It became apparent that Glenn, who candidly spoke about his deliberate decision to live in a small oceanside town in California, has little if any tolerance for: big cities, crowds, tourists, Japanese tourists, local people, traffic, busses, or "bumps in the road." And at every bump in this road, from a train reservation losing my "handicap" designation, to just getting on a bus, caused Glenn to erupt in anger and irritation, "blowing off steam" as he called it. But as I pointed out to Glenn, when a person "blows off steam" it's the people closet to that person that get burned.
I saw this most clearly as we boarded the train from Rome to Zürich. Despite our checking and rechecking our reservation instructions, "top down, bottom up" as my former programmer brother liked to say, we arrived at the train to find that: a) there was no handicap cabin on the night train; and b) the couchette we were assigned to had four others joining us for the bulk of the trip. It was also the worst couchette in that you could not sit up on the bottom bunk because the middle bunk was in the exact middle of the wall - not enough headroom. The other couchettes in the rail car were designed to allow passengers to sit upright on the bottom two bunks while the top four bunks were occupied.
Glenn ordered me to "get in" the train as he usually did - rather nastily. So I did as I was told and went to the couchette and sat down. Glen then proceeded to take apart my scooter, and when he bought the seat portion into the couchette, he threw it some five feet across the cabin where it landed on top of the bunk ladder with such force that I flinched and jerked back, expecting to get hit by flying metal. He walked off to get more scooter parts, which were brought in and dumped in the couchette.
The train conductor, a large towering fellow named Remy, was wise enough to leave Glenn to his own devices. I can only imagine the interaction between the two, but Remy came to me once the train was under way, and explained to me - and to Glenn who was listening, but was being left out of our conversation - that we could put the scooter at the end of the train car, by the door to the bathroom. So Remy and I took the pieces to the end of the car and reassembled Odie - poor, dear scooter who had been senselessly abused, and while Glenn scoffed at my anthropomorphization of an electric travel scooter, I saw it more as an unfeeling victim of Glenn's childishness.
Glenn promptly carved out his space in the top bunk which, it turned out, had a ton of storage space above the hallway. He changed into pajamas, put in his earplugs, put on his sleep mask as was about to go to bed when he commented on my having plugged in both Odie's battery pack and my laptop, saying that I shouldn't monopolize both plugs. Now Remy had told us that the other four passengers were joining us in Florence, an hour away by train. So I had at least one hour to charge both items before anyone would even be there to ask to use an outlet. But there was just something about how Glenn thought I should be considerate of total strangers, which is how he sees things in his world. I calmly told him that I didn't give a bad word is someone wanted an outlet, when I was done with one I'd let them know. And Glenn found my attitude incomprehensible. But after three weeks and two days together, I wasn't surprised that Glenn saw his behavior as totally fine. Man, Zürich was going to be great - Glenn stays in the hotel I booked for him, I stay at Judy's family's house, I go to Adelboden, Glenn goes to Lausanne and when we get back together on Tuesday at the airport, maybe he will have mellowed somewhat.
But the next bump in the road turned out to be a fork. And as I continued on, Glenn decided to quit the Tour and head for home.
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