I really wish train travel was better. It’s just … not. I was passing through France ever so briefly in my way to the United States, and I thought it would be fun to take the train to Paris.¹

And the Eurostar was fine, really it was, moderately new and moderately clean and less than 2½ hours. But the waiting room was miserable — long lines for security and passport control leading to a hellscape of institutional decor with cheap uncomfortable seating and not enough of it for all the passengers. Nothing communicates the romance of train travel like a bunch of people sprawled on the floor because there’s nowhere to sit.²

And there’s similar security, and similar demands to show up hours before you’re supposed to depart. The cost of a one-way direct flight is about the same, except I could have flown from Birmingham and avoided the two hour train to London first. And I wouldn’t have had to catch the train out to Orly at the end, either.

This has been a huge problem, everywhere I’ve been. Most European countries have good or great train service, within the country.³ But the train service between countries is nearly always shoddy, expensive and slow and painful. I’m making a big effort to take trains when I can. Next month I’ve booked the overnight train from Berlin to Zürich, which I may live to regret. But I gave up and booked a flight from Brussels to Berlin; even with a stopover in Frankfurt, it was faster and half the price.⁴

It may be getting better. There’s a bunch of fancy night service trains coming online in the next year or two, promising a decent meal and a comfortable bed with the ability to go to sleep in Madrid and wake up in Amsterdam. But the real sticking point is political. If we’re serious about fighting climate change but still want to preserve the luxuries of modern life, we need to stop subsidizing air travel and start investing heavily in rail travel. And that has to be a transnational effort. I’m not sure we’re there yet.

I lost the charger for my laptop. That’s an occupational hazard when you travel as much as I do. I suspect I left it back at a friend’s place in England, in which case I’ll be reunited with it eventually, but it may have just fallen out of my bag at some point and it’s gone forever.⁵

In any other situation I’d have just bought a new one. But I was getting in late, the chargers on sale in the train station were expensive and a max of 30W,⁶ and I’m heading to the United States immediately. I didn’t want to get stuck with a European charger.⁷

So for the time being I’m doing without. I can charge my computer off a phone charger; it just takes 48 hours. I’m making do with my mobile phone in the interim, and it’s not great. This entry is being written on it⁸ and it feels like writing I’m writing longhand after using a typewriter for 40 years.⁹ Typing with a full keyboard and a full screen¹⁰ lets me think long, complicated thoughts. Typing on a mobile feels staccato and disjointed. The medium is the message.

I also can’t really do proper research on it. I’m hoping to mail my passport to a visa service to get a visa to Mali, in case I do end up visiting, but it’s hard to do more than look up single, simple answers. And I had downloaded the full season of two TV shows¹¹ to watch on the flight to the United States, which I clearly won’t be able to do on my computer.¹² It’s a major pain.

I’ve ordered a new charger to arrive at the Disney hotel where I’m staying in a couple days. I’m looking forward to fully resuming my online presence. It’s horrifying how much I feel at loose ends without it.

Right now I’m halfway across the Atlantic. I used a trick to book cheap airfare. I usually book one-way flights; my travel is so irregular it’s rare I’m returning to the same place I departed from. In this case, I was flying to Europe from São Paulo, but I’m not returning there soon.

The flights from Brazil to Europe were expensive, around $800.¹³ But I noticed there was a round trip flight for $650. That was pretty good. Better, though, was that the return trip had a layover in Miami. You’re obviously not supposed to just not catch your connecting flight, but they can’t exactly force you to, etiher. So there’s a flight with a seat reserved for me to São Paulo leaving shortly after midnight. I’ll be asleep, catching a flight to Orlando in the morning.

Obviously this doesn’t work if you have to check luggage.¹⁴ Ditto if you’re not changing planes; I’ve heard reports of travelers who tried this trick only to discover they weren’t able to disembark at the halfway point.¹⁵ And if the airline figures out what you’re doing they might just ban you from their flights. It’s hard to catch if you’re careful, though. There’s lots of reasons people miss flights — left the airport and got back late, got held up at passport control or customs, had a family emergency pop up and needed to deal with it.

If I’ve posted this obviously I made it through without a hitch. I’m back in the United States and on my way to meet my friend at Disney World in Orlando. As I’ve mentioned before, I signed up for the Galactic Starcruiser. It’s been a decade since I last visited one of the Disney parks and with the Starcruiser being on the forefront of interactive corporate entertainment I’m deeply curious what it’ll be like. I guess I’ll find out tomorrow.

Next: Miami (MIA) to Brussels (BRU)
Prev: London to Paris

Footnotes

¹ I’d never been through the Chunnel before.

² I’m deeply curious whether the experience is similar from the French side. I imagine it would be, but the French have always been better at these things than the British.

³ The Netherlands being a notable standout, albeit one that benefits from a particularly compact and flat geography.

⁴ It’s also my first chance to see the new Berlin airport, which I’m weirdly excited about.

⁵ I was settling in to my seat on the train and unpacking my gear when someone came by and insisted, very nicely, that I was in their seat. I wasn’t — they had the wrong carriage — but when I turned back to my gear the charger was missing, and I couldn’t recall if I had pulled it out of my bag or not. I can’t shake the feeling it’s rattling around under the seats on the Eurostar still.

⁶ If it’s less than 65W I typically lose power while I’m working.

⁷ I have a universal adaptor — useful when you land in Buenos Aires and discover they use Australian plugs with the prongs set at an angle — but it’s bulky and doesn’t sit well in most outlets. Most of the rest of my gear assumes US plugs.

⁸ Excuse the typos

⁹ Between my tremor and my writer’s cramp I can’t write with pen and paper for more than a sentence or two.

¹⁰ A luxurious 13" LED display

¹¹ Foundation and the second season of Russian Doll

¹² You’d think it would be easy to transfer files from a Linux machine to an Android device, but it’s not. OTOH, there are plenty of Bittorrent clients for cell phones, and overnight is more than enough time to download at least 40 gigs of data from any reasonably seeded source and halfway decent connection. Use this information as you will.

¹³ And forget direct flights, which started at twice that.

¹⁴ Although if you’re making a connection where you have to pick up your bags and go through customs, maybe it’ll work anyway.

¹⁵ And yes, you could make a scene and get removed from the fight. Your best bet is to claim you’re I’ll and need to see a doctor. Best to avoid the whole thing.