Woman on train: Why do blind people wear dark glasses?
Me: Because we’re cool!

I had it all researched and planned out. The hotel was across the street from the Brussels central railway station – that’s how I chose the hotel, it certainly wasn’t for its glamorous lobby or it’s Formica Seventies canteen breakfast facility.

But, like most of my plans, it quickly went awry. I had passed through Brussels Midi before and thought I knew its complexities. However, I made the mistake of entering via a side door (the one nearest the hotel Ibis). As soon as I entered the cavernous space I realized that I had made an error of judgement, but, as I am want to do, I pressed on (it never looks cool if you hesitate). After establishing myself in the heart of the beast I realized nothing was at all familiar – I was going to have to ask for help, again! The Help Kiosk was closed. As I was standing, looking helpless, a young gent asked me if I needed assistance, do you need assistance? he asked.

Having been assured by this stranger that someone would come to pick me up and take me to my train I sat down and whiled away the hour that took me past the point of panic. No one turned up to help me. The Help Kiosk was now open, so I tried to explain to the lady in the booth that I was expecting someone to assist me. She made several phone calls and told me to, stand over there, someone will come to help you.

So, I stood, ‘over there’, until ten minutes before my train was due. After reacquainting myself with Help Kiosk lady and suggesting that time wasn’t on our side, a breathless Belgian of indeterminate age rushed me up escalators into lifts and onto a train. He was a lovely old chap and insisted on seeing me to my seat. However, the train carriage was chaos and our path through it, to my assigned seat, was blocked. The train was punctilious and pulled out of the station on time – with me and my new friend. He seemed very jolly and was giggling away as I apologized reminding him that I had insisted he get off in time. No matter, he chuckled as I envisioned learning about his grandparents and/or working my way through pictures of his grandchildren as we whooshed through central Europe together. As it turned out, he had a brief conversation on his walkie talkie and slipped off at Brussels North, ten minutes down the tracks.

The plan was to take this train to Cologne where I would have a relaxed two hours to find the ICE951 to Berlin.

I arrived in Cologne on time and quickly found the Information booth and produced my printout as a fairly basic sign of what I hoped to achieve,

I haf bad news, the man said in near perfect English, your train has a technical problem, you must go to Hamm.

Hamburg, I offered.

No he grinned Hamm, on the train for Frankfurt.

Frankfurt Han, I ventured (I don’t know why, I had been there once). It turns out there is more than one Frankfurt.

He laughed at my simpleton Brexit ways and explained that I would need to go to the same platform as before but I would have to get off in Hamm (wherever that was) and pick up my ICE951 there – I was to look for the 2921. I was so confused that I just thanked him, found a coffee and croissant and went to sit on platform No. 2 with little hope of ever being in Berlin for dinner. In between my Info instructions and my croissant I had caused total chaos in the Gents by trying to feed the entry machine with a two Euro piece instead of one Euro!

It was very cold, and the massive roof of Cologne railway station was leaking. Trains came and went, passengers came and went, until 2921 turned up and I jumped on. I even found the seat number I had printed out on my ticket, although there was someone sitting in it – she moved, but I think she thought I was being a bit pedantic given the circumstances. I clung to my plan despite all the obstacles being placed in my way.

In Hamm I jumped off the train with the crowd and changed platforms (they were adjacent). Our original ICE951 pulled in within a few minutes and everyone jumped on board.

Berlin? I asked a uniformed man.

Yes, he said, but this is first class!

I asked if I should walk to my carriage number but he didn’t think I would make it and urged me to enter his carriage but keep moving once I was safely aboard.

I stumbled the length of that, very long, train passing first class comfort, full dinning tables, and on through the packed carriages until I found a seat somewhere east of Westphalia. I was very stressed, tired, hungry and worried I was about to enter Soviet airspace or even end up in Kabul.

Everyone seemed quite relaxed about the Hamm shuffle but (I assumed) they were young, fit, and sighted. I had just escaped being lost in Prussia and had battered hundreds of dozing passengers as I dragged my case, carriage to carriage, with an outstretched white cane, on an express train that wasn’t waiting for me to find a seat.

