The sound of silence: A meditative journey on the train

 

From the first locomotives to modern high-speed trains, railways have been a representation of development and innovation, enabling us to travel across great distances and stay connected to the world outside our front door. Today, on the 20^th of March, I embarked on my journey from the beautiful city of Peja to the capital city of Prishtina.

Having been the first time I have been on a a train, and that's why my expectations were so high, yet I still didn’t know what to expect. After arriving at the train station and confirming the time of departure, I went on the train and found a seat. I was very excited as I wanted it to start moving quickly and get to experience the all-so-talked-about train experience. To my surprise, the exterior was far too misleading as I went in. The interior was surprisingly new, and it was decently clean for a public train. It was not overly crowded, which I loved as the train had many compartments, so space was not an issue. The ridership was also somewhat good as it was not completely empty yet there was still quite a bit of space left. Something that stood out to me were the windows, as some of them were shattered from the outside. It is quite unfortunate, as I was informed, it was done by unsupervised kids who took playing with rocks a little too seriously. I hope the adequate authorities take the measures needed to fix this issue, as the windows really were an ugly sight and not something pleasant to look at.

 

Nonetheless, the ride had started and so far so good. I was still analyzing the train and its features because really, I didn’t know what to expect the interior would look like, considering that the Kosovar railway services are outdated and not really used by the population. Time went by and we were reaching more and more stops. I was very confused as to why it needed to stop so many times, as some of the stations had no considerate population surrounding them, and the unnecessary stopping made the already long ride, feel longer somehow. More time passed and truly after a while, due to having so much time you tend to lose yourself in your thoughts and fail to acknowledge what was going on on the train. The thinking definitely continues throughout the ride and I bet a lot of reevaluation of people’s choices in life was done on the train. If I were to have no company, that entire ride would’ve probably been spent thinking, and more thinking. The company definitely helped as time went by quicker with them around, altogether it made the train ride enjoyable as I feel like doing it alone would’ve been harder had I not brought a friend along. Many stations later we had reached our mid-point destination Klina and already an hour or so had passed. At this point, even though the chairs were new and cushioned I was starting to feel sore and tired, I just wanted to arrive already. The ride was full of tunnels which were short but entertaining as it got dark for a split moment and you felt like it was nighttime.     

After a long train ride, we had finally reached our destination, Prishtina, the excitement was unexplainable as we were happy we could finally move and walk. The ride was definitely unforgivable and I recommend everyone to try it at least once.
 

-Epirot Dreshaj