Don't get bored

I don’t like to get bored. Full stop. I don’t known how other peoples like to be, but I like being active. This doesn’t mean that I don’t like to take rest, but I like to spend that actively. After a hard day it’s the best feeling to fall in bed and sleep in already while falling into.

Few months ago I started my new job. At the time I was searching for a job I couldn’t find one in Karlsruhe, so I looked in the bigger area as well. I found a company on Mannheim, they were super friendly and basically I could start in two weeks after the first interview. At that time was not an option to move and luckily the train connection is good between the two cities so I became a daily rider. This means two times 70 km on the ICE trains - the hight-speed train of Deutsche Bahn - which is cruising with 250 km/h between Mannheim and Karlsruhe.

I always considered that inside a city the fastest and cheapest way to travel is biking. So I decided to ride my bike every morning to the train station, catch the train and land in Mannheim, where I can reach the office with a few minutes walk. As for the last years I did not regularly ride a bike the first few weeks were quite uncomfortable, but after I totally enjoyed it. It wakes me totally up, so when I step into the office I am full of energy.

Traveling with the train is fun. I have every morning at least 24 minutes of fun. After a year I still consider it fun. I like to see every morning when the city is waking up, is getting ready for the day, while I ride my bike in the sunrise to the train station. Then travel till the ext stop. 25 minutes and I’m there.

The train station. I find train stations or airports totally interesting places. But not because of the place itself, rather because of the people. You can see so many diverse people there, but everybody has only one goal: reaching A from B as soon as possible. For me this is like when you go on a new place and you see interesting new people and you start to observe them.

You can imagine that not I am the only one who is in this situation, so after a time I friended up with the other daily passengers. I think everybody has his own ritual. With whom is he traveling, where he sits usually and so on.

So at the beginning I was enjoying the ride every morning and evening, but after a while I started to work on the train or I was reading newspapers. But somehow those rides I didn’t really enjoy, they were more of a stress than a 25 time frame when I can think or just relax a bit before I continue my day. First of all I have motion sickness when I am reading while traveling with car or train. I feel totally perfect in the car - even riding while seated opposite the driving direction - until I don’t start reading, but when I do it in 5 minutes I totally motion sick. If I stop it I fell myself better. On the other side while I’ve been working I realized that I can not concentrate on what I was working, while the people around me were much more interesting and observing them was much more fun as work. So I just stopped to read or work.

But what then? I have two times 25 minutes where I am fresh and I could do something. As I mentioned I don’t like to get bored, so I was thinking what could I do. I plan my day, but usually I’m done with that in 5 minutes. Still 45 left.

At one point, just thinking out of my head I started wondering how different stories could have two people who are just sitting next to each other for a trains ride. If the train is crowded, they are maybe sitting really in each others personal aura. Then popped in an idea. What if I could present somehow this feeling, traveling daily with so many different people, which make this ride quite interesting for me. I was convinced that not I am the only one who feels like this.

So I thought about portraits and stories. To present people whom I traveled with. Whom we were companions on a 25 minute train ride. Take a picture every day of somebody who I found interesting during my travel and write few lines about him/her.

This would be a new experience for me, and I knew that this would be fun, and I would not get bored on the train ride.

And then the days were just passing by, and there were always other things that were more important to do. (Even this post was staying in the draft for more weeks). One day my boss came to me and he told me I can travel to India to train some of our new colleagues from there. However India was not the first country where I would liked to travel, I knew I have to say yes to this opportunity. I’ve always wanted to see India, that was definitely on my bucket-list. I quickly connected the previous ideas with India. There probably everyone will be interesting for me. I’m gonna see so many interesting people there, that would be such a miss not to start this blog before I leave. Better, start right when arrive to India. After that things just moved faster and faster and believe me or not, I am here. In India, Hyderabad. It’s the first of May. And I posting right now my first picture with somebody who was around me today. :)