Watching the world go by

We had breakfast this morning with a man from Kent, England, who loves travelling by train as much as we do.  He says that when you fly,  you spend all your time in the cities.  When you travel by train, though, he says, you get to see the whole of a place.  You sit in your seat and watch the world go by.

Train travel is very sociable, and remarkably egalitarian.  It pretty well has to be.  The accommodation, even the two person bedroom we have, is very small - VERY small.  So the suitcase we bring on board is equally small.  Which means that we pretty much wear the same clothes every day.  Not much opportunity to show off your designer duds.  And even if you just happened to bring those fancy clothes, there's no place to hang them.  Tom and I fold up our clothes each night and place them in a pile on the floor just inside our room door, the only place we don't step between the beds and the bathroom.  By day three, everyone looks a little rumpled.

And then there's the shower.  There's one in each car that we all share, and we time our rising, not by the breakfast schedule, but by how many people are likely to be ahead of us for the shower.  I'm thinking 5:00 am tomorrow, before our 9:30 am scheduled arrival in Toronto, to beat the crowd.

Mealtimes are a chance to meet new people, as every table in the dining car seats four people, and every table is filled. We have a warm and interesting group of passengers on board.  There's Jan and Bob from Eugene, Oregon - a warm, witty woman and fellow knitter, and an engaging and amusing fellow who trades wisecracks and puns with Tom.  There's Brian and Lynn from Manchester, in Canada for the first time.  We felt it to be an hospitable touch to introduce Brian to that quintessential Canadian drink, the Bloody Caesar (that spelling just doesn't look right).  He confessed the it was not something he would likely order on his own,  but admitted it was "interesting".  David, from Vancouver, has a featherweight CPAP machine half the size of Tom's.   Krystal and Kristoff are mother and son troubadours from Petawawa, Ontario,  paying their passage by playing for the guests, she on the violin and he on the bassoon. Oh, yes, and Kristoff is studying nano technology at the University of Waterloo.  Then there's Celene from Portland,  Oregon, also a knitter - of socks - who never heard of the Sock Summit!  That was held in Portland!  Twice!

And the fellow from Kent - he stopped by this afternoon to tell us that he's decided to take that Winnipeg to Churchill train trip we told him about!