cross-posted from: https://lemmy.skoops.social/post/727
crossposted: https://lemmy.skoops.social/post/665
Oh boy...
Utterly depressing how this planet is predominantly populated by absolute morons with all the zeal and confidence of the best among us.
I just took the train from Switzerland to Italy. Can confirm, people do it.
Love it when people argue that it takes 45 minutes to fly from Y to X. 45 minutes is roughly the time your plane is airborne. The whole process takes 3-5 hours door to door.
Once I flew to a city that's about 6 hours away by car. Work was paying for it, and I figured it would be easier and less stressful to fly than to drive. A coworker drove instead. He left 2 hours after I left for the airport. After my plane arrived they were cleaning it out and one of the attendants hit his head and had to go to the hospital for stitches. I scrambled and was able to get on to another flight, although it took me about 2 hours into the opposite direction, where I then had to sprint from one end of the airport to the other. When I finally landed in my destination city my coworker had been there for over an hour. There was nothing easier or less stressful about that day.
That said, that was my worst experience flying, usually it is very easy - especially if I'm traveling by myself.
You can go from Paris to Stuttgart in less 3h 30min by train. No customs, no TSA, downtown to downtown.
Freiburg to Paris in about 3h, just went last weekend.
In the current political climate, border control is unfortunate becoming much more common. I had the border policy empty our bus and search everyone with dogs and half of us had to open our bags.
On my vacation in Germany we were not once asked on the train for our passports. We are white. The police would demand every non-white persons' "visa" and most of the time the questioned individual would produce a German ID or an ID from another EU member state.
It was a sad sight.
TGV > ICE
I stopped counting how many times the ICE broke down on this route. Of course I also had delays when using the TGV but not due to the train itself. Also the seats in the ICE are not comfortable at all.
Thats like 700km so in a proper high speed train it would be 3h or less from station to station. Thats probably faster than flying if you include all the boarding and travel to the airport.
I could walk from Germany to France in about 30 mins.
I meant Toronto to NYC is 700km
Germany and France share a border so yeah its 0 seconds if you are standing on the border and for one of the longest distances from Berlin to Strasbourg for example its 6h by train.
In the US people will argue it's quicker to fly or drive than take the train then show up 2 hours early to be sure to make it through check-in and TSA security to be sure to make their flight on time. Then waste another hour waiting for luggage
Don’t forget the 45m-1hr travel time to and from airports.
45 minutes to fly, but god help you if you check luggage, might as well be all day at that point.
Luggage doesn't matter.
Gotta leave the house 2 hours before the 2 hours before your flight. Then board, Then fly. Then disembark.
If flight is noon, you leave the house at 8 to be at the airport for 10. Then security theatre (remove your shoes, you're going to the LaNd Of TeH FrEe!!!).
If you're lucky, you're hailing a cab at JFK at 1:30pm.
That's your "45 minute flight". 6 hours, if you're lucky.
Don't forget that train stations tend to be in the city centre while the airport is 30-60 minutes outside in a field somewhere, so travel time is much reduced.
Even for very long distances (where flying is almost mandatory unless you are ready to spend weeks traveling) trains make things easier.
For example I'm living in a small village in the south east of France and I will be traveling to the carribean in summer for family, I will be walking to the train station is my village to take the train, 2 changes later I will be in London from where I'll take the plane to cross the Atlantic.
Same thing on the way back but with a night train.
The high speed Paris to Berlin train just started in December:
There are about 25 trains per day on the route, but I guess according to this American they're all empty?
I've been in Germany two years and gone to France three times by train.
I honestly don't think people appreciate public transit enough. Trains are the fucking bomb and if people could make trains and trams and buses a priority I think the world would be a remarkably more fun and enjoyable experience.
Vote for the political parties, even at and especially the local level, that want to put more money into public infrastructure focused around public transit. Cars and planes have their places, but they should never be the priority when city planning and a strong country is one connected by high speed rail and convenient, reliable public transit.
So... Fucking... American...
I've only ever travelled to Germany from France via train. I wouldn't bother flying,that's waaay to much of an effort
I had a US colleague stay with me in Ireland for a week and he was asking if it was possible to catch a train to England. It's amazing the geographic ignorance of some people and Americans seem to be especially afflicted. Maybe it's because the USA is so big, large cities so far apart, and public transport so terrible it doesn't occur to them that Europe is not the same.
You live in a world with the chunnel. The odds that a similar passage between islands formerly of the same empire is not so remote.
I'm from Australia and wouldn't have been able to confidently say there wasn't a tunnel between Ireland and England. There are long tunnels in a few places and one there wouldn't be too surprising to me
One of the factors is that the US is surprisingly huge. It takes EU tourists by surprise that a quick jaunt from NYC to visit their friend in Chicago is several days by road (unless you drive like an American roadtripper for fourteen hours a day) moreover, there's just huge tracks of land featuring not-too-exciting vistas (unless you plan your road trip to feature pretty routes, in which case multiply the distance by 1.3), so for the short while that airlines were regulated and we weren't worried (yet) about the air-travel carbon footprint (Huge. Enormous. Colossal.) it made sense to fly everywhere in the US.
Now that it's insanely expensive and inconvenient to fly, and we shouldn't be doing it, it's time for the US to build HSR for realsies, if the automotive / fossil fuel industrial complex will let us.
The US isn't as huge as you seem to believe (or Europe not as small). Europe is not as square, so its land area is much smaller, but the distances are comparable.
A trip from Hamburg to Vienna is not that much shorter than a trip from NYC to Chicago, but it's easily done by train in Europe: Board the NJ491 at 8pm in Hamburg central station (in the city centre, no need to be there more than a few minutes before boarding), have a good nights sleep, get your breakfast served at your bed (in the comfort category), take a shower and arrive well rested in Vienna (city center, no need to wait for your luggage) at 10am the next day.
Admittedly, a lot of people do fly from Hamburg to Vienna as well, as it can be cheaper than the train due to tax exemptions for the airlines (not everything is perfect in Europe), or they just don't like sleeping in a train, but these trains are usually well utilised.
EDIT: The link to truesize doesn't seem to work correctly, here's what I meant to show: 
(they won't)
Well, consider that most Americans couldn't show you France or Germany on a map.
I used to take the train from Wales to Scotland. I'd get on at my local station and change once about half way through the trip. On arrival I could walk to my flat. The whole process took about eight hours.
Once I flew. First I had to get a bus to the airport, arrive early for security theatre, eventually fly, land, take a shuttle bus to a train station, then take a train to Cardiff Central, then take another train to my actual destination. The process took about six hours and was utterly exhausting.
Just took the train from Frankfurt to Strasbourg.
Nobody flies a train from Germany to France.
I have my beef with the DB, but their ICE trains paired with SNCF are nothing to complain about
I’d love to hop on a train for a trip like that. So much more relaxing.
Let's just pretend the environmental impact is a negligible factor to save like 35 minutes on a 5-6 hour trip. Toronto - NYC, one way or another (have this guy ever been to an airport?).
Wait till this guy finds out you can take a train from France to England.
It's going to blow his mind
"Trains don't float, IDIOT"
Many short distance flights are business related but as someone who was working in an international corporation I can tell you there's plenty of business monkeys who fly simply for the prestige of it. They fly to attend meetings that could've been an email or a call just so they can pretend they're hot shit.
Massively disappointing.
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