Thu.12.Oct-14:10 (Onboard a Deutsche Bahn regional train in Landkreis Oder-Spree, between Berlin and the Polish border) // Low gray clouds spit mist, and all the pavements are wet and reflective. I can hear freeway rush nearby when the doors open at stations, louder the closer we get to the Tesla factory. Inside the train it is clean and dry, and a young man deafens himself by suavely blasting German trap through earbuds. Occasionally his chill vibe is harshed by an add for online gambling, but the volume stays at gun range level. Poor guy.
Fri.13.Oct-07:30 (Warsaw West bus station) // Transferring in Warsaw was an awkward dream; a big box of a station with pedestrian underpasses, som3 taped off with flickering fluorescent lights, a dignified but well-worn facility of smooth charcoal/tan concrete. Bus station breakfast time air is a colloidal suspension of 63% bacon vapor, 29% atomized cleaning fluid, and 9% warm bread. I tried to order a coffee an alcove a few tables partitioned from the waiting hall by transparent yellow plastic strips but my Polish failed me, so I gave up and tapped my card on one of the beverage automats lining the wall.
There was an oddly pale flatscreen TV — a faulty HDMI cable with a broken red channel pin? I watched the state-run TV broadcast scary insinuations about a recent wave of migrants, faces of worried-officials technocrats cut with grainy footage of people in puffy jackets dragging roller suitcases across a wet-looking forest behind a razor wire fence. (It was this.) Two bored old men pointed at the screen, muttering to each other. We all sipped our automat coffee.
Fri.13.Oct-09:48-16:00 (Onboard the Warsaw-Lviv express bus about 100 km north of Lubin) // A mostly-flat rural expanse. The sunrise was golden on the freeway through Warsaw but we drove straight into a rainstorm and it has been low-contrast cloudwash since then. I have time to think, and write, and set up live audio scenarios for the clip launchers at my shows.
We got through Polish exit control and Ukrainian entrance control faster than I expected. The landscape doesn’t change much, but some basement windows have sandbags stacked against them and I see a few burned-out farmhouses. I was surprised to see signs of the bombardment of Lviv so immediately. But the mood on the bus is cheerful; an Italian young man seated next to me tells me that he is on his way to meet a friend he met a few months ago at university who had to return home. He doesn’t get specific, but the way he talks about her makes it seems like he cares for her very much her. “I’m Luigi!” he said, holding up a wallet charm of the Nintendo character namesake. “In case you forget my name, just remember this!’
I hope he and Sofia are having a wonderful time.