Sleeping in trains

Today I held a seminar in a place quite a few hours away. I had to get up a 4:30 am to be there by 9:00. Taxi, train, another train, street car, and then taxi... this is the sequence of transportation I had to take to get there (and then again coming back).

I was sitting in the taxi or train anywhere from 5 minutes to 50 minutes at a time. As you can imagine, this was not enough time to unpack a picnic or dive into a new book. Instead, I dosed away the hours in-and-out of sleep, watched the various commuters get on and off the train every few stations, and listened to bits and pieces of my current audio book.

I was going to write a post about this book, The Once and Future King, but since I probably will not get around to it, here are the absolute highlights:

•  it is 33 hours and 3 minutes long
• the reader, Neville Jason has a very soothing voice (especially for those of us who suffer from insomnia)
• the story is delightful and entertaining, even though I know what is going to happen
• I am very nostalgic about this book since a dear friend of mine and I discovered about 30 years ago that there where numerous version of this book. We went about reading every edition we could find
• it is just a walloping good tale

I loved the whole experience of traveling far (for German standards) just to give a few hours' seminar. Not necessarily something I would do all the time, but it was a fun experience nevertheless.