< the skull

A WINTER CHRONICLE OF CHANCE, STRANGERS, AND FREEDOM
====================================================
2026-05-08

I had been in Munich for almost ten days. I had gone there with a mission that,
in my early twenties, felt perfectly serious: to backpack across Europe as if
life were my own private, colder, slightly less irresponsible version of the
2004 film EuroTrip.

Winter was beginning to harden the old continent. The city had surrendered to a
palette of white, gray, and cold light. From the top of a park in Munich, still
dotted with the Christmas decorations of 2008, I watched that brutalist, almost
Bauhaus Germany with a kind of beautiful anguish I did not want to refuse. It
was beautiful. Absolutely beautiful.

Munich was my anchor point. Gladston lived there, an old Brazilian friend who
had gone to Germany to study. I knew him from other times, other nights, other
circles. Gladston was a singular creature — and I say this without decorative
exaggeration. At the time, we were more or less the same age, but he seemed to
carry a parallel life, full of small secrets and private performances.

Perhaps I was one of the few people who knew one of his more eccentric sides:
his desire to have a “master” who would command his life. He told me these
things because, one way or another, I had already discovered them. The curious
part was that, despite this almost theatrical desire to be controlled, Gladston
never truly abandoned the throne. He was a fetishist of control in reverse: a
rich man wanting to play at submission without ever giving up power. But that is
another story. Let us stay with Prague.

During those days, I barely saw my friend. He was taking exams at the
university. He left the house around eight in the morning and, most nights,
returned only after nine. That gave me enough time to explore Munich alone, my
hands buried in my pockets, my face cut by the cold, and a kind of nostalgia I
still did not know how to name.

It went on like that for almost nine nights. The white light on those rigid
buildings gave me an anguish that, strangely, I knew how to admire. But on the
tenth day, something in me asked for motion. I needed a city more vibrant, more
voluptuous. I needed to escape Germany.

It must have been around three in the afternoon when I decided to leave.
Gladston had three travel guides on his shelf. Without ceremony — and with all
the ceremony that childish rituals possess — I chose between them by chance. The
chosen destination was Prague. Yes, that old lady of the Czech Republic. Chance,
that day, was generous to me.

I left Gladston a note, thanking him for the stay and telling him I was leaving.
He would probably read it only hours later. I grabbed my backpack, put on my
coat, and went to Munich Central Station. I bought my ticket to Prague and
walked through the platform in a state of ecstasy. Beautiful trains stood
everywhere: technological ICE trains, shining machines, metallic promises of
departure.

Then I reached the spot printed on my ticket. Out of the mist came my train. It
was not exactly the triumph of German engineering I had imagined. It looked more
like an old Eastern European train — almost a steam train, the kind that evokes
childhood, small towns, and poetic rust. Far from reducing my excitement, it
made everything better. I was alone, without a cell phone, at a time when social
networks were still learning to crawl. I was free.

*

I boarded the carriage and went straight to my compartment. There I discovered
that adventure did not come with heating, nor with enough light to read in that
dark late afternoon. Naturally, I seemed to have won the lottery: only my
compartment was like that. There was a man in uniform, apparently a police
officer, and two other people who looked as if they were returning from work. I
realized that this was not merely an international train to Prague. It was also
the daily transport of tired people moving between cities, shifts, and
obligations.

I spoke a little with the police officer, but the cold was so intense that I
could barely pay attention. Gradually, he got off, the others did too, and I was
left alone on the train advancing toward the Czech Republic.

Soon an elderly, very well-dressed gentleman entered the compartment. He sat
across from me and, for several minutes, did not say a word. He looked as if he
were fleeing something. Then he greeted me in perfect English, although marked
by an Eastern European accent I could not help noticing. His name was Peter.

Once the conversation began, it found its own rhythm. We spoke about Czech
writers, music, culture, anything that could involve the Czech Republic. Peter
had elegance, humor, and a quiet curiosity. At some point, I asked what he had
been fleeing when he entered my compartment. He answered, with delightful comic
timing, that he had abandoned his own compartment because the young woman
traveling there had an unbearably dull conversation. And so, through someone
else's boredom, Peter appeared in my journey.

