There are some lovely threads here, often opened by Jerry Rasmussen, about those commonplace things, which enrich your life so much. His kitchen table thread is a case in point.
I wonder what your most interesting train journey was? Mine is easy. Some years ago, I was travelling back to England by train from Cologne. At Aachen, a tall, slim, dignified man in his seventies got on the train, after taking leave of a women, whom he addressed in perfect German. It was my very good fortune that he sat opposite me and a conversation opened, which held me enthralled all the way back to London.
He had been visiting Aachen to go back to some old haunts, which he had first come to know during The Battle of the Bulge. He had been a young Military Intelligence officer at the time. Some forty years later, he had just discovered that a word, which had persistently recurred in the German coded messages, was an actual place name.
Doctor John Bitter was actually a musician, who returned after the war, to conduct the Gürzenich Orchestra of Köln. He went on to conduct at La Scala. I asked him why he had given it up and his reply began with the words,"Well, I realised I was never going to get to the top...."
The conversation ranged over the war, music, Shakespeare and a host of other subjects. I helped the seventy eight year old man off the train with his luggage at Victoria and never heard of him again.
I wish I could meet someone that fascinating every time I got on a train! Still, there has been more than one train ride, which was made more interesting by meeting someone.
Does anyone out there have a story?