Tag Archive for 'trains'

And here we are again

Ever since I started to neglect my SmokeFree Category on here, I’ve had the feeling I should pick up writing for it again. Well, Ladies and Gentleman, this is the day I’ve been waiting for: Smoke-free, once again. After the last try, which lasted a mere 7 months, my girlfriend and I have decided to say Auf Wiedersehen to blue fog forever (or until they’ve created cigarettes that are dirt-cheap and healthy, but still scratch my throat in that wonderful way I oh so love. Shit, sorry).

No more money spent on things that will go up in smoke. No more smelly clothes, no more being irritated by non-smokers’ disapproving glances and fists (Ok, I’ve never actually been physically attacked, but hey, it could have happened). Which reminds me of that episode from a few days ago, when our lengthy journey from one end of Austria to the other forced us to sit inside a smoke-free train for the better part of a day. Only possibilities to smoke were two stops where the train had about 4 minutes of stay. So when I and a few other desperate smokers made our way outside, I heard a woman exclaiming something to the effect of: “Why make the trains smoke-free, when all it does is make the smokers smoke outside?”

I would have loved to grace that stupid remark with an adequate answer like, say, shoving my pack of cigarettes down her mouth. But I only had four minutes to enjoy my smoke, so I was in haste.

Oh well, from now on, I’ll be the one bitching.

As some sort of farewell present to my smoking days, here’s a bunch of cigarette-images I took over the years:

And again

Berries and cigarettes

Another coffee
Ah, I’m going to miss that combo.

And finally, the most-viewed image in my Flickr stream:
Having a Smoke
I wonder why.

On books on trains

On the trainride to and fro Graz I noticed, as always on trains, quite a bit about the reading patterns of some people. There was this one girl on the ride to Graz, who spent the first ten minutes on the train putting on make-up, until she looked like she wanted to audition for a remake of the classic Nosferatu movie. Unsurprisingly, her reading material consisted of a textbook on anatomy, through which pages she lazily thumbed once in a while. In between she kept staring out of the window, without a doubt contemplating the mysteries of mankind. She also had Sartre’s Les Jeux Sont Faits on the little table in front of her. Only time she touched it was when she put it back into her golden purse (I’m not kidding).

On my ride back a guy sat next to me reading Kafka’s The Castle, and just when I thought I had missed the proclamation of Existentialist day, a guy sat down opposite my seat and pulled out a Bible. What a relief! He was skipping through the pages rather lazily as well, but he looked like he knew the content by heart, contrary to Miss Nosferatu and her anatomy book.

Speaking of the Bible, as I saw this guy leafing through the holiness, I just wondered what the literary market would look like without the Book of Books. Wouldn’t upcoming authors be a lot more motivated? I mean, without the Book of Books, wouldn’t an author actually aspire to write THE book? You know, the book everyone has (not necessarily read, but still, everybody has)?

The way it is now, every budding fantasy author knows that there’s no way they can compete with this winning combination of gore, flaming swords and cruel leadership. Especially if there are thousands of organisations out there pitching the piece to anyone who will listen (or actually just anyone).

Sleepless In Trains

I don’t have much to say today, so I’ll just post a few pictures I shot inside the sleeping compartment when travelling back to Vienna. It was by far the ruddiest compartment I had ever slept in. Which, when used to Austrian trains, means it was really quite extremely ruddy. Oh well. Click the bottles for some gallery fun.

And here’s a reminder to also check out my gallery of photos taken from inside a moving train. Excitement galore!




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