Traveling By Train

I've actually traveled very little by train (I'm not counting subway systems) but I've loved every second.  In the States the only trips I've taken were between Maryland and New York, twice maybe.  Most of my experiences came during my Europe trip, which I mentioned briefly in yesterday's entry.  There I got a very good taste.  I rode a normal passenger car train from Copenhagen to Amsterdam, and then a high-speed train from there to Paris.  Watching the olive fields which stretched out to infinity meander by on my way from Madrid to Grenada was breathtaking.  But my favorite trip by far was from Paris to Madrid.  It's a long trip to begin with, made longer by the fact that the train winds through the Pyrenees.  So I got a sleeping compartment on a night train.

It was a novel experience, for sure.  It was the first time that I'd gone to sleep, in a bed, while traveling, waking up at my destination.  I can't think of a better way to travel.  I was going to have to sleep, and accomplish nothing anyway.  Why not get my eight hours while traveling?  Plus, I'm not sure I've ever slept more soundly.  The sound and motion of a car makes me drowsy.  Even more so a train.  It's sort of like being enveloped in a sonic security blanket.  If I could create a bed system for the home that replicated that entire experience, I'm sure I'd be a wealthy, and lazy guy.

I think there's a certain romanticism that travels with trains.  Even the super-fast, super-modern bullet trains still share in that mystique.  Nothing beats sitting at the window, watching the countryside evolve as you draw closer to your destination.  You get a sense of involvement with your surroundings that's lacking in air travel.  At 35,000 feet, you're about as far removed as you can be.  And who really wants to be involved with their surroundings on a Greyhound bus.  On a train you can connect with your travel in a visceral way, watching it happen in real time, cities giving way to towns and villages, to countryside and mountains, and back again.  But, given that trains often traverse stretches of land not accessible to other means of transport, you're removed just enough from reality to feel that you're doing something special.  Involved with, but slightly apart from the world.

I love it.  If I had the time I'd take a train ride out west.  To no place in particular.  Just from one train station to another.  The traveling could itself be the vacation.  Or at least a value-added benefit, as opposed to just a means to an end.