March 6-7. What is all this?

We hang out with Malte and the other couchsurfers, but they have other plans, so we part. We then work in Café Royal where Mr. Clinton once came (they still brag about it) to enjoy a decent cup of coffee and a wireless thread to our world.

In the afternoon we bargain a taxidriver down to a few hundred rupees to bring us to some obscure station in the outskirts of Mumbai, where we fend off the mosquitos for an hour before boarding our train to Bangalore that will take 24 hours. A twenty-four hour trainride can be hell, or a very relaxing experience. In order to make it the latter, do the following:
- have enough healthy snacks to constitute a substantial dinner. Buy them beforehand;
- after your meal you take a rest. Make yourself comfortable in your blanket (only provided in A/C class so bring your own if you take the normal sleeper class.
- in the morning read a good book or listen to an audiobook on your mp3-player. Then try to have a conversation with the other travelers.
- do some stretching to prevent annoying backpain in your place of destination.

What is all this? You tell me.

Like I told you, twenty-four hours. So this day is a sacrifice on the alter of Mileage.

In the evening we arrive in Bangalore, we find a hotel that is very comfortable and not too cheap; then we take a series of hot showers and fall asleep in front of the television set that is playing U2 videoclips.

October 29. A long train ride.

The next morning I take the train to Diyarbakir. It will take the whole day.

A kid is looking suspicious at my bag. So I take it with me to the toilet, making up some vague excuse to save face. The child is only fifteen and I am obviously misinterpreting his dark staring eyes. This is not a thief. Later he lies down on the overhead luggage rack and sleeps like a baby.

An old toothless man from Diyarbakir, wrapping himself in his old overcoat as he sleeps on his seat looks at me, smiling. The train moves very slow, I estimate the average speed to be 30 km/h.

That is slow enough for a thought about taking another person seriously. Is there any objective criterion we could figure out for this virtue of human understanding? We can try and listen without bias to everything someone has to say. Would that be enough? I should be able to think about this, after long years in philosphy, but I am incompetent. My thinking apparatus is jammed, and the linguistic rendering apparatus is clogged. I can only tell you my raw intuition. There has to be a nonlinear power relation that goes back and forth, entangled, rumpled, intimately dependent. So that implies there must be weakness or affection involved on both sides. You can only take a person seriously if you are affected by what she says, no matter how well you understand her.