Move it
Plane, train, ferry, bus, car, bike and tram. All modes of transport employed in our recent traverse of the world to see our offspring and poke around parts of England, France, Spain, & the Netherlands.
Planes
I love flying (guilty admission - I even like airline food!). I’m amazed at the ingenuity of humans. Around 500 of us in this aluminum tube sitting in complete comfort at 40,000 ft off the ground, belting across continents at 900 kmph. I was watching a movie, supping on a wine, as someone brought me yet another meal I didn’t have to prepare. Happiness.
It never ceases to amaze me that we’ve worked out how to harness physics to the point where we can hurl tons of plane and people across countries and oceans in complete safety. And my flight was one of around 100,000 other flights occurring on the same day! It always gob-smacks me when I think about everything that has to occur for this to be a reliable reality. People are so clever!
Trains
We took the Eurostar from London to Paris. The channel tunnel was under construction when we were last there, so it was cool to experience rolling through the world’s longest undersea tunnel. Being a provincial kiwi, train travel is a lovely novelty. Racing through the French countryside at 300 kmph (which is faster than your average light plane) was another source of wonderment. Why fly short-haul in Europe?
Fun fact: The British and French worked together on the tunnel project, each digging their half of the 50km long hole. They started tunneling from their respective countries in 1988, aiming to meet in the middle. 6 years later they did. But get this; the tunneling teams met each other with an offset of only 36 cm! How skilled is that?
Cars
We hired a car in France and Spain. My risk profile/tightness means I don’t normally bother taking the insurance cover when I rent cars in NZ. But we took it out over there given we would be driving on the wrong side of the road, we didn’t understand the road rules, and were solely reliant on a tech giant to show us the way. Plus the insurance excess if we damaged our rental car was 1,700 euro!
Our prudency paid, as both cars were returned with less paint on them than when they were collected! Not all my fault - but I was the major offender.
I guess I shouldn’t have been surprised at the narrow roads in the towns, as they were planned many hundreds of years before cars were conceived. But if Google can map roads, give us eta’s, alternative routes, and street view, surely it should be able to tell us which streets our car can’t fit down?
Around 80% of the cars in Europe are manual, whereas in NZ stick shift is becoming a greater theft deterrent than a car alarm. When I questioned the absence of automatics, the most common answer was “We like to change the gears ourselves”. Was that because they are slow to adopt change? Or is it because they prefer to have greater automotive agency? I’m not sure - probably a combination of both. Long live the manual!
Bikes
Love’em. Best mode of transport ever. If you could put all the bicycle benefits in a pill and sell it, that truly would be a road paved with gold! The Dutch get it. They have the highest bikes per capita in the world. Cyclists there have the right of way over pedestrians! And you’d think that with the popularity of bikes, there would be some flash rides rolling around. But no, most were battered old one-speeds with the trusty back-pedal brake. Dutch delight.
It’s so good exploring the world. Mind expanding. Stereotype busting. Perspective shifting. Idea generating. Humbling. Enriching. And just plain fun! Already scheming the next adventure, cos you never know if or when that train, tram, car, or bus will run you over!
