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Girl on the train
A few Thursdays ago, on the 18:56 Eurostar from Brussels-Midi to London St. Pancras, an elderly, dyed-in-the-wool trade union activist broadcast his crackpot opinions loudly to his fellow passengers. With a thin strip of table as the only barrier between them, a middle-aged Finnish couple smiled politely as he held forth.
He only paused once, asking them about their itinerary. The wife explained that they had been taking the train with their two children, sitting a few steps away. A commuter train ferried them from their village in Finland to Helsinki. An overnight service took them to Minsk. Another overnight train across the breadth of Poland landed them in Berlin. Then they took a train to Cologne and at lunchtime on the third day, of travel, they changed to the afternoon service to Brussels, where they boarded this very 18:56.
I drew the zig-zagged line of their journey in my mind: struggling with their bags and children, on and off platforms, squeezing through narrow aisles and into seats and sleepers. Three days of effort and travel when a passenger jet could get you from Helsinki to Stansted in just over three hours.
They reminded me of someone I’ve been reading about: the ultimate girl on the train. Another Scandinavian. Greta Thunberg.
Greta, a 16-year-old, pigtailed girl from Stockholm, already has an effect named after her…
