Refinery

by Susan Weber

The woman with a headscarf disembarked several stops ago. A mother and her teenage boys sit with me. They’re speaking Swiss German dialect, that happy coincidence of melody, gutturals, and cadence. I don’t get to listen long. Like others around us, they sink into their phones. It’s hot in here.

“Hey! Hey!” comes a warbled cry from the far end of the car. Amidst head turning and discussion, the mother in my cubicle translates the news into German for me. A woman’s purse was snatched. Did she get it back? No, the thief ran off the train. Passengers return to their phones.

In Bern my threesome gets off, more people stream in. Asian teenagers overflow the compartment next to mine. A man with a briefcase, maintaining eye contact with his phone, takes the seat across from me. I give a silent tip of the hat to the gracious man back in Geneva whose GPS got me on the train.

A rosy cheeked pair approaches. The gentleman sits beside me, planting his cane between his legs. He has a small bandage, square and neat, just above a tuft of white brow. His breathless companion rolls up the sleeves of her track suit before she sits. To no one in particular she comments on the heat, pushing limp strands from her forehead. When I commiserate in German, she switches from dialect and says the climate control has failed us this summer.

“Dreadful,” she says, mopping her neck with a tissue. “But we have to make the best of it. What else can we do?”

“If we don’t drink, we look like this,” the gentleman tells me, his face flushed, drooping his shoulders for effect. “It makes sense the flowers wilt.” The German he speaks has the playfulness of dialect.

The woman nods at him and, after a pause, turns back to me. “What brings you to Switzerland?”

I tell them I’m Swiss American. Tomorrow I'll visit my father’s place of birth. She compliments my German and nods for me to continue.

“He was born in the canton of Thurgau and soon after, emigrated with his family to the U.S. There he lived to be ninety three,” I say.

“I am eighty nine,” says the man. The woman takes a breath as though about to change the subject, but the man speaks first. “My home is in Thurgau, where I was also born.” Something in his pleased face says we’ve just exchanged the secret Thurgauan handshake.

She wants to talk about Swiss National Day, coming up next week. In her native Austria, National Day is a somber affair. Speeches and parades, that sort of thing. But the Swiss do it right—bonfires, lanterns, games, fireworks. “It’s about Swiss independence,” she says. “Centuries ago!”

“Seven hundred twenty eight years ago, in Rütli,” says the man.

She nods briefly. “Austria’s National Day is linked to World War II, with a finger in the air to say (she wags her finger), ‘Never again!’ It’s all very political.” She shows me pictures of their morning hike by a turquoise lake. She says—more command than question—that I might like to go there one day. “I don’t have a kind word to say about Trump and the danger he is to the world,” she adds, putting her phone away. I look at her and blink.

The Asian teenager in the next section has turned up the volume on his phone. His friends laugh and jostle to the music. Several women around the car, as if conducting a practiced military drill, order the boy to turn it off. The Austrian woman, red-faced and louder than the others, stands and pivots as though she might grab the offending device and throw it off the train. Her nemesis mutes the sound, exchanging smirks and non-compliant laughter with his friends.

“So respect-less,” she says in English, sitting down hard with a furious roll of her eyes. She counts me among the righteous few who value rule of law—of this I have no doubt.

Says the man in lilting German to the world at large, “Just talk to people everywhere and keep your humor.” She leans across to check his bandage, the tension in the car a watchful lull.

We roll through villages and factories outside Zürich. The train yards are covered in graffiti. In Rupperswil, my countryman points out one of the two sugar refineries in all of Switzerland. “The other one,” he says, “is in Thurgau.”

The next day before dawn I’m in the hotel café with a long table to myself, a coffee at my elbow, pen in hand to write about the people on the train. It’s already warm here. A family brings breakfast trays to the far end of my encampment. His English is American, hers overlaid with Swiss German. Their daughter speaks English to him, dialect to the mother. The dad’s recurring theme is how smart he was to book a hotel near the airport. One less night with Ingram and her yappy dog, no hectic drive to catch an early flight—and cheap! The woman says how stupid she is to have left both charging cables at home. They’ll pay airport prices for a new one—so dumb! She butters a brötchen saying breakfast is good—for a place like this. I move to the outdoor tables.

In the courtyard, Indian or Pakistani parents at the next table double as a human climbing gym. They smile at their athletic toddler and at me, when they see I’m watching. Don’t I like them better than the group inside? I put down my pen—now it’s me I’m watching.

Europe this summer is a confluence of marinated, slow-cooked travelers. None of us would say we’re at our all time best. I’ve been shown much kindness—by a woman with a headscarf, a man with GPS, a gent with lilting humor, and by his ruddy companion, keen to share the beauty of a turquoise lake. I would like to emulate their good intent. I get a fresh coffee, and wait for the sun to rise.

Photo Susan Weber CC BY-SA 4.0