i spent 3-5 hours with strangers while travelling via train, not even knowing their names at the end

but i learnt that: 

the punk-looking man is actually a very nice person ——although maybe a bit too loud at times—— and likes to laugh generously. he told me about his disastrous travels with the 9€ ticket and how he will take a flight the next time he goes home for Christmas (he had an almost 5 hour delay);

the suicide rate is higher at train stations around Christmas time, which was also the reason why we had huge delays and many trains were cancelled. solemn news, i hope that everyone is okay. however, it was bearable because i got to know the subjects of this post;

the middle-aged lady is a software developer because she saw me looking at programming stuff and asked if i wanted to be a programmer, she also went on to say how happy it makes her feel whenever she sees young women learning to code; and what a cool woman really, she addressed me informally right away;

her son, albeit being around my age, doesn’t like the taste of alcohol and doesn’t understand why people drink them (to which his mother said: i don’t get his logic but it’s good news to me); we also spoke about addiction —— not only about drugs and alcohol —— and how it affects lives (common sense stuff but the occasion called for it) because

there are people who will try to smoke between train stops, even if the halt was just 2-3 Minutes long: for example, the two who were doing just that when we started discussing about it;

there were three Capricorns in our quartet: one born on Dec 31, another on Jan 7, one last one on Jan 8. apparently all of us usually receive one big present instead of two;

a 40 minutes delay didn’t feel so long after 3 hours of waiting at the train station.


“it was nice to meet you, merry Christmas, happy New Year, have a safe trip…”

“…and see you again.”