I don’t like the new high speed TRAINS. Their stations look & feel like airports, with all the mouth-breathing over-security presence. There are long security lines. A muffin costs $7. Normal TRAIN stations in Europe are usually at least 100 years old and architecturally beautiful. They are just fun places to be. The high speed TRAIN stations are modern and sterile, with lots of restrictions. They won’t let your friends & family onto the platform to meet your TRAIN or to see you off. I don’t like the self-important paranoia of high velocity TRAIN stations.

High speed TRAINS have airline style seats, all facing forward. They don’t recline.

I don’t like the new high speed TRAINS also because of their speed. I don’t want to travel from Lisbon to Berlin in 3 hours. I want to enjoy it, see the forests and beautiful towns go by, catch up on my reading, meet new people in my compartment or bar car, eat a real meal in the rolling restaurant, & fall asleep at night in a real bed with linens, to the rolling cadence of the TRAIN on tracks.

You have to sleep the night anyway, why not do it on a TRAIN, while moving toward your destination? Why not have time to read up on your destination city?

TRAIN station ticket window clerks are usually rushed, and just assume without asking that Westerners want the fastest TRAIN. If you want to travel at normal speed rather than on the new high tech 100+ mph “bullet TRAIN,” before you get in the ticket line look in your guidebook and find the word for “high speed TRAIN” in the local language. Write on a slip of paper: “No / Nein / Nyet [word for high speed train].” In Italy the high speed TRAINS are called Frecciarossa (red arrow). In France, TRAIN à Grande Vitesse (TGV). In Germany, ICE. In England, British Rail Class 395. Tickets on these high velocity TRAINS cost much more than normal TRAINS, so you’ll save money while you have a better time.

One must drive about an hour out of town to reach an airport. (No neighborhood wants the noise.) Consider: 1.) TRAIN stations are in the center of towns, and 2.) TRAIN stations are much more numerous than airports. These 2 factors make TRAIN stations closer to you.

One must arrive at the airport 2 hours before departure. You can arrive at a TRAIN station 10 minutes before departure!

After finally boarding your PLANE, you sit for another 45 minutes or so before the wheels begin to slowly turn. You taxi at snail’s pace a long way, then stop again. The captain announces, “We’re fifth in line for takeoff, thank you for your patience.” Compare the TRAIN: Within 2 minutes of boarding you’re at full speed toward your destination.

On a PLANE, finally your turn to take off comes and the PLANE engines begin to scream, about 20 feet from your ears. They continue their high decibel screaming throughout the flight. On a TRAIN the engine is far away from your wagon; usually it cannot be heard.

On a TRAIN there is no charge for any luggage; take whatever weight you want. Wheel them right into your 6-person compartment and one of your new compartment mates will help you lift them onto the overhead rack. If you need anything during the trip, it’s right there (not inaccessible, as on a PLANE). Upon arrival, no waiting 45 minutes for your bag(s) to show up on the airport luggage carousel.

You see so much from the huge TRAIN windows, whereas from the tiny PLANE windows you see only cloud tops. You really can’t see anything of the towns & cities of Norway or Croatia from 30,000 ft. And if you don’t have a window seat you don’t see even the cloud tops.

PLANE seats recline only 1 inch, making sleep impossible or uncomfortable, but you can get real bunk beds on a TRAIN. The most popular TRAIN trips in Europe, as they used to be in the US, are those that depart a major city around 10pm and arrive in another major city around 8 a.m. These sleeper cars allow one to travel while sleeping in a real bed with sheets, rocked to sleep by the gentle rolling of the TRAIN. So much for TRAINS being “time consuming.”

It’s important that TRAIN wagons be divided into several compartments with bench seats facing each other, as they have historically always been until recent decades. These compartments are vastly superior to having airline style seats arranged like on an airliner all facing forward. Some of the most interesting people can be met on a TRAIN if the seating is right. It’s nice to have your own little compartment, 3 people facing 3 people, a large window, a folding out table, 6 bunk beds that fold down at night, and a door that locks at night to keep out the sneak thieves!

In the old wagons passengers can open the window in their compartment. This is good for saying goodbye to friends & relatives standing on the platform to see you off. In former Soviet countries, private women sell home cooked food thru the windows to passengers.

PLANE windows don’t open and they have stuffy, recirculated air because of the high cost of heating the fresh air from outside, which at 30,000 feet is below zero. The stewardess’ union is always complaining about the unhealthy stale air, but airline executives refuse to spend the money to heat enough fresh air. TRAINS don’t have this problem since they are at ground level where the air is warm.

Trains are more fuel efficient than PLANES. For the same gallon of fuel one may travel 7 times as far by TRAIN as by PLANE. So PLANEs pollute the air 7 times as much as TRAINS.

But the most important thing about TRAIN travel is that it is a lot of FUN!