One

Once again we reached the small village-like station of the railway and once again I was enchanted by the wreck resting on its opposite side.

I was so enchanted that I decided without further ado to get off the train. At the very last moment, because seconds later the train, in which I had just been sitting, roared away and was soon no longer to be seen.

One last time I thought about whether I should really do this. After all, I was planning to cross train tracks in broad daylight to use an old train car as a photo backdrop - probably in a forbidden way.

But then I thought that this spot was so humanless that I should just do it.

And so I jumped down from the platform, balanced a bit across the iron rails, crossed the small netted fence on the other side and stopped in front of the old, rusty train compartment. I left my suitcase on the platform, trusting that no one would come by to steal it from me in the near future.

I had been on my way back to my new home. Three months ago I had started studying and had come home to my family during the holidays. Over and over again my way led me past this old thing.

From close up it looked even more beautiful than when I was driving past from another train.

Full of anticipation and out of great curiosity, I opened the train door, which didn't look very stable anymore - and a few seconds later I held its rusty handle in my hand. I sighed and laid it carefully on the floor.

It was the sixth of January and a few years ago it would have been bitterly cold this time of year and the world would have been snow white. But I didn't even need gloves at that moment, so some of the rust stuck to the palms of my hands.

Then I took the two creaky metal steps up into the compartment and looked around a bit.

From the inside it looked like you would have imagined it from the outside. Old, musty, but beautiful.

My fascination with the old was probably one of the main reasons why I was studying history at Oxford.

I couldn't really imagine how old this carriage must be, but judging by the outdated seat construction, this carriage could have been standing here for fifty years. I imagined wives, businessmen and children sitting on the benches, and I saw a ticket inspector in front of me trying to see the tickets. Whenever I saw or touched something so old and nature kissed, it filled my heart. Because for me there was hardly anything more beautiful than the artifacts of a bygone era.

If my mom would know what I was doing here, she would behead me.

I took some photos from different angles before I sat down on one of the benches to enjoy the atmosphere a little bit.

I thought a little bit about what a relief it was in this silence and fresh air. I thought about the little argument I had with my boyfriend before I left. Sometimes I felt a little bit that I blamed him for things that were actually my fault.

I knew that he loved me more than anything and that he would do anything for me. For he told me often enough.

But whenever he did so, a strange uneasiness came up in me that I could not quite describe. And every time we argued, I thought that it might be nicer without a man at my side.

There was a strange dull disruption in me that I could not deal with, and so it sometimes happened that I just froze instead of being able to respond to his expressions of love.

The cool, clean air out here helped me to clear my head. I really should allow myself a few minutes of pure nature more often. Relaxed, I closed my eyes.

The nature around me, however, suddenly began to change. Cold, pungent air entered my airways and wandered through my thin coat.

The door, which I had left open, closed with a rattling noise and the shutters rattled when it suddenly became quite windy.

Confused, I opened my eyes. It had become a little darker around me - unusual at lunchtime.

The metal of the backrest of the bench in front of me gradually iced up, you could literally watch them form along the round bar like ivy against the wall of a house.

A jolt went through the compartment and I had to hold on to the back of the seat in front of me to avoid falling over. My palms seemed to freeze on the metal, but I needed their support. I still had my backpack on, and it was bouncing back and forth on my back. For a few seconds there was a loud, confusing chaos. Then it became dead quiet, only the wind whistling through the broken windows.

Were there any earthquakes in this region of the country? If so, the last time must have been before I was born, because I had never experienced anything like it.

My head was lowered and my breath was heavy. With a groan I released my cramped arms from their position and observed my frozen breath for a moment.

How could it have become so cold so quickly? It must have been a drop in temperature of at least ten degrees.

I remembered that the train from here to my home departed every hour and decided to go back to the platform. There was a hot-drink machine there from which I could get something to warm myself.

I slowly got up and a cold shiver went through me. Immediately I began to tremble all over my body. It was as if the wagon had been turned into a freezer. That was probably the punishment for having entered it without permission. Small sins are punished by the good Lord immediately.

I wrapped my scarf tighter around me and closed my grey wool coat before I went to the door. It was a little bit icy and so I had to kick it with some force. As soon as I had done that, a hard, frosty gust of wind threw me back.

Apparently the weather forecast for this week had been drastically wrong, because a look out the door showed a furious snowstorm. One that seemed to freeze the blood in your veins.

For a moment I thought about staying in here and waiting for the storm to pass, but I had to go to the station house and take shelter there. It would definitely be warmer there than in this tin can.

