Changing Trains Quotes

“Voices raised in exuberant interchanges, not in anger, but rather enthusiasm for being alive and engaged in the great conversation of life.”
― Mark Johnson, Changing Trains: One boy's journey of discovery across 1980s Europe

“was now further south, the farthest from home I’d ever been in my life. Scotland seemed so very far away right then. The hum of life on the Ramblas enveloped me like a new stage set does an actor treading the boards for the first time. It was absorbing. Back then, I was full of curiosity, thirsty to see and feel new places. I knew I wasn't the first – or last – person to visit them. And in reality, they weren't even really so far away. But for a young working-class boy from small-town Scotland, who had never really been abroad, this was the biggest adventure.”
― Mark Johnson, Changing Trains: One boy's journey of discovery across 1980s Europe

“Everything was new, foreign, exciting. I was buzzing, thrilled with the new and the undiscovered. Until this moment my world had been a small place; the neighbourhood; provincial life; a short walk to school, a bland bus ride into town for work. A place where most public spaces were quiet on weeknights, where the shops closed on Sundays. Even the post office closed for the half-day on Wednesdays. But that morning I witnessed a whole new world.”
― Mark Johnson, Changing Trains: One boy's journey of discovery across 1980s Europe