Trains

In many ways I can call myself a railway child - both grandfathers worked on the railways in some capacity, and I've always enjoyed travelling by train far more than any other form of travel.

In a way, all travel is little capsule of people moving through time and space, but for me trains are even more so than buses, cars or planes. On trains, especially long distance trains, you can travel in your own space, the compartment, where you are able to spread yourself out the way you never can on a plane (even in first class) or a bus.

Of course, on metro trains (the ones who serve a city either as a subway or above ground), that does not exist, but still each car has an own dynamic, not similar to the other cars on the train simply because of the people who inhabit it, however briefly.

From where I currently live, a little village close to the west coast of South Korea, an hours bus ride will bring me to either Suwon or Banwol, from which I can enter the metro system of Seoul. From Banwol I catch a train on line 4 - above ground as far as Geumjong, then subway for the rest of the route, while from Suwon I have an above ground option on line 1, or the Mugungwha KTR train to Seoul station or down to Busan etc.

I have caught the KTX from Seoul to Busan three times now, and experienced how truly relative speed is - 300 km/h does not feel like that when you are sitting in a comfortable seat, watching the landscape roll by. Unless you focus on the ground next to the train, you do not get an impression of speed, simply of movement.

One of the things I've experienced a lot on the subway and metro trains is the reaction of small Korean children to the foreigner - especially to my blue eyes. Some duck their heads and try to crawl to safety in their parents laps and bosoms, others stare with wide-eyed wonder, still others will give me smile and play a game of peek-a-boo and some start talking to their parents about this stranger in their midst.

The worst, and most surreal, was a group of boys, about 11 to 14 in age, who were in the next car to the one I was in. The train was crowded, and I was standing next to the door between carriages, which happened to have quite a large window in it on this line. The boys were up agains the door on the other side, and, when I noticed them, were surreptitiously giving me the finger.

The surreptitiousness was shielding their action from the people in the carriage with them, while trying to get me to see what they were doing. They did not, however, expect my action - I tore open both doors and as they scattered before my wrath, let them have it in my best teachers voice: 'You have brought shame on your houses.'

In future posts I'll take you back in time to the years spent travelling around South Africa by train, and share some more absurd and magical moments with you.