More trains

Trainblogging again, I'm getting good at this. Today's destination is Munich, for a discussion with my partner and his assistants of our Hobbyist project. I haven't managed to push this on as far as I'd hoped, there have been too many distractions and crises in other areas.

I haven't been as good a citizen of the Internets as I should be and would like to be, for the same reason. By the time I get home these days (between nine and ten p.m.) all I want to do is to read a few blogs and go to bed. I have been following your adventures, dear bloggers, even if I haven't been commenting regularly.

But I confess that I haven't been sitting as much as I should, nor even as much as I would theoretically like to do. I notice myself posting the Number on 100 Days as a displacement activity: Can't really not be meditating if I'm still an active part of the group. Pah.

Time, and music. I'm currently reading The Time of our Singing by Richard Powers, a book about time in the Einsteinian sense, music as a profession, and racism as a fact of life in recent American history. One might think of it as a comment on Philip Roth's The Plot against America which I haven't yet read: Why invent a past of repression, oppression and murderous hatred when there was such a past right here in our home town? The foreshadowing is as deep and dark as a solar eclipse, that this tale will not end with a "happily ever after".

Climbing up the box canyon at Geislingen, there is again snow on the ground. Winter is taking a long and drawn-out farewell, like an actress unwilling to leave the stage coming back for curtain call after curtain call, although the audience is applauding only out of politeness and will soon stop altogether.

This is an IC train which has been partially retrofitted, with power points at the tables (but not the normal seat rows) and no music. The man across the aisle from me is watching Mangas on his laptop (not a Mac, it's one of those other things), and I'm amused and pleased to find most of my prejudices confirmed - as far as one can tell without hearing the soundtrack. I wonder whether what I'm doing confirms his prejudices about Mac users?

Leaving Günzburg, the train runs alongside a river that I never notice when riding the ICE's (which don't stop there), where I saw a Nordic Walker striding along the riverbank behind his dog. I haven't mentioned yet that I went Nordic Walking with Slim two weekends ago, when the snow was still deep and treacherously slippery. It's hard work, especially if you take it as seriously as Slim takes nearly everything. She was constantly nagging at me offering helpful advice about my posture and movement, and criticising any other NWs who crossed our path. I enjoyed it, once I got the rhythm and movement sorted out (and no, it is not "just walking with sticks"). It was a good workout, and quite enjoyable, if somewhat too active for either conversation or enjoying the riches of Nature around us.

I should perhaps mention for musically-knowledgeable, romantically inclined non-Germans that the river in Günzburg is in fact the Danube, made famous by Richard Strauss' waltz. Not very blue, but then again it never was. "Poetic license" and all that.

At Oberhausen, the sky is full of crows, a flock of at least fifty heading south across the tracks. We are already (spiritually) in Bavaria here, the church on the hill has a Russian-style silver onion dome. This is an example of cultural cross-fertilization: the German architects and builders whom Peter the Great imported to bring classical architecture to St. Petersburg, saw such domes in Russia and carried the idea back home whem they returned. (Actually, remind me to check that this is true, wouldn't it be funny if it were the other way around and Russia were full of Bavarian churches?)