Petersburg to Berlin. Three days, four countries, countless borders crossed in sleep. Foundation Programme done, Brighton ahead, and me suspended in this moving nowhere.
Writing this from somewhere in Poland. Or maybe we’re in Germany already. Hard to tell when you wake at 4 AM and the landscape outside could be anywhere. Grey fields, industrial towns sliding past like scenes from someone else’s dream.
Compartment companions keep changing. Finnish programmer who codes all night, screen light turning his face blue. Italian woman reading Ferrante in the original, occasionally laughing at passages I’ll never understand. Russian teenager heading to Amsterdam, first time leaving home, can’t stop taking photos of absolutely everything.
Dawn through train windows hits different. It arrives in pieces. First the horizon separates from the sky, then trees become individual things instead of dark mass. By the time sun properly shows, you’ve crossed into another country and yesterday’s language doesn’t work anymore.
This liminal space. Not here, not there. Perfect for thinking about memory and its absence. My protagonist in Blank Spots lives exactly here, in this disconnect between moving forward and knowing where you’ve been. The train carries you whether you remember boarding or not.
Found myself sketching passengers when they sleep. Quick lines, trying to catch how vulnerable people look when unconscious in public spaces. Trust or exhaustion? Both?
Tomorrow, Berlin. Then London, then Brighton, then real life resumes. But right now I’m nobody going nowhere, collecting strangers’ stories in the dark.
Perfect research. Perfect loneliness. Perfect.
Daria Ryzhikova Writer