Tango in the train

It is early morning; the fast train is full to its limits as always at this time. After forty minutes of transportation standing up next to what appears to be homeless guy with a strong odor, the train stops, and not because we have reached our destination unfortunately. After five minutes an announcement is being made letting us know that there is some kind of error delaying us twenty minutes. I can’t help but think that the train is a bitch. Thinking this, I now realize that the train is more than a mere vehicle running on rails. Having commuted for the past four years over distances of at least an hour by train, the train seizes to exist only as a mean of transportation for me. Hundreds of hours I have spent watching the landscape pass by in al haste to reach my destination. Going back and forth to Odense and Copenhagen from the geographical center of my life, Slagelse, the time spent in the train consumes a great deal of my hours during a week. The train has become this familiar, fickle friend you know is always late and whom I see on a regular basis. We spend time together and sometimes we even get mad at each other, or maybe just me. From time to another the train is a bitch, all seats taken and no other available spot, other than standing next to a smelly armpit at five in the afternoon. But it is also my office desk where ideas aspire and are put to words, where concentration is available. Making my way to the University of Copenhagen, an hour and a half away, I initiate this, because this is what the train does. It forces me to do something whatever it might be, be it sleeping, texting or writing this. And why is that? As the train has become a friend of mine during the years, I have familiarized it, I have habituated myself. The process of familiarization have been underway for a long time. Habituation or domestication of a public space is an art. Entering the train I have bought a ticket, essentially meaning that I bought a part of the train. Though I never have ticket for a seat, which is an addition, I consider it my right to claim a seat anyway. But why is the seat of importance, is it mere laziness? No, the seat is a part of domesticating the train. It is a dance, the continuous search and claim of space when riding the train. The fight for space even begins before the space is present. As the train slows down to stop, people on the platform follow the doors on the train, in order to get onto the train the fastest – and first. Entering the train the seats available closest to the doors are taken first, rarely people will dare to pass an empty seat, in the pursuit of yet a better spot. And so we dance. Having found a seat – or not, domestication begins. Sitting next to another person, the question of who has the right over armrest arises. But I fall asleep, the dance is over. It takes two to tango.