Terrestrial Engine Travel

So here we are again at a train station waiting for a long haul trip to the west. I never knew that I had this ongoing platonic relationship with trains. 

I've occasionally taken the LRT or MRT in Manila---I remember typhoon Ondoy when I was stranded overnight at work because of waist-deep flood (add to that the horrid feeling that my family was at home trying to raise floor furniture and whatnot) and braved the rat urine-infested floodwaters to get to the nearest LRT or MRT to get home.

Flashback further in the past and I'm in Osaka riding the bullet train to go to Hiroshima on an exchange student program in Japan. I blended well physically--I looked legitimately Japanese--however, I was with a group. We were an entourage of 4 uniformed girls accompanying our Principal who was a nun. The bullet train was superb.

Fastforward to 2009 when I found myself trying to figure out the intricate web of train platforms in Copenhagen when, during winter at that time, for some reason--commuters smelled of beer. Probably Carlsberg. Which I grew to love. The trains too. And the whole adventure of reading station signs and street signs with a sequence of accented vowels.

Now here. At Union station in Toronto. Where it feels like an airport. That's the developed world for ya. I'm pretty sure that people who have not gone outside of the first world comforts may think of a litany of complaints about this station. 

Cynthia Alexander's song comes to mind: "I have seen, I have been to places far and deep in my mind only to find comfort in your strangeness."