At 02:21 PM 01/31/2003 +0100, Eugen Leitl wrote:
On Fri, 31 Jan 2003, Thomas Shaddack wrote:
> I don't know how it works in the US, but railroads are both comfortable
> and pretty reliable in Europe.
A bit too expensive, especially in Germany. I also like being able to work
on the train -- given that here cities are only a few kilotons apart and
ICEs are pretty speedy flying can take longer.
Otherwise I agree, bahning beyond 5-6 h starts to become tedious.
Short distances make trains much more attractive, and most of the
big cities in Europe _are_ pretty close together.
The train was a great way to get from Berlin to Hamburg; 2-3 hours,
and flying distances like that is mostly hurry-up-and-wait.
It's a nice way to be a tourist, as well - you can see scenery
as you drive by, so taking the trains and ferry boats around
Scandinavia was nice too (as adventurer or bum, depending on whether
you saw me before or after I got to the hotel with a washing machine :-)
But the train from Berlin down to Munchen took about 8 hours;
that's about how long it takes me to get from San Francisco
to New York by plane, which is slightly farther.
Tim commented about railroad stations being in the ugly parts of town.
That's driven by several things - decay of the inner cities,
as cars and commuter trains have let businesses move out to suburbs,
and also the difference between railroad stations that were
built for passengers (New York's Grand Central, Washington's Union Station)
and railroad stations that were built for freight, where passengers
are an afterthought (much of the Midwest has train stations surrounded
by warehouses and grain silos, not houses or shops).
Here on the Peninsula between San Francisco and San Jose,
the train stations are mostly central to downtown or on the
edge of downtown, in areas that are nice (though the train
stations themselves are either minimal commuter stops
or else pretty mostly-abandoned stations that were built
because the government-subsidized train system thought they should.
