Seeing the landscape floating by. Pro's and con's on the choice of travel
Another weekend, another trip travelling towards Northern Europe to visit friends and family. I like travelling honestly, it’s calming and gives you some quality time for yourself. Correction on this, you have to MAKE it quality time for yourself
At the moment of this writing I am in the ICE train through Germany flying with a nice 198 km/h over the train tracks. For me train travel is one of the most comfortable ways of travelling actually especially if have to cross some borders. No customs bothering you, no annoying checkups if you have any fluids with you, if your luggage isn’t too heavy and waiting in all sort of lines.
And actually if you don’t live in the vicinity of an airport this is ofcourse super fast.
So why am I not always travelling by train then if it has so many benefits?
Excellent question actually but the answer is super simple. It’s is too expensive
When I look at my route which I travel a lot, there are multiple options of transportation for getting from home Switzerland to home Holland. Let me describe them for you with pro’s and con’s
Going by car-> About a 700 km drive. Apart from that I don’t have a car, I find 700 km too far to drive by myself after a day of working. That is like disaster in the making I find ending up in some ditch from fatigue. Also the gasoline prices are not really a joke at the moment. A one way trip will cost around 100 bucks.
Going by blabla car-> This is a cool internet site where other people offer rides where you can sign up for and carpool. I love the concept, you chip in in the gasoline and have a nice conversation along the way. Downside, you are dependent on when other people decide to go and where their start and stop is.
Going by plane-> For me going by plane is not the most convenient as well. Apart from have luggage restrictions and being dependent on the departure times of the airlines, I also have to travel and hour by train in Switzerland AND travel 1.5 hour in Holland by train on top of it. On top of this you also have to be like two hours ahead on the airport so in total also this travel will take like 7 hours. PS I still find flying scary
Going by bus-> Actually I do also like this way of travelling because it is from door to door and it is mega cheap (30 bucks) but it just takes forever. Fastest trip is 13 hours and is best done on a night route, but I can sleep on busses so I still arrive exhausted haha. Pro: taking excessive luggage!
Going by train-> My most comfortable way of travel. Excessive luggage, door to door and every hour. But expensive
And this I don’t really understand in the end.
Because the train tracks are there. They can be pumped full with trains every so many minutes. They can run on solar energy and so forth. I see only winners. Only the price, if that would drop I would always take the international train and nothing else anymore! Haha.