In Praise of Trains (Travel Update #2)
Note: This blog post was imported from my old squarespace blog, originally posted August 16th, 2023.
Hi lovely people, welcome back to another blog post. I am coming to you live from the Tuscan countryside! It’s been a consistent 37 degrees here every day, so pardon me if my writing is a bit clouded with sweat. This post started off as a love letter to trains, but I figured I should give you a larger update on where I’ve been these last few weeks. It’s a long one, so get comfy on your couch or back deck or balcony or anywhere you feel comfortable :) Have an extra coffee/spritz/beer/tea/glass of water on my behalf, please!
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I love to drive.
Driving a car has felt like a natural extension of my own body. Any kid that’s grown up in suburban or rural North America understands what I mean. When you can’t even use your own feet to get from point A to B, and the ‘public bus’ is merely an abstract concept to your neighbourhood, you grow up to romanticize the car. A sixteenth birthday is a big deal, meaning you can finally do the things all the city kids were already used to doing without help. Exciting things like going to the grocery store! Or your friends’ houses! Once you have access to a vehicle, the world opens up. I think that early glorification of the car forever made me sentimentally attached to the experience of driving, the open and nearly empty highway, weird roadside attractions, trees and sky and water as far as you can see. The best part of it - you control the music, you control the speed, you dodge all the deer, and you only have to deal with the people you willingly let into the other seats of the vehicle (and if you’re lucky, you actually like those people). As such, I never gave trains a chance. Why train when driving is just so much more fun?
To be fair, it’s not like VIA Rail from Ottawa to Montreal is all that glamorous. But I think I finally understand the beauty of the train now that I’ve taken a few through Europe. Especially when we compare trains and planes, it becomes glaringly obvious who the winner is. Picture two scenarios: one in which you are limited on how much liquid you can carry, scrutinized in a security line, swabbed, scanned, and stuffed into a flying metal tube for hours. The other in which you leisurely approach a large train station (that is also older than anything you’ve ever seen in your life), you calmly find your train, take a huge bag and a full meal onboard, and mere hours later you step directly into the downtown center of your destination. The second scenario, the train, wins every single time.
Most of my travel within Europe has been by train, and I’ve been lucky to take trains from Amsterdam to Berlin, Berlin to Budapest, Budapest to Vienna, Vienna to Venice, and Venice to Florence. There’s still quite a few more trains in my future, and I am very much looking forward to taking them (unlike plane journeys, which I tend to dread from months away - I’m looking at you my Barcelona to CDMX flight coming up in two months…).
My solo trip as been really wonderful and reflective for a lot of reasons but it has certainly been lacking in moments of true relaxation and calm. This is just the reality of being responsible for carting a large backpack around in strange and foreign lands, navigating language barriers, and making new friends every few days while potentially struggling with a hangover or some weird cold you got from your last hostel.
Don’t get me wrong, this is still fun and rewarding, but it does mean that my anxiety tends to be a bit on edge, never fully becoming familiar with a place and thus always feeling like an outsider. I think the train rides have hit hard for me because it’s the only place where I can really feel like I can turn my brain off and stare out the window, re-centering myself and remembering who I really am when I’m not constantly on the go.
My journal entry for the train from Berlin to Budapest really consisted of reconnecting with my inner child and thinking about all of the things I wanted to do when I was much younger. Since I was very small I have always wanted to see the world and experience everything that could possibly exist. As a kid, I was entranced by the sheer amount of natural beauty that existed in the world, as well as the infinite number of interesting people that I could possibly befriend on this earth. In the present day, this is still true. I took a really big breath on the train and thought about how excited my younger self would have been to be experiencing what I am experiencing right now. I put my face right up against the window and tried to take in every detail as I looked out at the German landscape, and I kept at it until the landscape became Polish. I felt a lot of emotions larger than I can really explain. Accomplishing a childhood dream is always a very powerful feeling. In everything I have been doing, I have tried to approach my day-to-day while travelling in a similar way that I would have as a child. Trying exotic things, seeing historical places, eating foreign food and saying yes to as many opportunities as possible. I go to bookstores and libraries and I eat ice cream a lot because I know that my younger self would have done that too. I feel a lot of gratitude for my ability to live out this dream on so many levels! And I am thrilled that I have had a wonderful range of experiences that prove what I believed as a kid - the world is beautiful in so many ways and people are so inherently good.
