Trains

[sartorias]

I love long train rides with a desperate love, but I haven't been on one since 2004, so I've been feeling deprived. So I ride trains on the Net.

Thanks to 365postcards there is this realtime snip of the countryside between St. Petersburg and Moscow. Watching that, I get as mesmerized as I do on trainrides, with my face pressed to the window

Comments

[anonymous]

I've actually been on the Berlin - Moscow train twenty years ago, though we only went as far as Riga in Latvia. The trip still took three days, though, with a lengthy stop at the Polish/then-Soviet border, because Poland and the Soviet Union used different train track gauges, and another lengthy stop, reason unknown, at Minsk central station

[sartorias]

Stupid teacher. Kids are there to learn, including how the etiquette of a place works.

How I envy you these journeys!

[anonymous]

At the time (early to mid 1980s), plane travel was still expensive and fairly uncommon in Germany, while train travel has always been a lot more widespread than in the US. So a kid who knew how plane travel works, but not how train travel works was unusual and likely from a wealthy family and therefore vaguely suspicious. My family wasn't actually rich, my Dad just had a job that required a lot of travel and he took my Mom and me along whenever possible, so I had seen a lot more of the world at a young age than most of my rural classmates and teachers. For some reason, the wish to talk about my experiences was viewed as bragging and I got tagged as a "rich kid", which was completely silly, come to think of it, because I never had brand-name clothing or the latest entertainment equipment or other adolescent status markers. Still, in time I learned to keep my mouth shut

[sartorias]

Oh, I would watch that.

[anonymous]

It's strangely calming and hypnotic, probably why it's broadcast as a middle of the night filler program.

Cora