5 hours out of a 3 day vacation w/ another 5 hours at the end. Also you're gonna have to do some shit when you get back home to be ready for work on Monday.
Vs.
Hey we're going to be traveling for 6 months, this is just your life now.
I could be wrong but I feel like the death rates for those trips were also very high
Yes but to be fair, the death rate of staying home was also high
At least on a pilgrimage I can lie down
More than that. Planes are just fancy flying cattle trucks. A lot of the time I'm in one it's so I can get to a destination I'll be hiking for several days lol. I'm all for Team Pilgrimage.
The monks are not expected to increase shareholder profits in stale air and incessant fluorescent lighting.
My entire issue with flying is not it taking a few hours. It's that airlines make it as shitty as they can. They really go all out in that way.
Flying does suck.
They do pack people like sardines but I don't think the airline industry is making big margins. If they didn't treat you like shit there is a possibility that you might be priced out entirely.
You can always pay to be one of the pod people.
Before the 2010s, airlines upgraded people if all first class seats aren't filled. Today they give you an option to pay the difference between an economy seat and first class, which I've never heard of someone choosing.
It doesn't have to be that bad, I have 2 short flights on Air China today, both come with a meal, carryon, 1 checked bag (sometimes 2 if the cargo space isn't sold out).
I think this comes down to the type of competition; US airlines compete only with themselves and a handful of other airlines, and at some level they understand a good economy experience competes with their business class at 5x price. Here in asia, you have a lot more countries airlines, but you also have trains and even ferries can be competitive.
A half-year pilgrim sounds fantastic! Get a break from my job and explore the world, probably share the expenses and burden with other fellow pilgrims.
Sign me the fuck up now.
I live in a part of America where you can drive at 70 mph for 4 hours and still be in the middle of nowhere…💀
Unless you're driving in the opposite direction.
Then you're back somewhere
Tell me you live in Texas without telling me.
Nope, north eastern Nevada.
I get vibes of "the king requests an audience so you need to travel 20 days to get to the capital" vibes. You need to waste 41-50 days of your life because your manager wants to talk to you face to face for a few minutes.
It's a break from the tedium of subsistance sharecropping...
If the king request an audience with you, then you're probably some middle management as well, which mean you also do the exact same thing but this time to a peasant because they didn't pay enough tax or their tribute isn't as good as last year, so they have to waste a few hours of their life just so you can threaten them face to face.
Medieval, amirite
Everyone here saying they want the medieval travel version because modern air travel is sooooo terrible should really be joking.
To start, safety. Going on a 6 month journey in the middle ages came with a significant increase in your chance of a gruesome death relative to staying home. Of course, mortality was higher at home than it is today as well, but travel increased mortality even more, since you could very well run into thieves/pirates/slavers, new and exciting diseases your immune system wasn't adapted to, end up stranded and/or lost in the wilderness, or just get kicked by a horse. In contrast, modern air travel is one of the safest ways to travel today - which makes it one of the safest ways to travel in all of human history.
Next, comfort. As an average traveller in the middle ages (not a noble person), you will be walking. Maybe you have a horse or donkey in your group to help carry food and supplies, but the supplies will take priority, and the only way you get to ride that animal is if you break your leg. To any fans of camping/backpacking, remember that you will not be using modern tents, backpacks, or shoes. Your shelter for a night out will be, at best, a good wool blanket or cloak - mosquitos or gnats buzzing in your ears, rain falling on your face, the cold ground sucking away your warmth. Your backpack, at best, is a sack with shoulder straps, or perhaps a few sticks lashed together with a few ropes to hang over your shoulders - and it may just be a sack that you sling over your shoulder and carry from the front with both hands, your body bruised, aching, and chaffed after just one day of handling such a load. Your shoes are floppy bits of leather - no support or padding to be heard of. If you get sick? Keep walking, or the group is leaving you behind. Get to a villiage? Maybe you'll get a respite by sleeping under the eves of someones roof or on the hard wood floor of the local church. Food? Heard of hard tack? Shit your pants? Well, you'll just have to walk in your shit pants for 6 months. But yes, yes, tell me how this is so much better than being mildly uncomfortable sitting in a climate controlled airplane for a few hours while you look down on the earth like a LITERAL FUCKING GOD.
