Spring Break Postcard: On Train Tracks

I can’t tell when England becomes Scotland. There are no welcome signs when the train crosses the border, or at least none that I can see. I think the girl in front of me is English, because she’s talking on the phone with her mother about when she’ll arrive back home in London. (“I’ll miss you, mum,” she says.) The man sitting next to me must be a Scot, because I can barely understand what he is saying through his accent (“Where’s the toilet on this thing?” he just asked, I think)—and he’s actually wearing a kilt.

The five hours of this train ride fly off into the landscape we cross: London’s towers quickly fall away, giving rise to industrial areas that speed by in the short-lived, shifting frames of a flipbook. The coffee cart rolls up and down the aisles; the burly conductor nods and collects tickets; we make our first stop at a city whose name I now forget.

Farther north the houses become smaller, farther apart, gradually turning into farms. About an hour out, windmills appear in the distance, and sheep graze on green. We slow down for a number of small towns, but roll past their platforms without coming to a stop. The woman on her cell phone disembarks at the next station, but the man sitting beside me stays here.

In London a couple hours earlier, I had waited for the train to arrive at King’s Cross station with my English friend who plays in the band of the British Army. I had wanted to know what the real difference was between England, Great Britain, and the United Kingdom—outside of the formalities. “Funny,” he said, “I never really think about this much.”

In Edinburgh the next day, my friend who studies archaeology at the University will take me to the National Museum of Scotland. We’ll look at portraits of Mary, Queen of Scots, and joke about how the movie “Braveheart” might not have been an accurate depiction of Scottish history. We’ll admit it’s all we know.

On the train, before this, I fall asleep in England and wake up in Scotland with no clear conception of what has changed, or where or when. The flatter plains have morphed into cliffs, I can tell, and the sky, darker now, pokes unevenly into the tops of trees. “Look at the waves rolling in here,” says the man next to me, pointing to the window. Outside, a silvery grey under the clouds collides with shore, making itself known as the sea.