I took my gloves out of my handbag and slipped them on. Immediately I felt somehow more protected. Then I took a deep breath - a mistake, because I immediately had to cough a little from the cold air.

With a sigh I took the two steps out of the wagon and set one foot on the floor.

It made a deep, cracking, iron sound. Frightened, I lifted my foot up again before I dared to put them both down. Again it seemed to crack and groan. I scraped the already inch-thick snow a little to one side with my foot and saw pure, thick ice beneath me.

It reminded me of my childhood when our garden pond froze over. We always threw a few heavy stones before we were sure that we would not break in. Then my father had cleared the whole dough of snow and we were allowed to use it for ice skating. It was our own little winter paradise. Only that I had nothing to throw here.

I carefully took a step forward, but the cracking did not seem to be getting less.

How was that possible? There had been no rain before. And there was no other source of water nearby that could cause such frozen flooding. Panic seized me. But I drove it out, because how deep could it go? The ground had to be directly under the ice.

So, in good spirits, I took another few steps and tried to ignore the impressive crackling. The sight of this frozen surface with the train compartment on top would probably have been breathtaking if it wasn't so cold and stormy.

I almost fainted when I heard the ice collapse behind me with a thunderous and deafening sound. I turned around and saw the train compartment being torn apart by the claws of the ice. The sound of the collapsing ice almost burst my eardrum.

"Shit," I murmured before my brain told my muscles to move because a deep crack was forming right in front of my feet and I told myself to run as if the devil was after me. Behind me the ice broke into thousands of pieces and was torn into the cold water below.

I didn't know if running was the best idea to avoid collapsing, but I couldn't help it, because my panic kept driving me forward.

I ran further and further, but the platform wouldn't come. But the ice seemed to have come to an end, because I reached solid ground and fell to my knees, breathless.

Adrenaline flowed through me and I looked back. There was hardly anything to see, as the snowstorm was still raging and limited my field of vision to the essential, but I saw that a huge lake stretched out before me.

Large, white ice sheets were floating on it, guided by the wind. Had I walked in a wrong direction? Had I opened the wrong door of the compartment and then walked in the opposite direction to the platform? That had to be it. The snow must have confused me. There must have been a lake behind the wagon, which I just didn't pay attention to.

The wind cut through my bones and I rose up to bypass the lake. On the other side must have been the platform, no doubt about it. And tonight I would cook myself something nice.

With difficulty I trudged through the knee-deep snow. Luckily I had taken my winter boots with me on vacation, so that my feet were reasonably free of snow and cold.

I had to tie my big scarf around my head and shoulders to protect me from the biting wind. But my coat was not designed for such temperatures and so I quickly realized that this would be a very cold piece of road until I was back at the platform.

Why didn't I just continue on like any normal person would have done? I cursed my decision when I got stuck with one leg in the snow and had to use all my strength to get it out again. Add to that the force of the wind, which I had to fight against and it felt as if I had to swim against the current of freezing cold water.

It took a while, but then I realized that the lake seemed to have no end. I walked and walked and walked, but it felt much too far. I should have arrived at my destination by now.

I decided to use my cell phone as a navigation device. At least that would give me a sense of where I had to go.

So I looked around and realized that I was lost in a forest. On the one hand, this was a bad sign because the forest was a few hundred meters away from the platform, at least in my memory, but on the other hand, the trees offered reliable protection against the snow. I found a very thick tree, decorated with many branches, and stood in its shade before digging for my cell phone in my handbag.

No matter how often I turned my mobile data off and on, I couldn't get a signal in. Also my GPS did not want to work. No wonder in such a storm that something like this failed in the middle of the forest.

So I had no other choice. I had to wait here until my sight was not so miserable anymore.

But the snow did not want to end. The wind whistled around my ears as if it wanted to tell me something. He sounded angry and was very energetic, like a mother scolding her child.

I never thought I would ever see so much snow all at once again. Every year the climate change caused more and more that a white Christmas was hidden from us and in other parts of the world dry fires were raging which could not be extinguished. Sometimes I thought that nature was simply resisting by doing what it wanted to do. Maybe to wake us up or to make us think. And she was right, because we had reached our limits.

Maybe this sudden snow storm and the thundering ice were another freak of nature.

I discovered two narrow trees growing very close to each other, densely overgrown with shrubs, and opposite them two more trees. All in all, a small niche in the otherwise bare forest. I decided to build a shelter for myself. Luckily I wore my thick woollen blanket-like scarf, which I never thought would have more than a fashionable purpose.

I first pulled the scarf along behind the trees, then I took a sweater out of my backpack and laid it out on the ground between the trees. The space between the trees was just large enough for a person to sit in, huddled together.

