Wé Ąll Špéäk thé Šame Lānģüàgé

It is her orange sock that first catches my eye. It bounces against the seat’s edge as she wriggles around, looking out the train window into the darkness. She exclaims and motions at the dark brick rushing past, then I see her eager face light up with the sun that shines down on the impressive Slovenian mountains and us. I too, am enamoured by the sight, yet more bewitched by her cheeky smile that reminds me of ones long gone. She has caught me in my act, and her wide brown eyes stare back at me.
Never one to be afraid of strangers – especially those half my size – I raise my eyebrows and grin. She giggles and covers her face with her hands. When she looks up again I widen my eyes and pull a face. In reply she giggles infectiously and goes back behind the safety of her fingers. Apparently peekaboo is the same in every language. Her mum looks up from her book when this gleeful girl grabs a train ticket to help her tactics. She peeks around the seat corner to see the culprit of this boisterous entertainment and smiles at me when I am found. I do the same.
Disappearing behind the confines of the other seat, my young friend is out of action. I hope I have not bothered her mother with our play, yet am sure I heard no voices of annoyance or anger in that end of the carriage. Five minutes later, the orange sock is to my right, and its delightful owner hands me a drawing of us riding the train around the mountains. Before I can say thank you, she has run off again and hiding in her mother’s lap. I can still see her overalls and orange socks hanging off into the isle of the carriage.
I think about my train journey, and wonder why I had not tried to communicate with everyone else on the carriage with the ease that I was befriending this girl now. I make a vow to always try and sit close to other passengers, and strike up conversation with every person I meet eyes with on my journey.
Before the train arrives in Ljubljana I reach into my backpack and pull out one of my small tourist koalas. I walk on over to this girl and make it jump into her pint sized hands. “Danke,” her mother grins. I don’t need to know German to know thank you when I hear it, and I don’t need to know the inner workings of the brain to know I will never forget that girl with the orange sock.