“Trein richting Amsterdam: vertraagd.” (Train towards Amsterdam: delayed).
The intercom voice blared through the colossal train station, accentuating my already-growing annoyance.
“Third time, should we try for a fourth?” I muttered under my breath, the sound drowned out by the whooshing of the trains and the blend of human sounds, from the shrieking of excited little children to the clicking of poshly-dressed women’s stilettos.
This was my last full day in Europe for the summer, and I’ll admit, spending it sitting around for hours, waiting for a train while trying to decipher the words around me with my broken Dutch – what did “heelal” mean again? – was not what I had imagined. But there I was, sitting on the cold stone bench, tuning into the “hellos,” the “goodbyes,” and all the conversations in between.
I looked up towards the clock, bored, watching from the distance as the second hand rhythmically ticked from one number to the next. The train station’s multiple levels towered over me. On the highest one, there was a big, beautiful clock surrounded by golden swirls and sculpted ornaments, an arch of stunning Neo-Renaissance-style motifs curling over it like an umbrella sheltering a poor soul caught in the rain.
I didn’t really think, I just got up and started moving.
Three flights of stairs and a five-minute walk later, and I was standing right below it. The ceiling was glass, and the sunlight made the gold shimmer in a lovely way. I watched as the hands ticked. It was 11:55 am now. I wasn’t even going to try to think about how long I had already been there, much less how much longer I would probably have to wait.
People crowded around me, trying to take pictures of the legendary Antwerpen clock. The train station was known as the “spoorwegkathedraal” (railroad cathedral), and I will admit that it did live up to its name with its debonair domed ceiling and grandiose architecture.
I turned around then, trying to get away from the crowd, from the noise and the movement.
I stilled.
The train station was sprawled out before me, levels of trains and people combining in a strange Renaissance-style rendering of a man-machine system. Trains crawled in and flew out. People jumped on and staggered off.
I watched the people below me, taking it all in. Some were running to hug their loved ones, while others walked out of the station alone. A child was trying not to cry as he waved goodbye to his grandparents while an elderly couple excitedly got on the train, holding hands as if on their honeymoon. A girl in a pretty blue sweater passionately spoke on the phone as she skipped off the train right as a middle-aged man in a suit ran towards it, looking anxiously at his watch. So many people, so many stories. A thousand lifetimes would not be enough to get through even a fraction of them.
Right then, that moment almost felt sacred.
The tiredness was suddenly gone, replaced instead by the wonder of how many lives and experiences were intertwined right here, in this Belgian train station. Lives I will never be able to comprehend or see except from the sidelines, a silent, unknown spectator to the collection of dreams, regrets, memories, hopes, and unspoken prayers that made up one’s being.
Observing the liturgy of human happenings below me, I grew aware of how cocooned we were within our own lives. It was awe-inspiring to realize that we were surrounded by such complexity but, at the same time, such fragile simplicity. At the end of the day, we were all human beings who were coming from somewhere and going elsewhere.
The intercom pulled me out of my thoughts.
“Trein richting Amsterdam: inscheping begint.” (Train towards Amsterdam: embarkation is starting.)
- the realization that each random passerby is living a life as vivid and complex as your own—populated with their own ambitions, friends, routines, worries and inherited craziness—an epic story that continues invisibly around you like an anthill sprawling deep underground, with elaborate passageways to thousands of other lives that you’ll never know existed, in which you might appear only once, as an extra sipping coffee in the background, as a blur of traffic passing on the highway, as a lighted window at dusk.
The Student Movement is the official student newspaper of Andrews University. Opinions expressed in the Student Movement are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of the editors, Andrews University or the Seventh-day Adventist church.