Yuki: ‘People who read books on public transport are attention seekers!’

If you can get a ride at all, because nowadays if you don’t order an Uber to Paris, the driver will cancel the ride because he doesn’t think the distance is worth it. Disgusting. So now I take the train when I go to the airport, the metro when I have to go to Central Station or the tram when I go for drinks with some friends in the city. Then I take it easy, because I know my exact departure times. I smile at my fellow passengers and my day is immediately brightened when I look at the few euros that my journey takes from my debit card.

There is only one major annoyance, an irritation that shows up everywhere in public transport. It has nothing to do with noisy people in a quiet compartment, with how dirty those compartments sometimes are and also nothing to do with the crowds, because I like that myself. My number one irritation on public transport is: the person who reads a book with a smug look on his face. At first I didn’t notice the girl with a ponytail with her backpack on the chair next to her and a Murakami in her hands. I overlooked it and why should I worry about that? But that soon changed when I discovered the reason why the girl was sitting on the train with that book in front of her. She started to attract attention in a subtle way.

It started with a laugh as she turned the page, followed by a quick glance at me to see if I had heard her laugh, followed by another laugh because she saw that I had noticed her laughing at her stupid book. After that it became an increasingly clear form of expressing her amusement, she laughed and giggled with sound and for the attentive viewer who enjoyed her show there was even a grunt to be heard. Oh, how wonderfully she was in her own world with her book, how analogue she was, she felt so vintage in this fast-paced world where everyone is on their phone. The book was her fashion accessory, a peacock spreading its feathers was nothing.

“Do you know Murakami?” she asked, apparently confusing my look of incomprehension with an interest-filled questioning look. “Yes, I just never really got through it,” I said curtly. An older man sitting diagonally across from her suddenly got involved and luckily they started talking to each other and I was able to retreat into my annoyance: people who read books on public transport are attention seekers!

But Yuki, there are worse things in the world, right? Yes that’s right. There are also people who read books on public transport, take a photo of it and then post it on Instagram.

This column by Yuki comes from Flair 17-2024. You can read more stories like this every week in Flair.