Sunday 6 August, 0830 Central European Time, Durchzug 759, just outside Stuttgart, Federal Republic of Germany

Every day, across the continent of Europe, complicated games of pass-the-parcel were being played that required diagrams to fully understand.

Olivia Maas had officially boarded a train from Stuttgart to Nuremberg, but any glance at the metal boards hooked onto the sides of the green-painted carriages would tell that only three of the carriages would be actually terminating there. The rest of the carriages would be put onto other trains, their ultimate destinations being the town of Görlitz in the German Democratic Republic or Prague in Czechoslovakia; in the latter case joining carriages from as far west as Paris.

As a result, carriages from three different countries were forming this service.

Olivia had noticed a number of families, some with parents who definitely needed a diet or detox, boarding the Czechoslovak State Railways coaches. They were probably heading for the town known in German as Karlsbad and in Czech as Karlovy Vary, a popular spa resort for West Germans. What the kids were going to do there wasn't entirely clear.

There were not exactly a huge number of people heading to East Germany; visas were difficult to obtain for most of that country for those from the Federal Republic unless you had an official reason to go there. West and East Germany had no diplomatic relations, although the current Chancellor Willy Brandt was working to get those established in the face of considerable domestic opposition, something for which he had been given the Nobel Peace Prize the previously year.

Maas had visited East Berlin, where day visas could be obtained at the checkpoints, as part of a school trip when she was 18. the feeling of oppression and the enforced division of Germany was hard to shake off, especially when a classmate had been detained by the People's Police for taking photos of the wrong things.

Right now, she was one of two people in her compartment. Sitting next to her, a young blond-haired Catholic priest was reading a copy of L'Osservatore Romano in German. He didn't seem overly talkative at the moment. The large top window was fully lowered - it was a hot day and the ventilation was much appreciated.

There were still over two hours in this journey. She could read one of her books or see if there was anyone else to chat to around here.

In reply to GM (msg # 1):

The day had been cool today until recently, when the sun had popped out of the clouds to the surprise of everyone,so Olivia's face was turned to the sun despite the stuffy air. The scent of some thing unpleasurable drifted in through the windows, but she pretended not to notice.

Her left hand went into her backpack and,without needing to look what she was doing, Olivia took out Anagarika Govinda's Way of the White Clouds. A present from her father for the journey - together with the usual litany of cautions, warnings and proverbs he had pressed it into her hand just before she was ready to leave. A paperback copy, of course, for many practical reasons. Before she could even open it, she remembered the blonde priest. Of course, the cover of the book with the abstract mystic drawing conveyed its non-christian theme. Well,if he wanted to engage in discussions, so be it. It would not have been the first time she had to explain her view of the world. The young woman opened the book, started to read but found her mind drifting already. would the train be on time? The schedule was a bit erratic at the moment, with all the extra trains due to the Olympics. The angry voice of her mother about her going on this trip instead of her going to see the Olympics. To her dear mom, the games were a once in a lifetime thing, while taking a trip half across the world was a foolish, dangerous thing to do for anyone,especially a young inexperienced woman... blah blah.

The train went around a bend, shaking and rattling,then picked up speed again. It shook Olivia's mind back into the present, where it should be. The here and now meant time to read. Putting her nose into her book, she forget all around herself, reading about the adventures of Govinda.

The door to the compartment opened and two teenagers entered, one male, one female. In their hands, they were holding something that... yes, it was one of those Interrail passes that had been introduced this summer to mark 50 years since the creation of the International Union of Railways.

The blonde-haired boy was wearing a West Germany football shirt; they had won the European Championship back in June, beating the Soviet Union 3-0 in the final. The girl, a brunette, wore a blue dress with a Danish flag on her lapel.

"Excuse me please," the boy said to the priest as he placed his bag on the roof rack. The priest lowered his paper.

"Ah, are you Interrailing too?" he asked.

Olivia's head came out of her book long enough to notice the football shirt,which is why instead of continuing her readings she smiled widely at the boy. "Football is so much more fun than the whole Olympics, isn't it?" she blurted out, before really thinking about it. "Who's your favorite player? I'm not much of a Beckenebauer fan myself,I prefer Müller and Hoeneß." Widely smiling, she made sure the other young folks has ample space to maneuver around.





(I'm taking Yellow for German.)
This message was last edited by the player at 09:28, Tue 15 June 2021.

"Sepp Maier, the goalie. Utterly brilliant. I'm a goalie myself in the school team," the kid replied as he helped his Danish Freundin place her own backpack on the rack, then the two of them sat down together. "I'm guessing you're a Bayern fan then? I was at that game where we built Schalke to win the title. Great match that..
This message had punctuation tweaked by the GM at 18:47, Fri 18 June 2021.

"Yes, Bayern is the only club for me. My papa is all for Stuttgart, which causes some discussion..." Olivia's eyes went to the priest, and she blushed a litte. "Pardon me, I didn't intend to talk right over you."

"That's fine," the priest said. "Can't say that I'm into football myself."

He lowered the small table by the window and reached into a bag by his feet, pulling out a bottle of Fanta and a plain white mug that had been moderately chipped over the years.

"Are you heading to Nuremberg?" the male boy asked.

"Yes, indeed. I'm planning for a journey half around the world. Not by myself," Olivia added quickly, to forestall any worried comments by the priest. "It's a group of people coming from London and I'll join up from here." Her face flushed a little. "I've been traveling around Europe before, but this will be different."

Olivia did not mention that the journey, while carefully enough planned once decided, had been a spur of the moment decision. Originally, she was supposed to have joined relatives in the Alps to help on their farm. Get experience living closer to nature and all that. It had been her uncle Werner who talked her out of it. "You can visit us old folks after you have seen the world," he had insisted.