And that is what I did, after I took the two ends of the scarf and tied it tightly together where the undergrowth was thickest. So my little place had no roof, but as soon as I settled down and was protected from the wind, I could breathe a little. It was still very cold and my teeth were chattering, but I was protected from the wind. But as long as I was here, I would have to sit as huddled up as possible, something that I was happy to accept just to avoid freezing to death.

I opened my backpack again and spread its contents out on my lap.

I carried three shirts that didn't fit in my suitcase, my lined cuddly socks, my tissue bag, a power bank, a bottle of water, tons of chocolate, a book I got for Christmas and my headphones. My laptop had the size of my backpack, so it was easy to carry it and the charging cable with it. But I left it where it was, because it was of least use to me.

I decided to take two of the shirts under the sweater I was already wearing. With my teeth clenched, I sat in my bra for five seconds before I put my clothes back on. With this onion principle I became slightly warmer.

Then I took off my shoes, slipped on my cuddly socks and moved the lacing of my boots a little further so that I could fit in with the thick socks. I gathered the third shirt together a little and used it as a thin but practical scarf. Then I buttoned and tied my coat. All in all I felt only a little better than before, but every improvement was a success.

And so I sat there and waited-waited for the snow to subside so I could find my way home. Luckily I had headphones with me and so I listened to an audio book on my cell phone, which helped me to concentrate more on the spoken words than on the cold. A glance at my fitness bracelet told me that I had already been sitting in my little cave for two hours and outside the sun was setting. But as the sun set, the storm seemed to die down. I stood up and looked over my soft wall. In fact it had become a little milder. Finally, I recognized much more of my surroundings.

A few feet from where I was hiding there was a kind of footpath. Since I had no orientation and didn't know in which direction I should have started, I decided to follow the path north. At twelve o'clock, not into the right north. Because if I had known in which direction north was, my current problems would have been much less.

So I opened the knot of the scarf, tied it around my head and shoulders again and put my belongings back into my backpack.

As it turned out, the path was not a trail, but rather a path made of small metal plates, each of them the size of a head. Two side by side formed a row and countless of them led further into the forest.

I looked one last time in the direction I had come from, then I followed the unusual path. Probably someone had placed these plates to recognize the path again and again at necessary time, and if I was lucky, it led me straight to the next village.

I might have been a zero geologically, but judging by the train route, the next town had to be one or two kilometers away. If I just kept walking in one direction all the time, I would have to encounter inhabited land sooner or later. And in high probability the cell phone network was much better there than out here.

My footsteps were making dull noises and I decided to listen to the radio play again, which I had distracted myself with before. With a little distraction the time would hopefully fly by. Unfortunately it did, but without leading me to a destination. In the last hour I had come across several branches of the path and had to decide again and again which direction to take. Apparently I was walking up a hill, because the path I had chosen was getting steeper and steeper and I was running out of breath at times. And the harder I breathed, the more painfully the cold air burned in my lungs. I knew this pain. It reminded me of particularly cold days when I went running in nature. When I could no longer walk and had to breathe faster and harder, I had a similar feeling and took a break for a few minutes.

But now I ran without looking back, because I was afraid that if I stopped and saw the vast nothingness behind me, I would lose my courage.

Without warning, the hill led to a rocky cliff in which small steps were carved. Very steep and very tiny. For a moment I thought about turning back and trying one of the other junctions, but this path could not have been marked like that for no reason.

A massive rope, with knots in constant repeating intervals, dangled next to the steps and I understood that while you climbed the steps with your feet, you could use your hands to grab the rope to get up safely.

It was almost dark and so I found it hard to see the steps, but once I had made the first ten, I didn't have to look much. The rock was not very high, seven meters maybe, and so I had quickly overcome the dangerous stairs. I hoisted myself up and settled down for a short while. The view from here was breathtaking. Everywhere the mountain tops could be seen rising into the sky. Snow-white and infinite the world lay before me and sank into the darkness of the night.

Again I asked myself, when did it become so mountainous in this region? It was impossible for me to remember if I had ever seen these mountains here before. This place was far away from my new home and at least twenty-five kilometers away from my old one. Was it possible that all those times I had just not looked out of the train window enough, lost in a book or in my cell phone? It seemed impossible that anyone would overlook this beauty so ably.

It was useless, because the darker it got, the more dangerous it would be to be in such a hilly region. At any time it could go down many meters.

I turned on the flashlight of my cell phone. My battery was about seventy percent of its full charge, that would last for a while.

I turned around and stopped abruptly. The glaring light of my improvised flashlight shone straight at a tunnel entrance about ten meters from me.