Why i love traveling with trains

Speed. The word of the century. We live in a time when our transfer from one place to another is easier and faster than ever. The plane offers comfort but above all speed, we cross continents, we reach from one side of the earth to the other in an hour. Plane travel is loved by most and by me however if I could choose I would always travel by train. Because train travel is not comparable to any other means.

Trains are full of life

In my eyes trains look more like a huge moving hotel on wheels than a means of transportation. They have life, buzz, people eating or drinking coffee in the restaurant, people knowing each other and sharing hours together in a wagon. It is a living organism at all hours of the day. AND who does not love a means of transport in which you can get up, stretch and walk during your trip. Sockets, food, drinks, relatively comfortable toilets. Got to love it!

Traveling back in time

I do not know if others feel it, but train travel always has something old, an energy of another era that may stem from the fact that it pre-existed and operated long before the plane starred in our travels. Every time I travel by train I think about how many forms have changed over the years, how many different people have traveled, sat in a place like mine wearing clothes from another era but in some cases looking at exactly the same view as me.

People and their stories

Train travel is a wonderful fantasy journey. Who is sitting across from me and why do they travel? On the 4-hour route Bratislava – Poprad, I crossed the beautifully snowy countryside of Slovakia with a Catholic priest and a nun in front of me and next to me a high tech costumed – probably director of a company – and with them a girl traveling to a small Slovakian town from the humble Corfu of Greece.

On another trip from Zagreb to Ljubljana my husband and I spent 2 hours in a wagon alone with a large family of gypsies who seemed to be waiting for us to sleep in order to steal everything we had. Or maybe this was just in my head. On the return trip we also spent 15 nightmarish minutes in which the inspectors did not seem very happy with our IDs and we were almost certain that we would end up somewhere on the Croatian-Slovenian border.

On the train from Bratislava to Vienna I was traveling with a young girl who was enchanted by the fact that I was traveling alone and especially from Greece and I envied her for living in such a special city as Vienna.

Traveling by train favors acquaintances. He usually puts us all in wagons, in places around a table as if urging us to meet. And usually it does.

Trains offers us beautiful images

The main advantage of train travel is of course the wonderful images we see from our window, something that the plane can not offer us. Everlasting memory of eating an extremely cooked schnitzel (but what a surprise) at the train restaurant and gazing at the snow-capped mountains of Slovakia.

Personally on the train I feel the duration of the trip. I see the changes in the landscapes, the changes in the people that go up and down, the borders of the countries. It is as if the journey is becoming something tangible. And dreamy.

Evita