Olivia took out a packet of M&Ms and offered it around. "I've read up on all the places we are going to visit,and I'm sure I will be able to learn a lot from it."

"Half way around the world?" the priest asked. "In which direction?"

At that point, the sounds of a ticket inspector could be heard down the corridor.

"East," Olivia said. "Starting with Turkey. Well, technically,we'll see Yugoslavia and Athens first, but the focus is farther east." She opened her book again, having used the ticket conveniently as marker. "My relatives thought I should rather see the Olympic games, but most sports bore me. What memorable thing asides being there could really happen at the games?" Much later, Olivia would probably remember this comment.

"Well, be careful and don't drink the tap water." the priest replied. "One of my fellow ordinands went to India to do some missionary work. He came down with a nasty bout of hepatitis and had to be flown back home."

The boy took some of the M&Ms.

"My father was in Libya during the war... came down with some nasty dysentery," he added.

The ticket inspector arrived at their compartment, followed by a young brunette woman with a backpack.

"Hello there," she said in very bad German. "Does anyone here speak English?"
This message was last edited by the GM at 21:31, Thu 01 July 2021.

"Oh, I sure won't drink the water," Olivia nodded. "Unless I have no other option, I suppose. But boiling it should help,no?"

Olivia handed the ticket over to the inspector and smiled at the new arrival. "I do.Do you need help with anything?"
This message was last edited by the player at 17:25, Tue 06 July 2021.

[OOC: Put English in bold]

"He boiled it... then he bought some fruit from a market..."

The ticket inspector clipped Olivia's ticket, checked the Interrail passes and examined the priest's own bit of cardboard before leaving.

"Thanks," the woman said as she sat down. "I ended up in First Class by mistake. Or rather bought a ticket for second when I left Berne... and the ticket guy won't accept my Swiss money... I don't know. I'll heard for a bureau de change when I get to Nuremberg."

Her voice was rather breathy... and as she put her backpack onto the one free seat, Olivia noticed a Canadian flag on it.

"There is enough space in here, no worries," Olivia said. "Are you going to watch the Olympics? So many people arecoming from all over the world."

"I have tickets, for the equestrian events. You know, the horse dancing. But that's not until the 9th of September, so I will be heading down to Yugoslavia and Greece for a bit first. Going with some guy named Desmond Weaver," Rose replied.

""Did you say Olympics?" the priest asked.

"Oh," Olivia exclaimed. "Then we'll travel together for a bit. I will be going all the way -hopefully- with Weaver's group!" A chance meeting, for sure, but not that unlikely. "The equestrian events would have interested me, too, but I rather travel the world."

"Well, I didn't exactly fancy going all the way to India myself... For one thing, I've already been. Daddy and I flew over there back in '65 to visit some prince and try to do some business deal to import their tea... well, I say prince, they're just a bunch of rich guys these days... stayed in a place called Darjeeling, as in the tea..."

She mimed drinking some tea.

"This was in August. Slap bang in the middle of monsoon season. I go for a bike ride... and lose track of time... then the heavens well and truly opened."

Rose involuntarily shivered.

"I, like, nearly drowned."
This message was lightly edited by the player at 07:45, Wed 14 July 2021.

"Oh, that sounds downright awful!" Olivia's eyes opened in horror. "I hope you were not wearing anything... too showing in rain. But there probably weren't any people out then but you, were there?"

In reply to Olivia Maas (msg # 18):

Rose looked rather aghast at this.

"Now that I think about it... I don't recall. But only the maid saw me before handing me a bath towel... and firing up the stove for a hot water bottle. At least it, like, gave me an excuse to miss dinner. Daddy can go on and on and on about business..."

The guard started to walk down the corridor, announcing that they were approaching their first stop, the large town of Aalen. Olivia had heard of the place, but it wasn't exactly the most memorable on the planet.

"So,what business is your dad in, then? Something boring, it sounds like." Oliva stared out of the window for a moment. "My parents made it a rule never to talk about work at home, and about school only if we absolutely must."

Out of the window, Olivia could see the gently sloping farmland and trees that made up this part of Baden-Württemberg, one of West Germany's ten federal states.

"He's the director of a major food importer back in Canada. Mostly dealing with the European and South Asian markets. He does a lot of travelling brokering deals between the major chains in Canada and companies outside it. The bureaucracy on food imports can be insane."

She laughed.

"I've picked up something from all those long dinners I've been dragged along to. Sor, what do your parents do?"

"Dad's a linguist at the University. Mom's an intensive care nurse. He's always talking about language development and anthropology and migration patterns of ancient tribes. She's always talking about diseases, and I sit in the middle and wonder why they ever married. But strangely, they get along well." Olivia chuckled. "Dad's an overachiever. Always getting at me for not learning enough languages - he speaks 16 and a few brokenly. I am currently learning Tibetian, Hindi, Latin, Sanskrit and Pali- all old languages important to understand the world, he says. Trying to learn a few more but it gets too confusing. I do know French though, and enough Arabic and Farsi to hold a conversation. I brought some dictionaries my dad thinks I might need. But I guess once I meet native speakers of the live languages the dialect will be so strange I won't understand a thing, anyway."

"That's a lot of languages," Rose replied, looking distinctly perturbed. "I struggle with basic French - and I live in Montreal!"

The train pulled into the station at Aalen, where a new looking electric train, painted red, was sitting in the platform next to them.

"I remember reading somewhere that you can still find steam engines in Germany? Is that true?" Rose asked.

Once Olivia had answered, she stood up and reached for her backpack.

"Do you want a can of Coke?"