You leave Prague for Venice, the last stop on your trip. You are glad to get moving again. The train, after all, is your best friend in Europe. For some unknown reason you are reading The Plague. An old woman enters the compartment. She has long false eyelashes that make her blink a lot and crazy hair that looks as if her last perm went awry. She passes all the other empty seats to sit right across from you.

You are not looking forward to bumping against her feet for the rest of this trip. You watch her carefully from the edges of your eyes. She tears a few pages out of an Italian magazine. She stares at each one intently then crumples it. She makes a pile of the wadded paper on the seat next to her. She makes you nervous. The train conductor does a double take looking in your compartment. You look at her, then yourself in the mirror over her seat.

You act like you are writing post cards. Really, you are just writing "wish you were here instead of me" over and over again in the margins of The Plague. You write backwards just in case she can read English: "hsiw uoy erew ereh daetsni fo em". You can not believe this is what your vacation has come to. There is no one else like the crazy lady on the entire train. She seems capable of anything. She may leap across her seat to attack you once you doze off. Suddenly, she stands up and reaches into her bag. You steel yourself. Then, she pulls out her big black sunglasses and sits back down.

Her veins stand out from her thin arms and her hands have a slight tremor as she carefully slips on the sunglasses. You are being ridiculous. She is fragile and old. You look out the window at the mountains. It is snowing. The Alps are so beautiful you can't believe it. You expect to see Julie Andrews spinning off one of the mountains with all the Von Trapp children dressed in curtains behind her. The old lady has fallen asleep and looks like a grandmother. It is a comfort to spend the next 10 hours with her.