And finally, time. People here seem to think like medieval people travelled for 6 months just for funsies. But no, this is not like taking a year long vacation. For one thing, the other two reasons above - your life is going to be very shitty for basically the whole time, and you might just die due to an ill-tempered musselman or an evil jew witch cursing you to shit blood. But also, you are giving up the opportunity to do anything else to improve your life or the life of your family for a whole year. Your mom could get sick and die. That sexy somebody you keep making eye contact with could marry someone else. The part of the community crop land you've been angling to get assigned to your family will get snaked by Bill - of course. Fucking Bill. What a dick. And really, until you show up again, no one is going to do anything to help you out because, again, there is a good chance you die on your trip.
Now, of course, everyone on Lemmy will hate to hear this, because of course, sitting next to a baby on a plane because of THE CAPITALISTS is literally the worst thing that ever happened to anyone, ever, and it was definitely better to die of plague while living under the rule of a literal feudal lord.
But what they'll hate to hear even more is that if you really want to go on a year long pilgrimage, you can fucking do that. You could start today. And it would still be better than your medival counterparts', almost no matter what. You can quit your job, break your lease, and start travelling with a few dollars in your pocket - and when you want to return to normal life, just say "oh, I was travelling", and all the hiring managers will think you are super cool. You can hitchhike across countries where you don't speak the language, and use your smartphone to translate. You can eat for free out of dumpsters because we throw out tons and tons of perfectly edible food every day. If you are reading this now, you can make money easily simply by travelling to a particular place and speaking a language you already know. If you decide to walk through the wilderness for days, weeks, or months, you can find free maps, mapping software, and information not just about the safest routes, but the most beautiful. You can pick up extraordinarily light, comfortable, and functional equipment from a thrift store. YOU CAN SEE AT NIGHT WITH THE CLICK OF A BUTTON. And if, during your travels, you find out your mom has fallen ill, or Bill is about to swindle the family farm, you can beg, borrow, or steal enough money to catch an oh-so-uncomfortable plane ride home and deal with the situation.
Holy shit, YES, flying economy on an airplane is so much better.
I'm sure people in the middle ages where adapted to most of the situations. For example If you don't wash for a few days or sit near a fire mosquitoes are less of a problem. Most towns, inns or taverns where less than 1 days march from the next in medieval Europe, so you would not have to sleep in the woods. There where also seasonal workers who would not live in one place, but move depending on the season to help sow or harvest fields, or work at different cities in their trade to learn new skills from different masters to see different countries.
Would you rather...
OR
5-month plane ride
Is the meeting on Mars?
...yes
...yeah ok, sign me up.
I would rather walk for six months than spend 5 hours squished into modern aircraft.
Not only would I be far more comfortable, I would have life experiences other than dealing with people I would rather be as far away from as possible, and I would be in better shape, and would likely make friends along the way.
I'd walk for 6 months to anywhere but the "holy" land.
Idk, Gary, IN isn't that nice tbf.
Gonna say it is the Journey not the destination.
The journey itself is once in a lifetime opportunity to travel though many lands, cultures, languages. It had its high and lows, it was tiresome, but rewarding.
But modern travel has focused on profitability that it only has lows and it is generally a bad experience overall unless you are very rich.
Also, the value of life was different then.
People didn't always survive traveling to far away places. In fact, the mortality rate was quite high for things like long-distance travel, from things like bandits to wild animals, to sever weather, to traveling by sea and the hundreds of ways you can die on a multi-month journey even before counting storms and shipwrecks. Many people died from very simple things, infected foot blisters, malnutrition, getting sick along the way, it was all just considered part of life and it's why people through history have put such great meaning on their actions and goals. Life has been very brief and fragile for the majority of human history and everyone knew someone who died on a journey or disappeared.
Traveling to somewhere far away was rarely done on a whim, it was usually for some greater purpose, either financial or religious or deeply personal as a way to seek out enlightenment or discover things about the world. (Assuming you had the choice at all.)
This "meaningfulness" is very much stripped from today's world of wonders. Yes, you can fly over an entire goddamn ocean in less time than it takes to read a short book, but without meaning behind your travel, the time spent waiting for your luggage feels unbearable.
We have everything, we're basically gods of our world, and we're miserable because we don't know what the point is.
An alternate version from the 1960s would show taking 3-5 days on a bus to take that 5 hour flight.
