The Unceertain Train Journey

For years I automatically took the car for everything I did, or almost. Over the last seven or eight years that habit has changed as I grew used to walking locally, and catching the train to activities. This shift in habits is due to two things.

The first is that I met with people who take trains. If you meet with such people it makes sense to take a train with them. If you go by car the journey time might be shorter but the goodbye at train stations can be quite brutal. “Goodbye” and that’s it. The activity is over. With the train it’s just as brutal but at least you sat in silence before saying goodbye. When I say silence I mean that you listened as someone else talked.

The second reason is that when you go to a place that is accessible by train, it makes sense to take the train. When you take the car you need to worry about parking, about speed limits, about finding the right route and more. Trains are usually on time, and connections between trains are not too bad.

The question, as an introvert is whether I want to travel for an hour or two to walk with a group, as an introvert and talk little. I keep questioning whether a solo walk wouldn’t be the same.

Exploring new places that I would not think of is nice. It’s good to do things with a group, but I want to find people to do things locally.

I like that when the book group meets up I can walk a few minutes and be there, without a car, train, bus or anything else. I spend too much of my life using cars, trains and buses. It’s nice to be local more often.