Living life in the slow lane...

Just thought I would post a feature I have written for the latest edition of Nouse which, for those of you who don't know, is the University of York Student Newspaper! The feature is about the greatness of long-distance train travel...! (except for the first one, the photo's were all taken at York train station!)

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Living life in the slow lane
by Adam Sloan

What if I were to tell you that tomorrow you can step onto a train at York station, and without setting one foot off the ground, in two weeks you could be in Singapore, standing at the edge of continental Asia. Getting there would have been no easy feet of course; you will have passed through around ten different countries (this assuming you decided to take the easiest route) and eight time zones. You will have probably suffered delays, setbacks, breakdowns and, of course, the odd stomach upset or two. But you will have taken one of the greatest journeys on earth.

For there is practically no destination in Europe, Africa or Asia that cannot be reached by simply walking off the platform at Waterloo International station onto the carriage of one of the worlds great trains. The possibilities are endless and the destinations fantastic, but above all it is the journey that really puts this mode of travel above all others. Long distance train travel allows you to indulge yourself and relax, basquing in the romance of “this is how it is meant to be”, rather than cocooned 36,000 feet up in an environment that is about as sterile as the journey it presents you.

My first experience of long distance rail travel was the journey through Canada’s rocky mountains, on the “Rocky Mountaineer” from Edmonton, Alberta, to Vancouver. In Canada, these trains that go through the Rockies can be kilometres long, with more than 50 carriages, somewhere in the middle there will be a passenger car. The size and scale of the train reflects the grandeur of the setting it passes through, and you know at the end of the line you have the city of Vancouver to look forward to.

Of course, in this 21st century world of instant messaging, broadband Internet and trans-continental flights, who can blame people for expecting to be transported to their destination of choice anywhere in the world in the space of a day. But what needs to be thought of is what treasures are being missed when you get the brief glimpse of a glowing lake through the gap in the clouds, rather than slowly moving around it, taking it in from a proper perspective. Why get somewhere in the space of a stressful day when you can do it in a relaxed week?

Last year a train took me over a thousand miles across Australia, through some of the most barren and deserted landscape in the world for three days and two nights on the Indian-Pacific railway. The flight would have taken five hours, but why rush? There is a kind of hypnotic effect, looking out the window on that train, which passes over the longest stretch of straight railroad anywhere in the world. To look out the window sometimes it doesn't even look like you are moving, the desertness stretches on for that far, the image broken by the odd kangaroo or gum tree!

The train allows you to experience a time and place in a way that no other mode of travel can. One does not have to worry about falling out of the sky, or plunging over a ravine (depending on how exotic the trains you choose to take are of course), leaving you free to relax and enjoy the world passing you by while making casual conversation with fellow travellers and local commuters. The train is often slow, cyclists can sometimes be seen whizzing by, but so this reflects the pace of life that should be taken when on a relaxing trip away, allowing you to ponder, and finish that book that has been gathering dust for the last few months.

Above all, long-distance train travel encompasses the romance of all those great journeys that have been written and read about, you can still step onto the Orient Express as Herculie Poirot did in the classic Agatha Christie novel Murder on the Orient Express, or at least the same-named successor to the original ‘express d’Orient’ that first opened in 1883, between Paris and Vienna. Time can be turned back by stepping on one of India’s grand former imperial carriageways, generally regarded as the best place in the world for railway enthusiasts, such as myself, to travel.

For many of course, the granddaddy of all railway journeys has to be the Trans-Siberian railway between Moscow and Vladivostok, in far-eastern Russia. The classic Trans-Siberian route takes around seven days, passing through some of the most remote places in the world. If just Siberia were a country in itself, it would still be the biggest country in the world. Of course, you could always take the Trans-Mongolian route, stopping off in Ulan-Baatar (claim to fame: it is the coldest national capital in the world!), or the Trans-Manchurian route, which takes you around Mongolia and down to Beijing.

This summer I will be jumping for a night on the historic ‘Red Arrow’, which travels between St. Petersburg and Moscow. It was this railway that transported the first Soviet government from St. Petersburg to Moscow. The track opened in 1851 and is one of the straightest stretches of railroad in the world. It is said that it was meant to be dead straight, however when Tsar Nicholas I was drawing the route on the map, he ran out of ruler and accidentally drew a small curve around his hand, before moving the ruler down and carrying on the line down to Moscow. The result is an apparently random curve in the otherwise dead straight track between the two cities.

For a solitary traveller, such as myself, a train allows you the choice to either relax in conversation with those around you (provided you speak the same language of course), or slip away into silent anonymity and a good book. With careful eyes it can actually be said that a country’s trains can reflect a national psyche. Look at the Bullet Trains in Japan, or the Swiss railways, they are fast, efficient and practical. In contrast, the slow-moving, open air carriageways going across Zambia reflect a more relaxed and enjoyable, reflecting a more laid back way of life. The train may reach its destination in a day, it may not, but what does a few extra hours really matter?

What does time matter when there is not just a destination to be reached but travel to be experienced and a journey to enjoy.

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For more information on inter-continental rail travel, visit the man in seat 61 at http://www.seat61.com

'The Old Patagonian Express'

Today I finally finished reading “The Old Patagonian Express” by Paul Theroux. It has been one of those reads that has been on and off for about the past few months actually, read a few chapters, a book in between, a few chapters, a book in between. A couple of weeks ago though I ended up picking it up again to read the last half and pretty much have not been able to put it down. I don’t think I liked it as much as The Great Railway Bazaar (Theroux’s first travel book for those not in the know), although that book does sit among my al time favourites so maybe a comparison is somewhat unfair, however it has now instilled in me even more a desire to visit Latin America (a desire first realised after reading Peter Moore’s The Full Montezuma I should point out).

