After my shower, I caught a glimpse of myself in the mirror a little while ago. I quickly looked away. My face was puffy, flushed, and criss-crossed with lines in places; not to mention the acne and dark circles that had taken up residence. Somewhere between a pre-teen and a bedridden old man at the end of his tether. Quite a sight!
It’s been over a month since I last set foot in a station, and yet the symptoms persist – a godsend for dermatologists. As for my baldness, however, I can’t blame anyone: it’s not the TER train that’s to blame, but rather a rather unfavourable genetic makeup.
As for the rest, I realised the scale of the problem when Paperjam gave me my chance as a journalist in 2023. Based in Metz, employed in Bonnevoie: blimey, I was going to have to take the train! All I knew about that TER of the damned at the time were my sister’s stories, with twenty years of commuting under her belt. On Sundays, round the dinner table, I’d never believed her endless tales of overcrowded carriages, heifers being knocked over, a flasher in the middle of the train, delays spiralling out of control, repeated cancellations, the clock ticking in her head, always, all the time. She had a comfortable salary and standard of living; come on, my little sis wasn’t going to play the ‘drama queen’ on me as well!
Pierre Théobald, from Metz, worked as a journalist for Paperjam for just over two years. That’s hundreds of journeys under his belt! (Illustration: Yan Lindingre)
What a wimp I was… My sister, that heroine, kept going for over twenty years, with two little ones to look after and a maddening pace. As for me, I gave up after two and a half years, with no kids to deal with, and nothing to show for it. Social life in tatters, plans trampled underfoot, sleep deprived, anxiety levels through the roof, a back in agony, and a lovely case of spots; I just couldn’t cope. Courage: zero. A mind of a chip. ‘Total coward’ level on the tenacity scale.
I confess it here, and so be it if, following this admission, Paperjam’s management decides to retrospectively strip me of every single one of my bonuses (it would be well deserved): during those two and a half years of constant travel and unexpected twists and turns, I was less concerned with the angle of the next article to be published than with how to get there and back so that I could put it together and make it compelling. The most important thing wasn’t the next interview, the next investigation, the next news story; the most important thing had become what framed the working day. The before and the after. Anything at all.
Although the book is intended to be humorous, it still provides factual information about the rail network and the daily lives of those who use it every day. (Illustration: Yan Lindingre)
In the first interviews about “Les Naufragés”, I was asked whether the book, which pokes fun at all this, serves as an outlet. My answer: I don’t know. It all started with an article I wrote for *Paperjam* last summer, whilst roadworks in Bettembourg were causing yet another delay in delivery times. I’d called it “A Grumpy Little Guide to the TER” or something along those lines. Then I ran with it, filled in more pages, added further entries, before asking my mate Yan Lindingre – a cartoonist by trade and a former border guard himself – to lend his down-to-earth humour to my perspective, which, if not exactly depressive, was at the very least rather despondent. I swear, there was nothing premeditated about it: it was whilst the book was being finalised that the idea of putting an end to this (rather than to life itself) really took hold.
Before I went and killed myself, I – the ‘Castaway’ that I was, a rail-obsessed psychopath who’d become a real pain to those around me – decided to put a stop to the absurdity of that nonsensical daily grind – by trying to have a bit of a laugh about it for once. In short, I didn’t resign from Luxembourg. I simply resigned from the TER.
“Le Petit singulier des frontaliers du Luxembourg. Les Naufragés”, by Pierre Théobald and Yan Lindingre, published by La Paulette. ISBN: 978-2-9565736-9-2.
