Reason number 5 why I love europe: trains and staring

To say I've had a great time in France and Switzerland would be a gross understatement. I am about as in my element as possible. I just go around some of one of the most beautiful places in the world all day and see people I adore. And they feed me.

I also get to ride trains AND stare at people. These are two of my favorite things in the whole world. When you combine the two, it's pure ecstasy.

So the other day I was on train from Basel to Bern and I was sitting across the aisle from the most fascinating man ever. He was dressed in older clothes, his pants dirty, and his shoes worn in a great deal due to his severe pronation. He was tall, his hair a wild mess and was surprisingly good-looking. He had his breifcase opened before him on the empty seats he faced. The case was full of what looked like the free magazine ads that come with the newspaper. He was pouring over stacks of them. Next to him were a few scattered plastic sacks and a roll of brown packing tape.

This guy was one strange cookie. He moved seriously and in sharp, jerky motions. I was assessing the smattering of very random objects were strewn across the seats around him when suddenly he broke out a huge pocket knife and I began to see this ecentric man as exactly the kind of guy that would blow up buildings, eat his own clothing, keep journals of everything that left his body, and certainly reach across the aisle and stab a travelling American with a swiss pocket knife. I could practically see the news coverage. CRAZY MAN STABBS YOUNG AMERICAN TOURIST REPEATEDLY WITH POCKET KNIFE, TRIP ENDS IN TRAGEDY FOR DIRECTIONLESS AND NOW MANGLED COLLEGE GRADUATE.

I thought that maybe I'd better move. But it was as though he had cast a dark spell on me and I was glue to my seat and could do nothing but stare as he started cutting up the magazine ads. "This is how I'm going to go. This is really how I'm going to go," I thought. "Stabbed in a train in Switzerland."

He got up and ran to another car and I saw what looked like a nudy magazine on the seat where he was. At least I gathered that from the picture of the woman on the front with no clothes. But this IS Europe. It could have been advertising socks or bicycles.

"This is my chance," I thought. But like I said, the spell was cast and was fated to watch as his work unfolded. Even though he was no longer in the seat, i couldn't rip my eyes from his strewn belongings, from his tattered coat (totally a serial killer coat) to his German computer magazine.

When he returned, he looked right at me and I about peed my pants. Not wanting to provoke Mr. Crazy's attention, I gathered all my strength and looked away. I started staring out my window, but in reality, I was watching him through his reflection in the window so as not to appear that I was staring. He was messing around with the brown packing tape and cutting up the plastic bags into small peices with a pair of scissors. Wearied by his effort, he pulled from a sack at his side a kronoenburg beer and started chugging. Putting down his drink, he began wrapping the plastic bag fragments into rolls and wrapping them further in the brown packing tape making licorice length tubes. He cut them into little pellets and then proceeded to light each one on fire with a little lighter he had. Blowing each out after watching them a burn moment, he eventually tired of that and pulled out his laptop and began surfing the web until the train arrived at Bern.

It was like watching performance art. I couldn't have been happier.