In the book Paul Theroux jumps on the everyday commuter train in Boston, Massachusetts, with one destination in mind, that being Patagonia, the Southern tip of Argentina. What I love about Paul Theroux’s books is that they are not so much about the places he visits during his three-month trip through the America’s, but about his journey getting there. Travelling by train he gets to meet some of the most interesting and, one sometimes thinks, some of the most insane, people spanning two continents. He really takes the reader along with him on his journey, meeting the people he meets (to use the old cliché!) and getting on the old railway lines all the way from Boston to Patagonia.

I think the fact that Theroux made his career as a novelist before he was a travel writer really comes across in his writing as you really get the sense he is telling a story. Even the way he presents his characters and his journey it reads like an adventure rather than just one man’s travels through the America’s.
Definitely recommended reading, but pick up The Great Railway Bazaar first, otherwise concepts such as getting “Duffilled” wont make much sense (to be Duffilled is to miss your train with all your bags still in the compartment, so named after Duffill, who was a guy Theroux met while travelling by train through Italy on his way to Turkey and the Far East).

'Can you make that coffee to stay please...'

London



Pro’s – Vibrant, cosmopolitan, loads going on, diverse, historic, the capital, cultural.
Con’s – Expensive, anonymous, lonely, EXPENSIVE, crowded, overwhelming.

There were two experiences I feel that really summed up my week down in London, one I liked a lot and one that made me think I didn’t like it all so much. The experience I liked: I went out for a few drinks with a work collegue and his friends. Sitting at the table were four of us, making up four different nationalities. Later in the week we went for a night out and there were seven of us, making up five different nationalities. This made me realise that London really is a place where so many different people of all different cultures come together, and that I really liked. Just travelling to work on the tube in the day, or getting around on the bus, I heard people talking in Spanish, French, Chinese, Urdu, Arabic and a whole host of other languages, almost as much as a heard people speaking English! This I really liked.

The experience that sticks in my mind as one I didn’t like so much in London was this: on my way to work in the morning, I had a bit of spare time so I stopped in Starbucks for a coffee and to read the paper. After ordering my drink I went to collect it, and without even asking it was automatically given in a ‘to go’ cup. This made me think…is it that absurd a notion that in London in the morning somebody might actually want to sit down and enjoy a cup of coffee before going somewhere? It sounds like only a small thing but this experience actually really disturbed me! I looked around and realised that I was pretty much the only one that was actually sitting down and having a coffee. People would come in wearing their suits, go to the counter, get their coffee to go and walk out of the door, almost in one swift motion. This is a place where people know where they want to go, stick their head down and do things as fast as possible (“time is money! Time is money!”) and that is a mentality I don’t know if I could live with on a daily basis!

Anyway, back to the reason I was spending a week in London in the first place! Some of you may or may not know, for many years I have known that I want to pursue a career in newspaper journalism. Having spoken to numerous people, the best way to get ahead in such a competitive industry is really to spend as much time as possible working for free until one day where you may luckily find yourself in a job from where you can start climbing the ladder. Some how (as a result of persistance and applying over six months in advance!) I managed to get myself a work experience placement down at The Independent, and thus acted as a precurser to spending a week down in the capital.

My place of residence was the ‘International Student House’, which has a great location at the top of Great Portland Street, right in the West End. Not exactly the most lively place to stay for people looking for wild nights out, nor the cheapest either (£18 p/n for a four person dorm), but when booking a place to stay I was very concious of the fact I was going to London to work and therefore would like decent nights sleep! It is worth noting that the hostel doesn’t have a kitchen either which means breakfast, lunch and dinner must be purchased. All in all though, it was a very clean, cosy and friendly place to stay. It was pretty quiet, the first few nights I shared my dorm with only one other person, who’s name escapes me, that didn’t speak English.
I don’t think I’ll bore you with the day-to-day goings on of my work placement at the Independent, but it was a great experience and well worthwile (Simon Kelner, the editor, drinks tea out of a china cup and tea pot in the morning!). Obviously with me only being a first year undergraduate student I didn’t do a lot in terms of work for the paper, mostly researching things, however just being there and seeing how a national daily newspaper works on a day-to-day basis made the whole thing worthwile. It was great meeting all the people there as well, and seeing how they got to where they are. I spent most of my time hanging out with other people on work experience as well, mostly MA Journalism students from City University.

Just to point out…I got the bus down to London on the National Express shuttle from Birmingham. No stops the whole way and the trip took just under 3 hours. The return ticket cost just £4 :-) !

London is a fantastic place. I hadn’t spent any time down there for absolutely ages, and this was the first time I really got to experience spending any period of time longer than a day or two there for a very long time. There always seems to be so much going on, everywhere you look, and this makes it a really exciting place to be, even if you just wander round like I did and take it in. Although most of my time was spent around Canary Wharf and the Docklands, which is probably one of the areas I like least around London, all it took was a quick hop on the tube and I was in Angel, or Covent Garden, or Parliament Square.

I think I am going to have to start making more regular trips down to London. For £4 return and hostels from about £12 a night it really is the place to be, where things happen, and I think this is why I have decided I like it so much.

Welcome to my blog!

Having spent much time meandering along the peripheries, I have decided to enter the world of Blogging. Expect to read mostly my wandering thoughts and experiences on the events and issues that I have come accross over the course of a day/week etc. Hopefully I will occasionally provide an interesting read but if not at least I can see what this whole blogging thing is all about!

Cheers,
Adam