I got to Berlin and tumbled out at the Hauptbahnhof and into a taxi. I need a drink, I thought to myself.

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In his epic book Europe: A History, Norman Davis suggests that, ‘… the ambitions of the nation states had ruined every practical enterprise …’ towards a European Movement. In 1945 Europe lay in rubbles, empires had been lost, millions of displaced peoples needed feed and organized. He goes on to say that, ‘[T]he moral dimensions of the post-war European movement are not always remembered’.

As I was reflecting on Liliana Segre’s moving speech to the EU parliament (the one I had been privileged to witness) I struggled to put her words into a Post on a Blog. How could I express how I had felt leaving that debating chamber with competing voices ringing in my head, how could I express my anxieties. Liliana had reminded us that she had not been liberated on 27th January 1945 – she had been subjected to the brutality of, what came to be called, The Death March. She had spoken about seeing all the flags outside the parliament building, and hearing all those voices talking to each other – it hadn’t always been so she said.

That evening, alone, in the bar of a Brussels hotel I started to put together a poetic response [it is still in draft form but] and it will have to suffice as my inadequate response to my experiences of these few days in modern Europe:

Always be that yellow butterfly that flies over the wire*:

In Europe

Part I: precious

To the French speaking mobility assistant on the EuroStar that said I was very independent because I didn’t cling to him, au revoir.

To the middle eastern gent who delivered me to my hotel in Brussels Midi, shukran.

To the Spanish lady who helped me find the entrance to the visitors center at the European Parliament I say, hasta luego,

It’s enough to make me wonder what we split apart..
What do we learn?.

To Natalie at the Hemicycle who got me to my seat in time to hear Liliana, merci beaucoup,

To the Greek woman who guided me out of the debating chamber and put me in a taxi, efharisto.

But mostly to Liliana who told me of the yellow butterflies, and Auschwitz..

Part II: common

Checkpoint Charlie cheated me.
held out the hand of freedom,
rebuilt from rubble, Starbucks across the street.

I’ve heard the Brandenburg concertos,
seen The Wall come down, by desire.
Those moments of opalescence; precious, common and fire.

To the African sounding taxi driver that picked me up when others were looking for that big money fare, ahsante.

To the girl in the coffee shop on Kurfurstendamm who helped me find my way, danke,

To the lady in Warsaw who explained the menu, dziekuje.

To Piotr who helped take my picture at the Sejm, before the policia scared us away, do widzenia.

To the butterfly, the one that flew over the wire.

Part III: fire

Drinking beer in this Berlin bar,
with comfortable stools and complimentary nuts,
survivors words strong in my head.

Her friend had drawn pictures of butterflies,
in a place no-one should forget:
they flew over the wire.

To the children who went on that
March of Death,
To the Kapos in the camps, and the architects, and the
train drivers on the trains out of Westerbork.
To the innocent and guilty and silently weak, to
the powerful and rich and elite …

Before the last of the butterfly die,
before the memories fade,
learn but never forget:

‘Always be that yellow butterfly that flies over the wire’.

NOTES:

• Liliana Sangre (an Auschwitz survivor) spoke to the EU parliament in Brussels on 29th January 2020. On Holocaust Day, 75 years after the liberation of Auschwitz. She told us of her little friend who drew a yellow butterfly flying over the wire fence. Liliana told us that it wasn’t a liberation day for her as her and thousands of others were forcibly marched away to other camps and many died on the way. She closed her very moving presentation by saying, * ‘Always be that yellow butterfly that flies over the fence’.

Sangre has also pointed out (elsewhere) that, ’ … indifference is the supreme guilt …’, and ‘The horrors of yesterday, of today and of tomorrow bloom in the shadow of that word.’

• Opalescence refers to the optical phenomena displayed by the gemstone opal. There are three notable types of opal (precious, common, and fire), each with different optical effects, so the intended meaning varies depending on context.
• Sejm – Polish parliament in Warsaw.
• Policia – Polish police.
• Kapos – Polish prisoners in concentration camps, like Auschwitz, who supervised aspects of camp life in exchange for privileges.
• Camp Westerbrok – a transit point for tens of thousands of Dutch Jews taken from the Netherlands to Auschwitz.

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