatic potential of the project. It cost millions but for that price the architect managed to provide the platforms and the adjoining bus station with just enough of a cold, windswept, bleak and dreary atmosphere to inspire any would be writer or storyteller. Or for the beginning of a 'feel bad' movie.