The Possibility of the Train

At the station the destinations rattle around on the departures board until they settle, a list of times and places and platforms that tells hundreds of stories. On line one, the commuter heading home to the suburbs after another day in the city. Had she imagined the hours she would spend on that line, back and forth, back and forth, day after day? On line two a link to the next city, for a football match or to visit and old school friend, waiting at the station. On line three a train that will cross borders, cross continents. That will leave from the bowels of this station with some passengers who will only alight in a couple of days time. It is these that grab the traveller who grew up on an island, at a time and in a place where an international train involved a ferry. WIEN. PRAHA. WARSZAWA. MOSKVA. MINSK.

The same thing happens at home when we flick through the latest copy of the European Rail Timetable and its mix of places, times and symbols. Through service (1st and 2nd class). Couchette car. Snacks and drinks available. Sundays, Saturdays and Bank Holidays. Reservation compulsory. Shipping service. Sleeping car. Frontier station.

The possibility of the train.

Even when we are catching that suburban commuter line to just beyond the city limits, or the regional train to the coast, there is an excitement to be found. It is the freedom of movement, through the carriages to the dining car (if such a thing still exists). It is in the conversations with strangers (when they look up from their mobile phone). It is in the lives observed, over the railway embankment and across the back gardens. She is doing the dishes as the train goes by. He is smoking a fag on the balcony. The football is heading straight for the window. Did it hit or did it miss? We’ll never know. Low bridge. Story frozen.

Familiar journeys take us through landscapes we can see ourselves in. A walk through the woods in the winter that passed beneath this line. A streetcorner where we waited to meet friends before the cinema. A town where we spent a weekend, years ago. New journeys have us staring out of the window, whether it is a flat featureless landscape or the industrial outskirts of a city, the first glimpse of the mountains or the spires of an old town emerging as the train follows the bend of a river. The best thing about the train is that the adventure starts the moment you reach the station. The journey is part of the experience. Even if we are getting off only two stops down the line.

One morning we caught the train to Prague. PRAHA. Even after all these years, a train to another country is something to marvel at. The carriages were Hungarian (as were the waiters in the dining car and the bottles of beer they brought to our table). We sat in a compartment with a young couple, also heading to the Czech capital. Their first weekend away? He was nervous, solicitous. It took her until Dresden to get the annoyance of something her mother had done out of her system. After Dresden we were all looking out of the window as we followed the river. As the train passed through Swiss Saxony and across the border, the Elbe flowing swiftly beside us, we imagined future trips where we would get off before now. To walk in those hills. More possibilities of the train.

I remembered this journey from years ago. Sharing a six pack with a friendly German guy before I could speak his language. It didn’t matter, as his English was good. He was from Hamburg and was on his way to Budapest. The whole way. They still checked your passports then, with suspicious glances under peaked hats at aged faces. The passport stayed in the bag this time, and it was hard to spot the border. On the opposite bank we could see the old checkpoints but for a short while the river was the border and we could not tell at which moment we crossed. There? There? Look, the road signs have changed. The number plates too.

The first glimpse of Prague was spectacular, of the babies crawling up the television tower and the castle emerging above the red roofs of the city centre. I had seen it before, many times. The last time I came we travelled by car, arriving with a stressful drive of missed turnings and one-way streets driven the wrong way, and the rest of the visit was not much better. I had loved Prague, and in those few days, overwhelmed by the crowds and the noise, I lost my feelings for the city. For ten years I did not return. And now, on the train, I felt the excitement of arrival once more. The journey was part of the trip and would prove to be a fine omen. I had my Prague back and it all began in that Hungarian railways compartment. The possibility of the train indeed.

Words: Paul Scraton, Photos: Katrin Schönig

We love trains so much we had a feature devoted to the Night Train in Elsewhere No.02. If you haven’t read it, you can get your hands on a copy via our online shop, where you can also buy sets or subscribe to the journal. Elsewhere Online Shop.

For trip planning and adventures of the imagination, you get your hands on the European Rail Timetable here.

Postcard from... Parkgate

By Paul Scraton:

On the promenade we squeezed past our fellow strollers as we made our way down between the row of parked cars and the sea wall towards the famous ice cream shop. Outside the chippy lads poked at polystyrene trays with wooden forks and through the window of the tea room it was possible to imagine the sound of a tiny spoon landing on china. It was a typical scene at a genteel seaside village, with a view out across the water to the Welsh coast and a hint of the mountains in the clouds beyond. But Parkgate is a little bit different, as seaside villages go, because – despite the fish and chips and the ice cream, and the call of the gulls circling in search of scraps – when you look out from the promenade it is not across an expanse of golden sands, but of waving grass and glassy ponds.

