Category Slow Routes

At the ticket window I asked for the branch line instead of the direct train, and the woman asked if I was sure. I had three reasons, and only one of them was any good.

Over about an hour the fences outside the window changed from wire to stone, and I watched it happen. Here is the concrete stuff a slow route gives you, and the large amount of it that is useless.

Three buses and five hours to reach a village where I looked at a closed shop, drank a warm bottle of water and turned around. The detour taught me nothing. Slowness does not generate meaning on its own.

Four connections in one day and the only thing I remember is a station cafe with the chairs already stacked. What I learned is that the unit that matters is not distance, it is transitions.

Two trains on the board, one over two hours and one most of the day. I took the long one for no reason except that I had decided I was a person who took the long one.

The bus passed me forty minutes before I reached the town. I arrived hungrier, slower and worse at talking to people, and I also knew things the passengers did not. Both are true.