They didn't come

[topum]

We were on a train crossing Romania from east to west (don't do this it really sucks, drive instead). The train stopped in this bleak small town only for three minutes very early in the morning. It was cold, wet and grey and the station was really run down, depressing and almost empty. This old guy was standing there, his head and hands shaking, scanning the train from the front to the end and back anxiously trying to see if anybody was getting off the train. Nobody did and as soon the train started moving he walked away with his two walking sticks, dragging his left foot a bit every third step or so.



I called granddad in a couple of hours and got "What is it about? I can't really talk now, we are driving to Gothenburg today and had to leave the house two hours ago but your grandmother is not being easy about this as usual so I am going through some intense stuff here now so that we can bloody leave already." That was great to hear.

Comments

[bunn.livejournal.com]

Oh, that is so sad. I don't know why you say you don't like writing and then go and post an utterly heartbreaking mini-story like that!

[beautesauvage13.livejournal.com]

That's sad.  Poor guy. 

Hopefully who ever he was waiting for calls him to tell him why they didn't show. 

Athena

[sagittariusbun.livejournal.com]

Our town is like that too. If you live in the old part of town as I do, you can hear GO trains and freight trains in the distance.

[snailbones.livejournal.com]

It's such an atmospheric picture anyway, and then I read your caption for it - just so sad and beautiful, all at once.

[topum.livejournal.com]

Later in our trip to Romania I told one of our hosts about this guy and he told us about the guy in their village who goes to the train station every day to see if his children came to visit him. He doesn't have a mobile and does not want to have one, partly because then he would definitely know that they would not be coming and his whole life after his wife died was built around going to the station every day. He just cannot stand to be completely alone in that house. So every morning he puts on his best trousers and his jacket and his hat, takes his two walking sticks and goes to the train station "to meet his children and grandchildren who are coming to visit him". He has to cross his village first and he tells everyone he meets on his way that he is going to the station because his children might come today. It takes him a while to get to the station, it is not that close. The train stops there for less than two minutes. His kids never come, they work in Ireland and France, they are very busy, "they chase their American dreams" the story teller told us, his grandchildren speak English and French as their first languages. He sits at the station for a while after the train departs and has some rest preparing for the long trip back home. He tells everyone he meets on his way back that his children didn't come today but they might come tomorrow. He comes home and thoroughly cleans and irons his trousers and his jacket (the road to the station is dusty) to be ready to go to the station tomorrow. That jacket is more than half a century old but it is spotless.

We visited the guy, he is a complete gentleman and has the clarity of mind of a 30 year old about everything except this going to the station glitch. He showed us old pictures of his deceased wife, his children and his grandchildren as babies. He raised a lot of of kids and has even more grandkids. They do not like his kids in the village. What people said about them was translated to us as "it is just some very bad swear words".

We received an email from our host in that village a couple of months ago. Among other things he told us that Harlampie fell on his way back from the station and could not get back on his feet. When the villagers saw that he was not coming back they ran to the station, found him and brought him back home. He cannot walk to the station anymore, it is way too far for him. The villagers know that going to that station is the only thing that keeps him alive so they have a schedule to take him there and back every day, usually in a horse-driven cart. Some days it is very inconvenient for them, they are very busy there and don't really have spare cars or carts in the village especially during the busy agricultural season so they try to reason with him on those busy days and offer him to call his children to confirm whether they are coming or not but he does not let anyone do that because "they are very busy, it is not easy for them". Every morning he stands there next to his gates immaculately dressed waiting for someone to pick him up and take him to the station.

I am very accustomed to the stories on how big a "catastrophe" mass immigration has been for Denmark, Britain, Norway, etc. If I could write even a little bit I would tell the story we don't hear that often, about the catastrophe and complete devastation mass emigration behind that mass immigration caused in some parts of Europe. Ours has nothing on theirs, that's where the real catastrophe happened. The more I learn about why and how exactly this has been happening, the more fascinated I am by this. And don't get me started on Moldova, it is very close to becoming the first country in Europe to cease existing because of mass emigration.

