Praise of a Commuter

Ever since I started my new job I have to ride the train about 40 minutes every day. First I take the train from Opladen to Solingen, which takes between six and ten minutes, depending on the train. At Solingen I change trains and get on the S7 which takes me right to the office building in a little bit more than 30 minutes.

I don’t mind commuting. In fact I found it more tedious to work in the same town I lived in, because it basically meant that I hardly ever left my town. And, although I don’t think this is such a bad town, it surely isn’t a very interesting one. Somehow I felt stuck, which is one of the reasons why I specifically wanted to find a job in a different and preferably bigger town. Cologne didn’t work out, but still, here I am, riding the train for about 80 minutes every day back and forth between Opladen and Düsseldorf.

One of the main reasons why I don’t mind commuting is because I get tons of reading done now. I just realized this when I updated my reading list and noticed that I have already read 21 books this year. I have no way to prove it, but I’m pretty sure that I can thank my train rides for that. I’m a quick reader, the first one to admit that sometimes I’m very impatient with long paragraphs and tend to skip any string of words that doesn’t seem very appealing to me. I’d like to believe that all those years of frantic reading taught me how to recognize a boring sentence by just looking at it. Maybe not. I don’t really care.

The point is, commuting is a blessing for someone like me, who loves to read but is easily distracted by shiny things like computer screens and DVD boxes when at home. It also helps that connections are good and I always get a seat. Otherwise I’d probably be ranting about commuting right now.

However, this doesn’t mean that there are no plans to move here. Because there are. But don’t get too excited, because it’s not going to happen that soon.