A short walk to the train station and I'm hopping on the train to Amsterdam; 32 minutes later I'm heading into the city on foot. The fast train always stops in Schiphol, which means I get to observe the airport people pretty often. These include KLM flight attendants dressed in their bright blue suits, grungy tourists nervously asking if they're on the right train, and impatient business types in a rush to jump on a flight or meet a client.
My least favorite part of commuting is pictured here. Some days when I have to head in early, this is what awaits me: A train so crammed with people that it's impossible to sit. Piles of free daily newspapers are handed out at the station and are read in stairwells and discarded in every conceivable place. Still, it makes me feel like part of a community of workers, no matter how lame that sounds.The train commute has become a time to practice my Spanish. I'm hooked on the podcasts produced by Ben and Marina at Notes in Spanish, and I bring along a transcript and follow along. On the way home, when I'm tired to properly exercise my brain, I watch episodes of The Office on my iPod or listen to Dan Savage.
But the best thing about commuting is the psychological distance it provides me from work to home. Even though the minutes sometimes creep by and all I want to do is lay my head on a pillow, it gives me a separation point from the hustle and bustle of Amsterdam to the quiet, sweet city I now look out at every morning. It's a time for self-improvement, a time to decompress, and a time to work on bettering my Snake score. And of course it's a time to observe the fascinating group of people that surround me - individuals that were previously difficult to scrutinize from the vantage point of bicycle.
|