A cold has gotten a hold of me. Like always. It's minor and so I check out early to explore the parts north of my AirBnB before enjoying the efficient public transport back to the airport. While the southern part is a posh residential district with parks, playgrounds and well maintained brick buildings, the north is a bit more commercial and under construction. People are going to work, the sidewalk is full, bicycles wizz by, business people and hipsters, some have two kids in a cart in front, others let their dogs run alongside them. I go to a standard coffee shop with an excellent terrace next to one of the lakes. Comfortable, the wooden seating is angled exactly right to let me recline to catch the morning sun and forget my cold fits. My metro station is Norreport, a cool 12 minute walk that takes me past the museum of art that I had passed on the way to the little vixen. It feels good to close a loop like this. With every visit a place grows more familiar and suddenly you feel at home in a new environment. A very enjoyable feeling. The walk is simple, I move like a chess knight. On the way I take care of the ticket, there is only one to buy, you can enter the underground through the train station and avoid several big streets by following the platform until you get to the metro, which arrives a minute later. Norvegian friends of swedish students with danish boyfriends. They all somehow understand each other but english is the baseline. The airport is cosy although very commercial, security has a scanner that looks like a particle accelerator. I have lots of time and buy myself some hot water and tea for the cold. 24DKK, the price you pay for convenience I guess. Some french who are going to take the same route as me over Amsterdam I suppose, a cute blonde girl, some dutch. On the plain I mostly sleep with a mask on. I am not the only one coughing, but the others don't cover their faces. 2020 is already forgotten like 1939. I doze off and wake up just in time to receive a sandwich and some water from a charmingly bright eyed cabin crew. KLM is the only company in recent memory with impeccable service. They are not just polite but exceptionally caring, like in the old times. In Amsterdam I start getting somewhat bored. The outlook of 2 connecting flights and 3 hours of train ride all while feeling slightly unwell is not ideal. Somehow I manage to get through the ticket check and find myself behind the blonde girl I saw earlier. She's going to Lyon too! It's funny, she's adjusting her hair and pouts into her phone camera to check if her make-up looks right. Then she turns over to me and more to look back into the boarding bridge to see nothing, as we are the last passengers. She'll keep turning back ever so slightly until we find our seats, which are in the same row, alas, not adjacent. I had to take a painkiller and feel somewhat drowsy. From time to time I see the girl next to me pass her phone to her friend in the row in front. They're writing comments in their notes app. I make a joke about her being stuck between me and the guy in the window seat who's convinced me to enter a coughing contest. In Lyon, she's impatient, they won't catch the bus to Clermont. "Everything will be alright", I tell her, while I notice that my phone battery is on 2%. That's a problem because I have an external battery, but I don't have a cable to connect it to my phone. I gave it to N yesterday - "Remind me to give it back!", he said knowing full well that we'll both forget. I need the wallet and the tickets on it so I scramble to find a socket in the airport. Difficult, Lyon airport is for the most part deserted and I don't want to walk in loops here - I know it too well already! I manage to get it back to 10% but I'll need more, my journey is about half done. From Lyon to Le Puy requires much patience and a little bit of luck with the train operator. There are sockets in the shuttle train to the station. Yay! When I ask a guy, 50, jamming to some oldies in his sony overheads, if I can use the socket next to him, he says "Of couuuurse!" but it drops out as soon as I put it in. Try again, Sweeep. One more time just to be sure. "Mister, you have to hold it with your knees, these sockets don't keep the plug in", a girl tells me from the opposite side of the aisle. It's the blonde girl from Copenhagen! "Here, take my seat". "That's so nice of you, I have a battery but no cable for it..." She smiles and we swap. A girl talking to you, let alone to offer help, in french public transport is rare, so I don't want to bother her further. When we get off, I tell her proudly that with the precise knee positioning, I've reached a new personal high score: 50%! She chuckles and we never see each other again. I have seen Lyon Part-Dieu perpetually under construction. It's chaotic, is open on 3 sides and you can expect anything from a concert pianist to a bomb warning. It's getting better over the years and the waiting area under the screens announcing the next departing trains is now downright cozy. I'm attracted by a young Asian student, presumably of music, because he hammers out the Rachmaninov in c sharp minor op 3. 2 diligently and until the end, struggling only with those giant chords. Right next to him, a Rastafarian with a joint and a funny hat, drinking from a can, tapping his foot rhythmically to a tune only he can hear. A middle aged couple of strict demeaner a bit further on. Behind a guy drinking Cristalline from one of these small plastic bottles until it crumbled noisily to the size f a golf ball. He really made sure to squeeze all air out! The pianist leaves, no applause. My friend F would have shouted "bravo!" with a standing ovation, I cannot keep myself from thinking, but she's very much not with me right now. A girl arrives hurriedly and so quickly that I think she must have gotten up before the last player let go of the sustain pedal, throws her backpack on the floor and starts playing a passionate and musical rendition of the "Expedition 33". That music has some melancholy to it and resonates with the general speed of this place, people walking, luggage rolling. The rasta is back with a new can and a new joint, sits down at his usual spot and sways with the same music I'm hearing this time. A woman comes over and squeezes into the seat left from me, disheveled and old. On the table in front of me, 3 men, one 40 something, pulling his grey hoodie over his had and looking like he was about to be erased by the *Paintress*. On his suitcase a shabby bag and some torn plastic wrapping, maybe that's his wardrobe. He buries his face between his palms and it slowly slides down over his wrists and forearms onto the table to rest. The scene is so dense that I don't want to leave. At one point you sit in a coffee shop, empty but for your friend, drinking 15Eur coffee and talking about the importance of the placebo effect in medicine, and two days later you find yourself in a waiting room jam packed full of people with real worries as the music of a high brow l'art-pour-l'art essay on denying reality washing over it all with the emotional might of recognized coincidence. I am well familiar with both sides and count my current blessings. The coffee is silly, but not necessarily wrong. Desolation is serious but not necessarily true. The truth is we're all alone and misunderstood.