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country, with room to spread out, and accordingly we let our limbs flail where they will. Not so with the
Europeans, who favor a far more compressed bearing. They hold their knees closer together and their arms
tighter to their flanks. The contrast is striking. With minimal practice, I've become able to distinguish New
World gaits from Old World gaits at 150 yards.
We booked a four-bunk cabin for our overnight train to Rostock, but no one else is in the berths when we
board. We claim the top two bunks for ourselves and have begun settling in when our cabinmate arrives and
tosses his backpack on one of the lower beds. He introduces himself as Stefan, and tells us he's a policeman
from Düsseldorf. He's a chubby blond guy in his midtwenties who's on his way to meet some friends for a
vacation in a Baltic shore beach house. He takes off his shoes and makes himself comfortable on his bunk.
Soon after the train starts rolling, he's asleep and lightly snoring.
Chatting quietly across the gap between the upper bunks, Rebecca and I calculate the ground we've
covered so far. We went 140 miles from Antwerp to Cologne today, and we'll have gone another 330 miles
by the time this train reaches the edge of the Baltic Sea tomorrow morning. Tack that onto the roughly
4,000 miles we racked up on our freighter crossing, and it's starting to feel like we've made some progress.
Until we remember that the circumference of the earth is 25,000 miles.
Suddenly feeling smaller, I let the clacking of the rails lull me to sleep. When I wake after sunrise, Stefan
is already gone, having disembarked in the wee hours of the morning to connect with another train. I drop
drowsily from my bunk to the floor, rubbing my eyes. Soon after, we shuffle to the exit doors as our train
pulls into Rostock at 8:00 a.m.
THERE are many ways to get overland from Belgium to Finland. Taking trains and/or buses is the obvious
option. With both these, though, we'd have to make a big curve to get around the Baltic Sea. Looking at a
map, the more elegant solution is to cut straight across the water on a ferry.
It's clearly the shortest path to Helsinki, mileagewise. We assume a ferry ride will also mean more time
spent in the spacious, open-air expanses of a ship, instead of in the comparatively crowded compartments
of buses and trains. Based on this reasoning, we've come here to Rostock to catch a ferry that boards later
today.
Fifteen and a half hours later, to be precise. As we're beginning to learn—and will no doubt continue
to learn, in painful detail—surface travel involves a lot of waiting around. It's no big deal to make a con-
nection at an airport between a pair of four-hour flights. It's another matter entirely to make a connection
between a ten-hour train ride (arriving at a downtown railway station) and a thirty-six-hour ferry voyage
(originating at a pier in a far-off, neglected corner of the city).
Train and ship schedules rarely align, for one thing, since few people make this sort of transfer anymore.
Even if the timetables miraculously coordinate, you'd be a fool to cut things close. If you miss a flight,
there'll likely be another in an hour or two, and you can wait it out in a comfortable departures lounge. If
you miss a long-haul ferry, the next ship might not leave for another three days, and you'll be stuck out at
some remote, rusty dockyard, with no idea where you're sleeping that night.
Thus we've left ourselves some wiggle room. We'll consider it a chance to enjoy Rostock as we wait for
our ferry to cast off. We pick up a tourist guide upon our arrival at the train station, and set off for a walk.
According to the guide, the focal point of Rostock's town square is something the locals have named the
“porno fountain.” We of course make a beeline for it. It turns out to be a standard fountain that's been ringed
with sculptures of frolicking nudes—men, women, boys, and girls—arranged in embraces that, while in-
tended to evoke an innocent joy, very easily lend themselves to darker interpretations. Perhaps you're fa-
miliar with an old joke about a family variety act that dubs itself “the Aristocrats”? If so, you'll understand
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