I came across this article in the Economist's business travel section today, on passengers revolting over delayed and incompetent air travel. I've felt close to doing the same thing myself (although perhaps I have more of a predisposition to not doing what I'm told than others); moreover, I find the experience of travelling by air not particularly pleasant in general, whether it's anti-terrorist measures, planes sinking almost without trace in the ocean, or just the disappointment in looking at your fellow passengers and realising you're not in particularly good company if the metal encasement ends up becoming your tomb or if, as is more normal, you have to endure a few hours in close proximity with these people.
For all of the above reasons, as well as the fact that airports are generally far from where you actually want to end up, and the environmental guilt of plane travel (especially after two medium-haul returns flights to Saudi Arabia earlier this year), I resolved to travel by non-plane methods as much as possible. This has usually comprised taking the train for long distances (I usually walk or cycle or take the bus for short distances). I was living in London until the end of August, and travelled via Brussels to Cologne to attend a friend's wedding at the beginning of that month: the train journey took about five hours in total, and was very pleasant, with an hour's stopover in Gare du Midi/Zuid, enough time to sip a Chimay, and good scenery throughout (with the evident exception of the Channel Tunnel). Also, the journey was not vastly expensive, costing under 100 pounds return, while friends who had booked flights actually ended up paying more).
At the end of August, I moved to Florence, Italy, to begin a PhD at the European University Institute, and booked tickets on Rail Europe (the place to go for rail journies from the UK to the general "abroad") to travel by train to Florence, this time via Paris. The journey takes about 15 hours in total, with the Paris to Florence leg being a sleeper train. After a busy period leading up to my departure, I was relieved to have that time to myself, to comtemplate my move, and see the scenery change gradually around me as we sped through rural France, as night was falling, then through Switzerland during the night, waking up in the bel paese the next morning. The journey was not particularly cheap, but then I booked it only a week or ten days' in advance, and if you book with more time, the tickets can be very reasonable.
Continuing this trend, and to conclude the year, I booked the most epic journey, from Florence to my parents' house in Glasgow (to be fair, the final leg of the journey, in a snow-covered city, from Central Station to my parents' was conducted on my dad's car), involving stops in Paris and London. Equipped with a half-bottle of vino rosso and some honey and hazelnut Italian biscuits, I had a relaxing and comfortable journey to Paris, where I saw my first snow of the year and had the less relaxing and comfortable task of lugging my luggage across the city from Bercy to Gare du Nord. I had enough time for a cafe creme at one of the less awful establishments outside the station where at the next table were two highly stereotypical American writers in Paris, wearing black and talking pretentiously. I boarded a Eurostar for another enjoyable journey to London, the very day before the Eurostar imploded and stranded thousands of people on both sides of the Channel. After a few days spent in London, where it also snowed, I took a train up the West Coast Main Line to Glasgow, and arrived with about an hour of delay, catching a glimpse of the countryside outside of London before night fell, the fields and trees looking like perfect Christmas card scenes.
I'm planning to travel back to Florence in ten days' time in the New Year via the same route, this time stopping off in Paris for longer (and strongly hoping that there are no more problems with the Eurostar). My experience of international train travel over the last six months has been consistently good: unlike flying, you get a taste of each of the countries you travel through, and the cities where you stop off, making the journey a more gradual transition from one context to the next, rather than the more abrupt change of scenery brought by flying. Train travel does take more time than the plane, but then you are usually going from the centre of one city to the centre of another, cutting out the time taken to research sterile airports, and the time spent checking-in, going through security and generally waiting around. The train can be more costly than air travel, but that is not always the case, especially if you book as far in advance as possible (train operators usually open booking three months before actual travel, when the best prices can be had).
A good friend of mine has also started hanging the plane and taking the train wherever possible, including a visit via train to me in Florence from his current residence in London at the beginning of December, and a trip to Dublin prior to that, which involved a ferry crossing as well, a form of transport I'm yet to take following my rejection of planes (although perhaps less comfortable, given I'm not the best sailor).
For all of the above reasons, as well as the fact that airports are generally far from where you actually want to end up, and the environmental guilt of plane travel (especially after two medium-haul returns flights to Saudi Arabia earlier this year), I resolved to travel by non-plane methods as much as possible. This has usually comprised taking the train for long distances (I usually walk or cycle or take the bus for short distances). I was living in London until the end of August, and travelled via Brussels to Cologne to attend a friend's wedding at the beginning of that month: the train journey took about five hours in total, and was very pleasant, with an hour's stopover in Gare du Midi/Zuid, enough time to sip a Chimay, and good scenery throughout (with the evident exception of the Channel Tunnel). Also, the journey was not vastly expensive, costing under 100 pounds return, while friends who had booked flights actually ended up paying more).
At the end of August, I moved to Florence, Italy, to begin a PhD at the European University Institute, and booked tickets on Rail Europe (the place to go for rail journies from the UK to the general "abroad") to travel by train to Florence, this time via Paris. The journey takes about 15 hours in total, with the Paris to Florence leg being a sleeper train. After a busy period leading up to my departure, I was relieved to have that time to myself, to comtemplate my move, and see the scenery change gradually around me as we sped through rural France, as night was falling, then through Switzerland during the night, waking up in the bel paese the next morning. The journey was not particularly cheap, but then I booked it only a week or ten days' in advance, and if you book with more time, the tickets can be very reasonable.
Continuing this trend, and to conclude the year, I booked the most epic journey, from Florence to my parents' house in Glasgow (to be fair, the final leg of the journey, in a snow-covered city, from Central Station to my parents' was conducted on my dad's car), involving stops in Paris and London. Equipped with a half-bottle of vino rosso and some honey and hazelnut Italian biscuits, I had a relaxing and comfortable journey to Paris, where I saw my first snow of the year and had the less relaxing and comfortable task of lugging my luggage across the city from Bercy to Gare du Nord. I had enough time for a cafe creme at one of the less awful establishments outside the station where at the next table were two highly stereotypical American writers in Paris, wearing black and talking pretentiously. I boarded a Eurostar for another enjoyable journey to London, the very day before the Eurostar imploded and stranded thousands of people on both sides of the Channel. After a few days spent in London, where it also snowed, I took a train up the West Coast Main Line to Glasgow, and arrived with about an hour of delay, catching a glimpse of the countryside outside of London before night fell, the fields and trees looking like perfect Christmas card scenes.
I'm planning to travel back to Florence in ten days' time in the New Year via the same route, this time stopping off in Paris for longer (and strongly hoping that there are no more problems with the Eurostar). My experience of international train travel over the last six months has been consistently good: unlike flying, you get a taste of each of the countries you travel through, and the cities where you stop off, making the journey a more gradual transition from one context to the next, rather than the more abrupt change of scenery brought by flying. Train travel does take more time than the plane, but then you are usually going from the centre of one city to the centre of another, cutting out the time taken to research sterile airports, and the time spent checking-in, going through security and generally waiting around. The train can be more costly than air travel, but that is not always the case, especially if you book as far in advance as possible (train operators usually open booking three months before actual travel, when the best prices can be had).
A good friend of mine has also started hanging the plane and taking the train wherever possible, including a visit via train to me in Florence from his current residence in London at the beginning of December, and a trip to Dublin prior to that, which involved a ferry crossing as well, a form of transport I'm yet to take following my rejection of planes (although perhaps less comfortable, given I'm not the best sailor).
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