From the 18th century until the 1920s, Parkgate was a popular port – for travellers aiming for Ireland – and seaside resort. Photographs in the ice cream shop showed bathers stepping down from the promenade and onto the sands. But change was coming. As the River Dee silted up, Parkgate became unusable as a port and then, with the spread of colonising grass, the beach became overgrown, gradually transforming into the expanse of marshland between the river and dry land that is what visitors look out across today. Still, the seaside strollers in search of ice cream and chips still make their way to Parkgate, joined by the birdwatchers who come to catch a glimpse of the species that live or pass through the Dee Estuary Nature Reserve.

We stood in a queue for our cones of vanilla or mint choc chip, and then crossed back over the street to the place where passengers were once ferried out to deeper water for the boat to Ireland. Whatever future changes will come to Parkgate, you somehow get the feeling that the ice cream will remain.

Elsewhere No.03, featuring great writing on place, illustration, photography and reviews, is out now and available via our online shop.

Printed Matters: Writing Maps - Write Up Your Street, Writing The Love, Writing People

Writing Maps by Shaun Levin
Words: Marcel Krueger

These days, a good map is hard to find. With a variety of location services installed in smartphones, cars, and even glasses, it seems to me that the art of appreciating and even reading a map is slowly but surely dying. But then maps have never simply portrayed landscape in reality - just look at Tolkien’s self-drawn maps of Middle Earth or Martin Vargic’s Map of the Internet. Maps have always enabled us to understand abstract and imagined facts and ideas, so why not take this up a notch and release maps from their traditional purpose completely?            

Enter Shaun Levin, writer and creative writing teacher. Shaun has published short stories, novellas and non-fiction, and is the founding editor of the literary journal Chroma and the director of Treehouse Press. He also publishes the literary magazine The A3 Review (also as a folded map-like publication) and a series of notebooks featuring writing prompts, with so far three volumes out: City, Food and Family. In 2012, Shaun launched the first in a series of “Writing Maps”, illustrated creative writing prompts to inspire writers on the go. As Shaun states: “Together with some exceptionally talented illustrators, my aim is to create a source of inspiration that draws on my love of writing and the ways it enriches and intensifies our engagement with the world.”

For Elsewhere I’ve reviewed three different maps with city writing as overall topic, named Write Up Your Street (illustrated by Andy Carter), Writing The Love (illustrated by Isik Bagraktar), and Writing People (illustrated by Andrew Sutherland). Each map has a distinct individual style, ranging from monochrome images of buildings in Write Up Your Street - my personal favourite - to the city represented as a colourful beating heart in Bagraktar’s map. All maps contain at least 12 extended writing exercises that will help a writer explore the city and the writing process, plus a reading list and quotes befitting the topic of the respective map. According to Shaun: “Writing Maps are created to suit writers of all genres and levels, and have been devised with adult writers in mind.” Overall 18 writing maps have been published so far, with locations ranging from beaches to art galleries to the body itself.

What I like about the maps is that while they might not lead you to a specific location in your city or neighbourhood, they enable everyone to use every-day surroundings and encounters as writing prompts. One might argue that this is just standard creative writing course material wrapped in fancy paper, but I might beg to differ: for me, any reason to leave the house and go for a stroll is a good one, and if I have a map with me that makes me write - even better. These maps are not the latest in cutting-edge abstract cartography, but lovely little things for anyone who can do with nudge towards creativity on the go. Bring them with you if you are ever stuck with a piece of writing and, to paraphrase Nietzsche, need to conceive some great thoughts while exploring your city.

Published via http://www.writingmaps.com/

Postcard from... Cwm Llan

By Paul Scraton:

From the car park we followed the procession of bank holiday walkers aiming for the top of Snowdon via the Watkin Path. Throughout the day the summit of Yr Wyddfa would remain in clouds, and descending walkers told us of the cold winds on the ridge and poor visibility. We were not aiming that high, just following the path long enough to turn the corner into Cwm Llan and up to the old slate quarries that stand in the shadow of the great mountain. Beneath huge piles of slate we picked our way through the remains of the old barrack buildings, standing solid-if-roofless on the boggy ground.

We tried to imagine what life was like for those working these quarries high in the mountains, tried to imagine the working conditions and the weather, but we failed. We could read about it, learn of the low wages and the poor life expectancy, but there would still be a gap in our understanding. We headed back down via the old tramway that had moved the slate down off the mountain to where it could be transported on to Porthmadog. It was a reminder that even the “wild places” of Britain are shaped by human hands… or the sheep they release to graze there.

Elsewhere No.03 is out now - order your copy via our online shop.