[topum.livejournal.com]

He probably doesn't have a phone. See my answer to the comment above yours about another guy like this and why he does not want to have a phone.

[topum.livejournal.com]

We were surrounded by stories like this in Romania's villages and even more here in Moldova.

[beautesauvage13.livejournal.com]

Wow.  That's sad that his children live so far away that they can't visit him regularly. 

I can understand though why he keeps going to the train station.  The routine helps ease the loneliness.   Still his kids should visit him once in a while bring the grand kids. 

I used to work in a nursing home saw alot of lonely people who's family never visited.  It was sad. 

Athena

[slobberpuppy.livejournal.com]

I love run-down depressed places like this.

[topum.livejournal.com]

I like to visit them too. But I bet you wouldn't want to live in a place like this?

[topum.livejournal.com]

Those places are so dead that they don't even get many trains passing through them anymore.

[sagittariusbun.livejournal.com]

Since the GO trains stop here, there has been a lot of activity.

[bunn.livejournal.com]

You know, I think I've read almost that same story from Britain long ago... I'm trying to remember if it's a 'coming of the Railways' story from the nineteenth century, or perhaps even sadder, a post-first-world-war story...

Sad to know it is still happening, even now in the era of Skype and so much other communication technology.

[topum.livejournal.com]

Yes, I think this theme has been used quite often, seeing it happening in reality turned out to be something quite different to me.

Worse stories are all around us here in Moldova. Almost every village has a whole bunch of "forgotten children". Their parents had to leave to work abroad and either died or disappeared or simply started new lives gradually leaving their existing kids out of those new lives. The kids are left on grandmothers who are too old to care for them and after they die the kids are on their own. Just yesterday in the village not far from ours one of such families, an old grandmother and eight (!) kids (widowed father was hit by a car abroad where he worked I think) had their cow die on them, which pretty much means hunger. Luckily one of local IT companies ran a fundraising campaign among their employees and bought a new cow for them today.

[bunn.livejournal.com]

Oh my goodness. That definitely is not a story I have heard told before. 8 of them relying on one cow. I had no idea that people did not take their children with them.

[topum.livejournal.com]

Almost none of them do. They used to not even know where they were going exactly, the trafficking firms used to take them to some construction sites somewhere in Europe in those overcrowded minibuses where they lived in barracks arranged by the firm. It is better now but still almost none of them can take their kids with them, they usually live in hostel type accommodation at least in the beginning. They leave the kids with the grandparents and send the money to them every month.

[bunn.livejournal.com]

You know, inching through crowded, busy incredibly-prosperous Britain, I have been known to feel a certain nostalgia for tired, worn, poor 70's Britain where there was no money to repair things or build things, and half the buildings were run-down Victorian or hastily-patched-up second World War.


The space and freedom. Wildflowers cracking through old cement. Striped cheerful caterpillars on old bomb-site rubble. Real clouds of butterflies, the kind yrelenou just don't get here now (and my mother tells me that the clouds of butterflies of the 70's were nothing on those of the 40's...) Empty roads and no signs on everything telling you what you can't do.

I wouldn't really go back, but none the less there is a sense of something lost...

[topum.livejournal.com]

Here is more on the "forgotten children of Moldova" in some Italian paper and FT. It got much worse (and it was worse than reported).

http://www.lastampa.it/2011/03/08/esteri/lastampa-in-english/moldova-s-forgotten-children-left-behind-by-mass-immigration-BEK44vALSiO9niFx09wIUP/pagina.html

https://www.ft.com/content/bf5d6278-152f-11e5-a587-00144feabdc0

[topum.livejournal.com]

I know what you mean but those towns would not bring that something lost back. One cannot help but have a constant feeling that everything is lost walking through them. Very few people left, no kids, closed and crumbling schools that were once full of kids, shops boarded up, everything is boarded up and crumbling. I think in Britain in the 70s there was no sense of being irrelevant and forgotten and that life was happening somewhere else but it would never be happening here anymore.