Still on the Right Train

Martensdorf, Mecklenburg-Vorpommern — April 3, 2026

Here is a question for you.

You are a pilgrim. You have a plan. The plan says: bus at 08:11, connection at Martensdorf, six hours south to Brandenburg, arrive in time.

You are on the bus. You are on time. You are also — if you are honest — somewhere else entirely. Thinking about a birthday tomorrow. A daughter who will be eleven. A house you have not been inside for eight days. A woman who sent a sunrise photograph through a car window without a single word.

The Rufbus stops. You step off.

You are on the wrong platform.

The train leaves. You watch it go.

What does a pilgrim do with forty-five minutes on a platform in Martensdorf?

Option one: be annoyed. Construct a small internal narrative about the cost of daydreaming, the importance of attention, what this says about your readiness for the day ahead. This is available and completely free.

Option two: notice that the pilgrimage just handed you forty-five minutes you did not plan, on a platform you did not choose, in a village you would never otherwise have stopped in. The body that was moving fast is now standing still. The mind that was already in Müllrose is now, unmistakably, here.

The plan changed. The ground did not.

There is a difference between the train you planned to be on and the train you are on.

The planned train was a tool — a means of getting somewhere on schedule. The train you are on is where you actually are. These two things are only the same when nothing goes wrong. And things go wrong. On pilgrimages, things go wrong with a frequency that begins to feel less like accident and more like instruction.

The instruction today was simple: you were daydreaming. Pay attention. Not because the schedule matters more than the dreaming — the dreaming matters, it was full of the right things — but because attention is the practice. Attention is what Phase 1 asked of me. Touch. The sense that asks: where are you, actually, right now?

Martensdorf. Platform. April light. A train in forty-five minutes.

Two hours later in Müllrose. Message sent. Nothing more needed.

Julika knows her father is coming. That is enough.

The train you are on is still the right train. It is just the next one.

© 2025–2026 Michel Garand | A Pilgrim's Fitness Plan
Gut Nisdorf, Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, Baltic Coast, Germany

Licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-SA 4.0)

This document was developed with assistance from Claude (Anthropic PBC). All strategic decisions, philosophical positions, and personal commitments are those of the author.

Contact: stewardship@ubec.network

A Pilgrim's Fitness Plan — Gut Nisdorf 2026
Gut Nisdorf, Mecklenburg-Vorpommern — April 2026