Trains have also been supremely great because of the people I’ve met (or at least seen) on them. On my first train from Amsterdam, I sat beside a very kind person around my age who was travelling to Berlin for work and who chattily asked me about my time in Europe and warned me of the frequent train delays common on this route. They stand out in my mind as the first stranger to really talk to me, and they even switched seats with me so that I could look out the window in order to suppress my food-poisoning based nausea. They mentioned that their networking event that evening would involve beer pong. We didn’t exchange contact info, but I do hope that they won the beer pong, and I wish them infinitely good train karma.
It’s always a bit of a toss-up in train compartments, and the social feeling of the train needs to be judged quickly. Do they want to ride in silence? If I engage in conversation will they be secretly wishing they picked a different seat? Or will our conversation become very fulfilling, go on for hours, and make me reflect deeply on cultural differences, borders, politics, and the place that I’m at in my life??? On the train from Vienna to Venice, I got lucky to get the latter. It’s remarkable how quickly you can feel like you know someone in just a few short hours of device-free conversation, face to face, with nothing to distract other than loud train announcements. I was lucky to meet two lovely people who chatted with me until their midnight stops in other Austrian cities. If you’re reading this blog, thanks to both of you for the chat, and I wish you the best in your lives :) And Daniel - I forgot to tell you, on the topic of our conversation, I think you would like the movie Before Sunrise (1995). You are so correct that the best moments in life are unexpected!
Those have certainly been the stand out train rides. I’d like to also give shout outs to people who will never see this, including the mysterious woman who did not speak German, Polish, Hungarian, English, Spanish, French or Korean on the train to Budapest (I will forever wonder who you were!), and to the realllllly British dudes with the huge backpacks who slept beside me on the train to Venice - you were super quiet and nice and I hope Manchester wins the football game so you can be happy.
In short, my train adventures have been good. As for the places I’ve been… I’ll definitely write more about Berlin and Vienna in the future, but here’s some quick recaps:
Amsterdam!!
Amsterdam: A gorgeous city! So great! Went to a phenomenal jazz bar recommended by the brilliant Tessa. The performers played a medley that included some Pharaoh Sanders, who is possibly one of my favourite musicians of all time. Went to the Rjiksmuseum and cried about how nice the art was. Walked around really late at night in a group of people from the hostel. The people from the hostel were also phenomenal (hello to any of you reading)! I maybe got food poisoning at the Rjiksmuseum (the cheese was weird!). I must return soon!!!
Berlin: WHAT A CITY. I joked that it’s sort of like if Mexico City had laws and no one smiled. Something about Berlin feels youthful, free, and very very alive. My interest in Berlin stemmed from a few things, including my music interests, and the fact that every German I’ve ever met has been pretty cool. One of my favourite musicians, Paul Banks (of the band Interpol), currently lives there and his instagram is littered with really dope architecture photos. Another of my favourite musicians, James Murphy (of LCD Soundsystem), also said this in an interview with Vulture in 2017:
“Interviewer: So where would the 20-year-old version of you move now?
JM: […] if I had to, I guess I’d tell a kid to move to Berlin. That’s where everyone seems to be going.”
So if everyone’s going, I figured I might as well check it out. It was totally worth it. A very bustling music scene, club scene, vegan scene. To top it off, the people I met, both strangers on the street and the people from the hostels were phenomenal. Thanks to everyone who made Berlin a lovely time <3
Budapest: So from Berlin I went to Budapest. Primarily because I had only ever heard good things, but also because a friend of mine, Zsófi, lives there. I met her during my semester in Spain way back in 2016/17, and I was very hyped up to see her again. She introduced me to to the beauty of Budapest, and we had a brilliant time chatting in a mix of Spanish and English, drinking fröccs at the top of the hill, watching the city lights twinkle below. Thank you Zsófi (and Eszter!) for a wonderful time. Additionally, if you’re reading this blog and we met while I was in Spain, pls reach out! Would love to see you again :)
Thanks also to Aimee, who I met at the hostel and was lovely to chat with over a few days! Hope to see you in England!!
Vienna: I was going to try to summarize Vienna in a blurb… but I think I have an idea for a full blog post about this city. Just spectacular!
And so, that’s the update for now. I’m on to France after Italy, but Italy will surely be written about. I think this post has gotten long enough - but that’s the beauty of the blog! I can write as much as I want forever !!!!!!!!!!!!
love and hugs,
sam