Travel for Fun

Sitting there on that train to Koblenz, The Idiot on my lap, I could feel myself becoming lachrymose. And I tried to stop it, I really did, but I was never very good at self-control, and I began to push at the air in hurried little breaths, and water seeped from my eyes straight onto the page that reads: Don’t let us forget that the causes of human actions are usually immeasurably more complex and varied than our subsequent explanations of them. And I tried as best I could to suppress it the minute I suspected stares. Had I been instead on a train in Spain, in Italy, in Greece, the other passengers might have patted my back or embraced me or whispered words of comfort that would be indistinguishable from words of normal conversation but for the tone of voice and look of eyes (that look that makes you feel like a puppy). But I was in fact in Germany, and instead of sympathy all I sensed from the other passengers was embarrassment.