Canadian Pacific Railway

Timezone: UTC-4.

I boarded the train to Vancouver, the “Canadian”. The landscape quickly turned spectacular, and I am looking forward to following it very attentively over the next four days.

I am meeting new people. I had lunch with a Roman Catholic family from Ohio, and good conversations in the bar with various Canadians from all over the place, most with various stories to tell about their European heritage – Dutch and Italian. I got acquainted with a very agreeable Englishman who recently moved to Montreal, a German leftist whose claim was that the AfD are “the Nazis” (debatable, even in the eyes of a Pole). Dinner with retired air traffic controllers – veterans of long-distance rail travel – and an engineer on the Canadian railway.

An evening stop for refueling at a small town. A walking bug bit me very hard from all the sitting, and I charged very swiftly towards the front of the train. As it turned out, I violated a safety restriction: coming up to the refueling tank by passengers is forbidden.

In the midst of this pleasant and friendly chatter, the initiation with Canada's railway and the beauty of its endless landscapes, there is someone I miss very much.