Background of the project:

For several years, I often have had to go to Switzerland by train to give lectures there. It is a train ride of five hours.

I like this time. It is a time of resting, praying, reading, planning and working on my note book. I seldom talk with other travelers, most of the time I deal with myself.Over the years I have developed my own way to manage this journey well.

But for my Art of Life Project, I will find out possibilities for more beauty, more surprises, more relationships.

Description of the process

For my next journey to Switzerland I do not have one specific new plan what I will do but some ideas:

• Not only do my normal jobs.
• Perhaps I will sit down next to a stranger.
• Perhaps I will walk up and down through the train several times being attentive for the situations and for improvisation.

My report is not supposed to be a complete travelogue but to compile the differences compared to previous trips, that what could rudimentarily originate more “beauty”.

During this trip to Switzerland, I only traveled by train until Offenburg where a participant of my seminar gave me a ride for the remaining 150 km to the conference center. In the beginning of the trip, I had some doubts whether an Art of Life project could work out, as I had been content with my way of traveling so far and considered it as pleasant and successful. Would even more “beauty” be possible this time? Without doing anything extraordinary?

I started my trip in Würzburg, my home station. 

There were so many free seats in the cabin that there was no reason – at least for us here in Germany – to sit down next to somebody else.

Only a few people were talking with very low voices. The train was gliding fast and almost soundlessly. Yes, this ICE was one of the most comfortable of the world: adjustable, padded, fashionably upholstered seats, with power sockets, worktable and many more things.

This collective calmness did me good, was what I had always appreciated during my previous trips. Having arrived and rested for a while, I decided to read “So wird’s im Himmel” (“That’s how it’ll be in heaven”), as I did not see any possibility to get into a conversation with other travelers. I had written the manuscript for this humorous little book about how it will be in heaven on my flight home from the US and it had been published in 2007. I had decided lately to think about ways to reflate its sales. For this reason, I wanted to read it again. Its combination of humor and thoughts precious to me gave me great pleasure. I noted down some advertising ideas.

While I was reading, the conductor appeared and asked for my ticket.

For the first time, my secretary had bought an online ticket for me. The conductor pulled my BahnCard through her machine and moved on. Suddenly, she returned. She had been notified that the number of my BahnCard did not correspond to the one indicated on the ticket. Somebody had made a mistake. She kindly tried to make clear to me that this was a problem. She seemed to expect that I would disagree or make waves. To calm her down I just said that she was behaving correctly and that I trusted her. The situation eased. I had to buy a new ticket and to pay for it immediately, of course. She informed me that we could return the old one. No extra charges, no fine but probably deductions.

Thank God, I had pocketed a 100 Euro-note before leaving as I hadn’t had any money in my wallet. Normally, I try not to take too much money with me on business trips but couldn’t find a smaller note that quickly. Now it paid off. For without enough money, I don’t know how we would have solved this problem. I was thankful for the helpful and friendly manner of the conductor and that I had learnt that it was ok to do such mistakes without feeling guilty or getting upset.

Soon we arrived at the big main station of Frankfurt am Main. I had to wait for 50 minutes there.

Already yesterday, I had planned to go to the station bookstall to buy a magazine about “beauty”. It was strange: I had had this idea yesterday and had been quite sure that I would find such a magazine. And in fact, I found even two about this topic: A Geo-issue with the title “The beauty about life” and a Brain & Spirit dossier “Art and Music” with the leading article “Beauty – The laws of aesthetics”. How much time I had spent searching for this in the last weeks! I experienced all this almost as a godly guidance although the reason for it seemed rather unimportant. However, I was pleased with all my heart.

I went early to the platform, left the station concourse in order to take some photos of these venerable concourses made of steel columns and struts.

Suddenly, a man sitting on one of the benches asked me if I was a collector of photos of stations. I denied but asked him back if I could sit down next to him. A lively, interesting conversation developed.

He, born in 1939, knew lots of historical dates, knew even the year in which e.g. the first train drove in Germany. He grew up in Erfurt that was later a part of the GDR and had just visited this city for the first time after 50 years and had seen some places from his schooldays again. We talked about many things, about electrical toy-trains, reconstruction of cities, about trams in Bern, about the punctuality of trains nowadays – our train had just been announced with a delay of ten minutes. He agreed with me that the arrival of trains is probably in many parts of the world not expected as strictly punctual as in Germany. But he added that in Switzerland where he was living the trains were actually punctual to the minute. In this moment, our train arrived and we said goodbye for he had bought a seat reservation. It had been a very refreshing, somehow uplifting conversation, lively, open and creative!

I took my time getting on the train. Normally I try to get in as fast as possible to get hold of an unreserved seat. Not today, this was my “generous” contribution to the Art of Life project. I wanted to see what would happen.

The train was overcrowded but still I surprisingly found – though entering as one of the last ones – a seat at a table for four.

Two Swiss men sitting in front of me were angry at the delay of the train. I asked them whether 10 minutes were a lot. No, both of them answered friendly, but they had already 60 minutes delay because they had to get off their previous train for inexplicable reasons having waited for a while. Good that I had asked, like this I could understand their irritation.

