On a recent 'Guide to living in DC', an editorial noted how awkward it is to go to a beer garden. If you go to meet one other person, you can either try to sit right next to each other, or across from each other. Across is ideal, but then "you have to share elbow space with a stranger."
The dining and lounge cars in a train are about the only place left for city-slickers in American society where it's not a social faux pas to intentionally interact with a stranger. On elevators, in subways, on buses, even at many bars, you're supposed to mind your own business. But on the train, you have nowhere to go and nothing to do. Faced with the barren reality of the situation, people seem to finally lower their guard and just be humans, and do what humans are naturally apt to do: share an experience. It's so tragically sad that we've bred ourselves to have to be forced like cattle into a metal box hurtling across the countryside just to engage in scenarios and people foreign to us.
The dining and lounge cars in a train are about the only place left for city-slickers in American society where it's not a social faux pas to intentionally interact with a stranger. On elevators, in subways, on buses, even at many bars, you're supposed to mind your own business. But on the train, you have nowhere to go and nothing to do. Faced with the barren reality of the situation, people seem to finally lower their guard and just be humans, and do what humans are naturally apt to do: share an experience. It's so tragically sad that we've bred ourselves to have to be forced like cattle into a metal box hurtling across the countryside just to engage in scenarios and people foreign to us.