Then a third man entered. Bald, strong, with scars on his face, very well
dressed in a wool coat. He sat with us and remained silent for almost an entire
hour. Peter and I pretended to be natural, but it was impossible to ignore that
presence. The man had an intimidating appearance, the sort that turns any narrow
compartment into a small theater of suspense.

Then, suddenly, he entered the conversation like thunder. He spoke the cleanest
English I had heard on the whole trip so far. Unfortunately, I no longer
remember his name. Peter, however, looked at me with alarm, as if his eyes were
saying: be careful.

Hours later, I felt like smoking a cigarette and mentioned it to my travel
companions. The bald man offered to take me to a part of the train where it
would be possible to smoke. I accepted. Peter looked visibly perplexed. His eyes
seemed to ask how I could go alone with that stranger, especially that stranger,
into some dark corner of an old train in the middle of a European winter.

We entered a small bathroom. He closed the door and, with a facility that seemed
absurd to me, removed the handle. The man was strong. Very strong. He sat on the
toilet, and in that instant I thought: well, now I die. There was no dramatic
music, no camera cut, only me, a tiny bathroom, a scarred man, and the door
handle out of place.

But I did not die. We talked. And we talked a lot. We spoke about the women of
the Czech Republic, Brazilian football — although I have never exactly been an
authority on the subject — politics, travel, books, everything. Behind that
brutal appearance, the man was immensely cultured. There was an unexpected,
almost delicate intelligence hidden beneath a surface of menace. Life, when it
wants to humble us a little, does this: it dismantles our certainties with a
good conversation inside a train bathroom.

When we returned to the compartment, my fear had diminished to almost nothing.
Peter was still perplexed, sitting in the corner, trying to understand how I
could be so calm. I nodded to tell him everything was fine. As the hours passed,
the three of us found a rhythm together. One distracted the other, and the
journey, which could have been merely cold and uncomfortable, became strangely
amusing.

At a certain point, the bald man told me he would get off before Prague Central
Station. His boss was waiting for him; he was the man's driver. He asked whether
I would like to go with him and take a ride into the city, promising to drop me
wherever I was staying. Peter looked at me once more with the alarmed expression
of someone watching a man play with a match inside a powder magazine. I declined
politely. The man pulled a few cards from his pocket, gave them to me, and said
that if I needed anything in Prague, I could call him. We said goodbye, and he
went on toward his destination.

*

As we approached Prague's great old station, Peter asked if I had money to use
in the city. I answered with the idiotic confidence of the unprepared that yes,
of course I did: I had euros. Peter looked at me with an almost paternal
disappointment. He explained that in Prague the currency was the Czech crown. I
had none.

He then offered me shelter. He said his family would be waiting at the station
and that I could spend the night at his house, continuing my journey the next
morning. I refused. Peter, without much discussion, opened his wallet, took out
some Czech crown notes — which seemed like a lot to me — and placed them in my
hand. I asked why he was doing that. He said he could not leave me without money
on that trip.

I thanked him as best I could. He gave me his addresses, his email, and told me
to reach out if I needed anything at all. Then he hugged me and said goodbye. It
was the last time I saw dear Peter. Years later, in 2013, I discovered that he
had died. He had stopped answering my emails, and one of his sons had taken over
that inbox. The news filled me with sadness. I remembered that good old man, who
had appeared by chance on a cold train, and his generosity without spectacle.

I got off in Prague with my backpack, a few crowns in my pocket, and the feeling
that the journey had already justified itself. Still inside the station, I
noticed a very well-dressed man about my age watching me. He wore a suit and
seemed to be trying to decipher my next move. He approached with a smile and
asked whether I knew where he could exchange euros for crowns.

I understood immediately: here was another careless traveler, someone who, like
me only minutes earlier, had not prepared for the local currency. I took half
the money Peter had given me and handed it to him. The man asked where I was
staying. I told him the truth: I did not know.

He then said he was going to a hostel and that, if I wanted, I could accompany
him. He introduced himself as Ahmed, a Turk. And so we went together, two newly
arrived foreigners crossing Prague station as if entering both a city and a
story.

That train journey alone would have been enough. It was one of the greatest
adventures I ever lived: cold, improvised, absurd, human. Munich had given me
the beautiful anguish of white lights. Prague was beginning to offer me
something else: chance in its most elegant form, walking beside me in a suit,
with a backpack and a foreign accent.


< the skull