The last Train to...

Anyone living in a small village – or even just outside one – will often have very little public transport. It may even be the case that the last train is also the first of the day, or that the service has been cancelled altogether. The question then is: how can you still get to a shop when cycling isn’t an option and the distance is too far to walk? Quite apart from the fact that carrying shopping is impossible over such a long distance, not to mention the amount of time it takes – time that most people simply don’t have. Recently, a young man on the train told me that it takes him no less than 3.5 hours by train and bus to get to work and back home. Seven hours of travelling for a distance that can be done within one hour by car, on top of a job – this means you’re never really home or once home go straight to bed, and that’s in a country that claims to have a well-organised public transport system. How motivated should one be if it comes to that job?

_{The Photo was taken at the Stedelijk Museum Zutphen and part of the exposition 'Heiligen en Helden - Iconische foto's) (Saints and Heroes - Iconic photos) by photographer Eddy Posthuma de Boer}

Lately, I’ve been wondering more and more often where the last train I take will be heading. Perhaps it’s to the airport or, who knows, out into the countryside, to the next concentration camp, but it could just as easily be that my last train sets off for an unknown destination, gets derailed, hits me or never leaves at all. It’s unlikely to be the Orient Express.

_{Prompt: see title
6-8-2026}