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8/16/2025

Random Saturday - Travelling books

In my post about "Little Nicholas" a few days ago, I said that my personal copies of the books had a story of their own.
Here it is.

The year is 1994 and it's two days before my birthday.
We three sisters happen to take the same train home after work and my oldest sister has my birthday gift in a bag which she just picked up from the book store on the way to the train station.
The commute from Bad Cannstatt is about 30 minutes. We talk, we laugh, we get off the train ... that's when my sister notices she has left the book bag on the train!
It's too late to hop back on, so there are only two things to do now, 1. go to the service center and try to have them contact someone, 2. hope that no passenger grabs the bag and decides these are nice books to have.

Losing or forgetting something on a train is a game of chance. Some people will give it to the conductor, so it ends up at the railway company's lost and found (and in an auction if no one claims it), but some go the "finders keepers" route or at least contemplate it (I've seen it myself), and some just ignore it.
The service clerk told my sister they would contact someone at the end of the line and have the train conductor check the train in case they hadn't already found the bag by themselves.
If the bag were there, they would then take it back on the next possible train and drop it off at the service center where my sister would be able to pick it up the next day.

Luck was on our side and my sister picked the bag up the next day.
To celebrate it, she drew a little picture in each book to tell the story.

From left to right - my sister A., yours truly, and my sister B.
There's a lot of detail, from A.'s braid to my long hair worn open
and B.'s bob, but also A.'s typical backpack, my shopper and
B.'s purse, and of course the book bag saying "Stehn", a book
store that doesn't exist anymore today.

What I love most about this picture are two things.
There is the company Hengstenberg which will be 150 years old
next year and produces vinegar, pickles, mustard, etc.
Nowadays there are only offices in that building, but it's still part
of the region's history.
Also, this is still one of the old trains. It's actually possible that we
did ride on one of them because the new double-decker trains
were only just introduced around that time.
Can you see us in the last window?
 

Oh no! We got off the train at home, but the bag is still on there!
Our shocked faces never fail to make me smile 
🙃

Tell me without words how the books went back from Geislingen to
Göppingen. Did you notice the speed lines?

The service center of the Deutsche Bahn (which also doesn't exist
anymore because they lost the contract for this line some years ago
and because they expect everyone to be their own service people,
anyway) on the day before my birthday. You can tell from the
clock A. and I took our usual train at the time and oh what
a miracle, it was on time, too!


I think the drawings really make these books extra special. Do you think someone in the future will be holding them in their hands eventually, wondering what all of that was about ...

12 comments:

  1. I find it to be a story that brings back very beautiful memories, and also, the drawings are nice, aren’t they? The perspective is quite well done. Who was the artist? All three? To avoid altering the originals, maybe you could add a small note on the page with the drawings in each book to guide the new reader to explore the story in the other books. Like a game :)

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    1. My sister A. did all the drawings.
      That's a good idea about the note, thanks!

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  2. How adorable! And wonderful that your sister did all the drawings. This is a lovely story. I can imagine someone picking it up one day and being delighted.

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    1. Thank you! They are really special to me.

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  3. That your sister told the story of the books in drawings is so cool! It makes these books unique and special. What a great addition to your gift.

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    1. I thought it was such a fun idea and so much work! Thank you!

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  4. What an absolutely charming thing to do! I hope those books always stay together because it's going to be very confusing to the person/people who buy them! But, what wonderful illustrations! Were the books as good as the drawings?

    https://marshainthemiddle.com/

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    Replies
    1. Thank you! I do, too.
      Oh yes, these are the children's books I wrote about the other day, the French ones.

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  5. Oh, this is just wonderful! Thank you so much for sharing. I do my own travelling books with BookCrossing.com - I don't often hear from the books I have set free now but now and then I get a message, which I love.

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    Replies
    1. Thank you!
      I heard of BookCrossing, but never got around to trying it myself when I still would have more possibilities to set books free, so now it's just the public book cabinet and never knowing where they end up.

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