Plus, some of y'all ain't never taken a 16 hour flight with a refuel stop at hour 12 and it shows.
When I was in the US Air Force, I returned to the US on a flight they call the Milk Run. There were layovers in Aviano, Madrid, and th Azores Islands (that I can remember, at least). This was over 30 years ago, but if the Milk Run still exists, I would not recommend it.
"Milk run" is a generic term for routes with many stops, we have one here too :)
Woohoo! Oregon trail time! Let's go!
You have died of dysentery
One is a 6 month travel vacation, the other is 5 hours of boredom in cramped space. And before that comes waiting for the flight, stress with boarding, TSA, jet lag,...
And you are supposed to ignore all that and work normally the next day. Or perhaps on the same day, or even on the flight.
our ancestors never could have imagined the horrors of having a middle seat on a plane. there isn't any room for you to manspread, and manspreading is by far the most comfortable way to sit. when i don't manspread i feel like i can't breathe
We need everything to be available instantly, because we need our time to be bored and watch TikTok.
Reminds me of Yuval Noah Harari who spoke in a talk of his about how even kings back in the day, generally speaking people who get a lot of information handed to them all the time, when they needed to travel the country, they would have a week off and be detached from all the news whilst sitting in a carriage. Here we are having all the world news available to us every second of the day. No excuse not to be up to date on anything. What a comfort...
When I travel across Europe I do so by train, and I find it to be part of the experience that the journey takes time. Last year I visited Italy, from the Netherlands, and through the train window I see the landscape floating by, the flat Netherlands, the hills in Germany, the mountains in Switzerland and then the beautiful landscapes of Italy. Due to the time it takes you get a sense for traveling, for the distance you travel. I don't mind the time, cause I'm reading a book, which is often the most enjoyable thing of my vacations anyway: I find time to read, without any distractions.
More broadly speaking I've noticed that I've become suspicious of comfort and convenience. Nothing may take time anymore, nothing may take effort. Everything good needs to be quick and easy, available instantly all the time. But is that really better, or did we actually like having to work for something, not minding that it takes time, and weren't we more satisfied with the relief when we finished something, feeling like we spent our time well and brought something good unto ourselves. Isn't that experience more meaningful?
You could say this is some sort of false romanticism, but i don't think it is. Obviously we got a lot of good things, and I am not saying we should get rid of every comfort or convenience in our lifes. I'm just saying the opposite isn't true either, some discomforts and disconveniences are blessings in disguise.
Leisurely travel vs rush travel? Hmm, I wonder what is better and more enjoyable?!
at least they had full leg space without class difference.
Time is a luxury. Even on a small scale - I bike or walk to work most days, because I have the luxury of waking up when I wake up, having a morning and a slow human powered commute. That is privilege, yes? So many have to drive an hour or even more.
If I had the time to walk to somewhere far, I would take it.
I guess on the upside, a faster life means more stuff done in each life?
Trains over planes all day
We went from "the canterbury tales" to "travel vlogging couples"
As someone that doesn't have a car and uses coaches, public transit, or bicycles to get around, I've always found it ironic that people are willing to be stacked and piled into planes for hours but refuse to take a public bus ride for an hour. Planes are the only place where people can't just take their car to go somewhere and really have to put up with all the BS of traveling with other people.
When I go visit my family and friends using public transit and it takes multiple hours, I sometimes fantasize that I could have gone to the airport and use the same amount of time to fly to a Caribbean island. People complain about planes but I've used public transit all my life so to me they're just a tad worse than a packed public bus. At least planes have power and bathrooms, even if you have to climb over other people to use them.
I also love bike touring so sometimes instead of taking 2.5 hours to go visit my family using public transit, I use the greenways to cycle there, spend the night camping in a small provincial park, and finish the rest of the ride the next day. It usually takes about 7 hours of continuous cycling, without the pauses for rest/food and the overnight. I could rent a car and drive there in about 1.5 hour but then I wouldn't spend a night there. It's not always easy, but it's usually much more rewarding.
So yeah, it's relative.
Truly, road trips are more fun than flights
This juxtaposition does not take into account airports, or airplane seats. I'd absolutely, preferentially fight off waves of brigands. At least you can move around and stretch.
Fuck the "holy" land.
they had nothing going on so who cares what you do
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A collection of some classic Lemmy memes for your enjoyment