At the next stop, many people apparently wanted to get off or went looking for a better seat. Thus, I suddenly was alone until a new neighbor settled down, a young woman around 40. Around 40 and young, slowly I am growing old I thought!

She seemed uncommunicative and immediately burrowed into her studies. She stayed like this for the whole trip till she got off.

I felt bored and thought that the trip wasn’t better, nicer like this than normally, on the contrary, I missed descending into my laptop and finalizing my tasks bit by bit.

I decided to look out of the window. Outside of the cities I could admire the early autumn, colourful trees between green ones.

Especially the red leaves of the Virginia creeper fascinated me. This year already the first play of colors enthused me, an autumn lover.

Finally again, for in the last years I had been so distracted that I did not manage to appreciate autumn. I had written a rather disillusioning poem about this once, I remembered, that I’d like to squeeze in here:

My friend autumn 2005

This year

Autumn is cancelled

From the corner of our eyes we observe each other

Like two that know each other

And tasted each other

Nothing more

No secret handshake

We trust the supply

Of sweetness inside

This year

Its leaves have to

Fall alone

I appreciate it rarely

Like the beauty of a strange woman

When one is happily married

Next year again

This year, though, the still young play of colors left me so delighted that I was surprised by myself for I did not know me like this. These different shades of brown and red just left me speechless.

When driving again through a bigger city I fetched a book that I had brought for reading. “Thanks!: How Practicing Gratitude Can Make You Happier“  by von Robert A. Emmons, an American psychologist, representative of the so-called Positive Psychology. I have to hold a seminar unit about gratitude in a few weeks. That’s why I was looking for inspiration in this book. The following passage appealed to me the most as I had never heard about this before. Should I believe it?

“I did not yet mention that the heart produces an electromagnetic field. In fact, it of all the organs in the human body produces the biggest rhythmic electromagnetic field. The amplitude of this field is about 60 times bigger than the amplitude of the electric activity of the brain. Apart from that, the magnetic field produced by the heart is 5000 times stronger than the one generated by the brain and can be detected by means of a magnetometer still at some distance from the body – and that in all directions. Motivated by the knowledge that the cardiological field of a human being is influenced by his different emotional conditions, some studies were able to prove that the information sent by it can indeed be received by other human beings. Thus, it is for example possible that in a conversation between two people facing each other the electromagnetic signals of one of the dialogue partners influence the rhythm in the brain of the other one… Then again, this synchronization disappears as soon as stress and fear are involved.” (translation from the german book into English)

A train ride is given time for reading! Reading means more to me than entertainment. Every new thought that appeals to me broadens my world. Sometimes the most simple but new thoughts are breathtaking. Just like the ones above.

At the station in Karlsruhe, I got three new companions at my table, a grandfather with his two grown-up granddaughters. They didn’t say hello, just sat down. The two young ladies played with their mobiles. At first sight, they seemed to be rather simple.

An announcement in the train told us that the train still had to wait a bit longer due to a signal tower problem. Across the lines the passengers started talking to each other suddenly, with loud voices especially those that had already lost lots of time before.

I stayed calm for I had sufficient time left until the beginning of my seminar. I was not yet late. My driver would wait for sure.

Suddenly another announcement told us that we would leave 30 minutes later. Now most people started to make phone calls, also my two neighbors. I realized that I also started to get worried. Another 30 minutes. My time reserve was shrinking. But I did not have a mobile, as a matter of principle.

Thus, I asked my neighbor to borrow me hers against payment what she did kindly. I called my driver who had already been informed at the station in Offenburg where we were supposed to meet and didn’t mind waiting.

Still, I began being short of time and started to pray in order to put this whole matter in God’s hands. Barely having finished my prayer, the train started driving. Too early for God heaving heard my prayer I had to admit. Then it was announced that we had left with a delay of 32 minutes and I realized that the previous announcement had not announced 30 more minutes but had referred to the entire delay of the train. But all the others around me had understood it differently as I could gather from the phone conversations.

Thus, we were happy about the early start although it actually had only been a misunderstanding!

This little crisis including the misunderstanding not everybody was aware of had somehow changed the whole compartment, many more travelers than before were talking and laughing with each other.

Somehow we had all become a community. My table companions as well turned out to be quite talkative.

I looked around in this “solidarity community”:

A young woman helped an elderly couple to find their connecting trains

A mother breast feeding her baby was sitting in the back on the right. The baby was dozing there peacefully. A nice picture I hadn't seen before in 20 years travelling by train, a women breast feeding her child in the compartment.

My former Swiss neighbour, who had found another seat, was engrossed in a calm, seemingly intense conversation.

My neighbours as well seemed much opener and communicative

The compartment had transformed!

Then we were already arriving in Offenburg, my destination station and I had to get off. I thanked once again sincerely for the borrowed mobile. I forgot to tell that I didn’t have to pay anything.

Evaluation

I could easily imagine how I would have experienced this trip in the past, alone on my seat, engrossed in my work behind my laptop, not very interested in the delay of the train, barely in contact with the other people but still happy about all the things I could advance for myself.

Completely different this trip, much more interest in life, connected to it also more restlessness.

It was a new kind of traveling I had tasted. At the moment it did not yet feel much better or nicer than the old one, to be honest. However, I felt that this was the first step in a learning process to turn a train ride more into a work of art.