The train to Yogyakarta

The best train

We request our driver to stop at the railway station in order to make a reservation for tickets of a train from Bandung to Yogyakarta. Inside the office of Reservasi, we tell the lady at the desk we would like to have tickets for two windows seats. We want to sit opposite of each other at the same window. Opposite not facing the same direction.The lady gets confused, but the driver succeeds to clear the situation. Everybody is happy and smiles a big smile. Early in the morning of the next day,

we go by taxi to the train station. Arriving on the spot, the taxi driver switches off the meter and opens the backdoor pointing at the minimum price for a fare - an amount twice as high as the meter shows. All porters surround the car and laugh out loudly. At the platform, we walk up to the executive train, the best and fastest train on Java, the so called kerata api. We look around reaching for our bags, but they are already taken away by two porters. To get into the train and having no long legs, you almost have to leap decisively. Steps are missing or better, this great leap is the first selection to get on board of an executive train. Poor little ladies. Inside the coach, the porters show us our seats, leaving our luggage and all of a sudden disappearing without a fee. Half a minute later, a French couple comes back searching the place,  because they had lost a  white bag with their valuables it had dropped here on a seat.They travel across Java in a group, the man said to me and mistook this coach for another one. Poor couple, rich porters? This is the second selection criterion to get on board of an executive. Watch out. Checking our seat numbers, we discover the seats are positioned all in the same direction, opposite seats are lacking. A friendly passenger offers his seat, but this proves to be a blind seat, without a view from the window. After some chatting, we get two seats next to each other. The train runs through  the outskirts of Bandung, a sea of houses, wall to wall, a wave of red roofs, a wood of rusted antennae, gradually the first palm trees and rice fields between the houses and finally the first green and blue mountains in the background. After a while I try out the chair. I can put it in an opposite position by turning it around which I stop halfway the turning. Nobody smiles, everybody politely looks away. The train slows down climbing the mountain. The landscape is marvelous, a checkerboard of ricefields, workers with a hat, sheep along the railtrack, small train stations crowded with people. Next, I open the arm of the chair to out-fold the table. The opening is just a hole used as trash bin, the table is missing. Call it multi-functional use or inventiveness. Later I order two black coffee. I had seen the fixed tray under the window. The waiter brings us two high glasses of hot coffee and put it on the tray. The lid keeps the heat inside, so I cannot touch the glass until the coffee is nearly cold. The executive coach is air conditioned. To warm up, I go to the balcony, the only place where it's hot and the wind squeezes inside. Walking back to my seat, I scan the windows of the coach. Ours is a big one, cleaned and well closed without the possibility to turn it open. However, the windows of our original seats on both sides of the coach, left and right, are different. Both have a beautiful spiderweb in the thick glass, a well-formed star and a little hole in the middle, clearly a hole of a bullet. It's taped with a kind of transparent plastic preventing the glass spider to enter the coach. When I bend over, I see the  glass spider sliding over the rice fields. I love the art of improvisation, the tenderness of tinkering, the politeness of the passengers. Clearly, we have the best window,  we got the best seats after all. No complaints, just gratitude and grace, if necessary. And the train runs on.