With children by train from Kralupy: A short reflection on the phenomena of our time
It's been a few weeks since we were invited as a family to a party at our friends' place in Kralupy nad Vltavou. Because my husband had work obligations on the other side of the country, he only drove us to the party, said a short hello to the hosts, and then we and the kids had the subsequent merrymaking and the train ride back home on our own. Perhaps that is why we were lucky enough to have an experience that for me was also an interesting life lesson...
Our hostess friend drove us to the station, put us on the train, and hurried back home to attend to the other guests. We settled comfortably on the seats with a nice view and, as it happens after a party, we had fun and joked around. With about two minutes to go, a strange uneasy feeling came over me, still familiar to me mainly from various horror and sci-fi movies. You know that vague, creeping fear that something is wrong - when objectively there is no indication of it?
But my intuition is used to expressing itself quite intensely and it doesn't let itself be silenced. So I asked the children to be quiet for a while and looked around. Everything looked kind of normal - the carriage was about half occupied by people looking at their mobile phones, then there we were, cheered up by the celebration... But there were no lights on, so typical for trains in traffic. Eventually, I noticed a big orange sign saying DO NOT PASS, THIS TRAIN IS NOT FOR DEPARTURE! That's it!
"Excuse me," I addressed my fellow passengers timidly. No response. "Excuse me," so I tried again, louder, while watching the clock on my cell phone relentlessly measuring the time until departure. Panic gripped me. I had no idea where our train would come from, or what would happen if we missed it. It was only when I exchanged the polite "excuse me" for the rather more blunt "hello!" and added a little anger to my voice, that several people looked up from their phones in irritation. "I don't know this place, but I guess we're on the wrong train," I tried to pitch.
"It always runs from here," a male voice settled me down, which was the last straw for me.
"Yeah?!" I blurted out. "Then what's that sign doing there!" I pointed angrily at the orange sign above the door. By now everyone had lifted their heads from their cell phones and started packing up to leave without a word. So I packed up the kids and myself, went into the corridor to get the pram and we caught the right train, arriving slightly late on the second track on the same platform.
"You see," smiled the gentleman who had seated me before, "you have saved us all the journey."
So we rode home from Kralupy in good spirits, and I had the whole evening to reflect on the lessons this slightly adrenaline-filled experience had taught me:
What if we humans looked a little less at our screens and a little more around us? Maybe a lot would have changed for the better...
Is it always okay to stay on the same track? It's nice to have order and your "good old" stereotypes, but sometimes blindly relying on this can backfire...
And in conclusion: it felt really good not to be cornered by a "decent girl" and to speak up. Who knows how the day would have ended for us - and others - if I hadn't done that and kept quiet...
