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.

The train they used back then looked like a Soviet copy of the Orient Express with pseudo Art Deco design in plastic and vinyl instead of polished wood and leather. The train attendants served tea in cups decorated with little stars and rocketships. I desperately wanted to have such a cup, but I couldn't communicate with the train attendant and she didn't like us anyway, because our group of noisy and nosy Western teenagers were messing up her orderly train. I probably just should have given her some Western money and pointed at the cup, but back then I didn't think of that.

I rarely use the train, probably because I subconsciously associate it with school trips and a teacher who told me I was a spoiled brat, when I mistakenly assumed train travel worked like plane travel (which I was familiar with, but trains were new to me) and asked him where I could check my suitcase. I usually only take the train, when I'm in Britain, because I can't handle the traffic there. But I took the train when I went to Hamburg two weeks ago and actually enjoyed the experience.

Cora

[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.

Though the Berlin - Riga trip was a fabulous experience and I'm glad I did it. Coincidentally, that trip was also the first and last time I saw the Berlin wall - in October 1989, less than a month before it fell.

If you like videos of train trips, one of the German public TV stations has a program called "Die schönsten Bahnstrecken der Welt", which is broadcast as a late night filler program. Unfortunately, it doesn't seem to be online.

Cora

[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