The philosopher, writer and recent writer-in-residence at Heathrow airport imagines a world without aircraft.
In a future world without aeroplanes, children would gather at the feet of old men, and hear extraordinary tales of a mythic time when vast and complicated machines the size of several houses used to take to the skies and fly high over the Himalayas and the Tasman Sea.
The wise elders would explain that inside the aircraft, passengers, who had only paid the price of a few books for the privilege, would impatiently and ungratefully shut their window blinds to the views, would sit in silence next to strangers while watching films about love and friendship – and would complain that the food in miniature plastic beakers before them was not quite as tasty as the sort they could prepare in their own kitchens.
??
Memorable train journeys of my own
??The above article from @alaindebotton would make you nearly want to have a world without planes.
For the past year I’ve been yearning to go inter-railing. Again. 9 years ago I saw 10 counties in 20 days on a meandering and fun but hurried trip of Europe.
I find travelling by air stressful and would love to just be able to head off on the ferry from Rosslare and take ferries and trains and buses around Europe. Ideally Europe would be right hand drive. But, I’ll stick with the inter-rail dream instead.
9 years ago, myself and a friend booked a flight to Rome with a stop off in Budapest. From our departure from Rome to Venice by train we spent 96 hours on trains over the next 15 or 16 days, eventually arriving in Dun Laoghaire by boat.
The plan was simple, all we had to do was arrive in Manchester to see U2 by a certain date (11th or 12th of August, 2001, the internet tells me). The following 3 weeks were a blank canvas.
We did have some idea however of places we might hit along the way. I know that because I recently found the envelopes I had brought with me, holding foreign currency for a range of countries including Hungary, Italy, France, Spain, Germany and Britain.
We spent just 5 hours in Venice, leaving our rucksacks in the train station until it was time to board the midnight train for Nice. From Nice we got the train to Cannes where we stayed a couple of nights, and then on to Barcelona where a friend of my travel partner lived. From Barcelona we took a train to a town called Torelo or something and got to enjoy a small town festival where the girl we were visiting had a brother.
After Barcelona we did something thoroughly crazy. We took a 23-hour train trip to Germany. I got off the train in Cologne to meet friends and my travel buddy went on to Hamburg to meet a friend.
Next stop on our itinerary was Berlin. I ended up seeing Berlin from the train only because while we were apart for a few days, some drunken texts were exchanged to the tune of “I hear Berlin is a shithole. Fuck Berlin lets go to Prague“. I’d been to Prague before and I’ve been twice since. I love the place. But it wasn’t my idea to go there, to loop out to the east of Europe again, having originally started our journey in Hungary.
10 or so hours into the train journey to Prague my travel companion, piped up “So what made you want to really go back to Prague.” She’d forgotten it was her idea.
We’d a fab few days in Prague, but we were running out of time, so off we went again, to Amsterdam. I don’t like Amsterdam, never have. So after a night or so there, we changed plans again, made a quick call and arranged to kip with a friend of mine in Covent Garden and took the ferry from Hoek van Holland to Harwich and a train up to London.
And then after a night or two catching up with a mate there, we went to Manchester, saw U2 and then got the train to Hollyhead to get the ferry back to Dublin.
And that was it. That was 96 hours of trains over 15 days of a 20-day holiday.
How did we cope? We’d buy a 1.5 litre bottle of water before each long train journey, empty it out and refill with cheap local wine, we even had plastic cups too.
And for the night trains where we were scared of the people who walked the trains at night robbing peoples belongings, we had chains. Chains securing our rucksacks to the overhead racks. Would I do it all again? I like to think I would.
0 Comments