Posted by 1659447091 2 days ago
Relatives and friends thought my wife and I were crazy - or at least eccentric. Why would you waste 4 full days (+ 2 days to get to and from Denmark by car).
Turns out, travel time is still travel. And what a beautiful time that was!
There is no stable Internet conncetion on the ferry itself (no cell connection AT ALL at sea), plus you have to pay for it a pretty hefty fee. So from observing other people, +95% did not have Internet access at all.
The ferry itself is not huge, it is not a cruise ship. But large enough to be entertaining and fun to explore. Kids had a few attractions, including a tiny cinema. They sold popcorn though, that's all kids cared about besides the Minecraft movie.
For us, adults, there were a few bars, restaurants to hang out. Even a little library, a corner with board games, couple shops.
Because people were not glued to their phones, you could actually meet and talk to other people, have non-trivial conversations. People would read books, have a sip of coffee, walk around.
Not once did I get bored, not once did I not know what to do. Sure enough, I would pull out the iPhone from my pocket only to see it is completely offline. What was also fun: if I went out with the kids, there was no way I could let me wife know we would be late or any other matters. Same the other way.
Life felt slower, but somehow more real?
Anyway, I can only recommend a travel experience like this, at least once in your lifetime. For us, it became part of the memories we made, besides visiting Iceland itself. I can imagine the same being the case if you travel long distances by train.
Ditching my phone as much as possible has been the best decision I've ever made. Life always feels a little slower when you're not constantly inundated with outside noise.
I still pay attention, but instead of constantly paying attention and doing nothing, I pay attention a good amount, and do things instead.
But it turns out that it takes 20h, so twice that speed. Still not fast but better. With that duration it also seems unlikely that the speed is kept artificially low to allow some sleep on the train, as is very common in Europe.
On the way back we decided to drive through france and skip the ferry.
But yes, on the Newcastle to Amsterdam crossing my favourite thing is being completely cut off from the internet, can finally sit down with a book without the compulsive need to check my phone every 5 minutes.
I really liked it, was a cool experience, and an easy way to get on a boat. IDK if it's still like this. I hope it is.
I had checked google maps before the trip and saw a bridge so figured the train would go over that, but looks like it's car only bridge. Was a pleasant surprise.
(As an interesting aside, the Swedish railroad system drives on the left, while the Danish one drives on the right, so the trains have to cross to the other side after crossing the strait.)
If you take this ferry, make sure to do the stop in Faroe Islands, it's absolutely amazing.
I plan to sail this route again next year.
Side note: was it just me or this ferry or route is particularly rough? I crossed Baltic like 20 times by ferry (18h crossing), never got sea sick, until this one.
My wife got a bit sea sick on the 2nd day on our way back, I didn't notice any difference. But sure enough, depends on how steady your stomach is...
Anyway it wouldn't be too surprising it's less rough than the North Atlantic given the Baltic is closely wrapped in land.
So this was "just life" in the 90s and beforehand. The upside you describe was also sometimes the downside. E.g. my mother was traveling for work when one of my brothers was injured in a way that required a trip to the ER for stitches (he's fine). My dad was getting us all (4 kids under 7) into the car as she called from her hotel and he basically had to answer and say that we were on the way to the hospital, and she just had to wait for an update once we got home many hours later.
And yet, I would still agree that "Life felt slower, but somehow more real?" and that we haven't yet found the right equilibrium for always being connected in a way humans were never able to be before. I'm glad experiences like this are still possible.
The train you may be thinking of, a luxury train that imitates a historic one, is mimicing the the Simplon Orient Express which did not run through Vienna (and also it rarely goes beyond Venice).
My family lived in Messina for a while and it seems that in the last 100 years no one was actually interested in building nor genuinely stopping the project for good, just using it to bash whoever is on the opposite side of the argument.
- On the left it's seen as the biggest ecological issue they have in Italy, despite the ferry company handling the passage is a well known mafia-owned monopoly whose ferries leak tons of garbage and oil on the sea every single day.
- On the right they've gone with the most ridiculous, expensive and unachievable version of a project in order to to make sure they can siphon as much money as they can before declaring that the project has to be stopped or whatever.
Every summer I go back to my mother's family and when the topic comes out it's as they're basically stuck in a time loop.
This is the same debate that happens each time there’s a fixed connection to an island until the damn thing opens and people grow to love it.
It’s a pain in the arse to have to wait for the ferry, to sync your travel plans to ferry times, only to have to change plans again when the ferries break down.
(1) https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/prince-edward-island/pei-isla...
Fellow Italian here. The whole country is stuck in a time loop. Have you noticed that even the crime pages of the newspapers are filled with articles about investigations on murders of twenty or thirty or even forty years ago? And that on tv, people debate furiously terrorist acts that took place almost 50 years ago- when they also don't get updates from eternally ongoing investigations and trials? In politics, the same reforms that were proposed at the beginning of the '90s are brought up by each new government, generating new controversy and division, until they're forgotten or, sometimes, rolled back by Italy's supreme court. These days there's even a debate going on about the opportunity of introducing sexual education in schools for 6-8 graders, when I remember we had it already in the late '80s.
2025. In Europe. They burn. Their trash. On the street.
The bartender was talkingto a local bar owner, and he was explaining how he was trying to find another contractor for garbage disposal because he found the current rate ridiculous. Every contractor hung up on him after hearing his address, and he found out that yakuza had territories around Kabukicho and you'd get in trouble if you took a contract there.
Interesting to hear garbage disposal being a common business organized crime go for. I guess there's many utilities too to have garbage disposal infrastructure for other illegal activities
Instead of the famous Japanese customer service, residential garbage requires you to sort it, put it in transparent bags, put it out on specific days etc. so your neighbors can personally shame you if you do any of it wrong.
Commercial garbage in Tokyo gets left out on the street (like NYC up until this year) and occasionally attracts rats.
The rest of Japan's garbage culture (small bins, poor/mafia organization etc.) is totally self inflicted and is more of a cultural phenomena rather than a technical one.
It's their "service" or no service, with some extremely narrow exceptions, like a very small town named Aci Bonaccorsi, which fought that and now they're able to keep their streets on an amazing level of cleaniness compared to nearby municipalities.
Garbage disposal is the last remaining big business handled by the local mafia (drugs are handled by camorra nowadays) and they're absolutely doing anything to avoid losing that.
And I have never heard anything (or were able to find something on google) about an island full of trash. Islands are simply too valuable for that, and you'd also need to bring the trash there by boat.
Zakynthos is the island I was referring to. It's an illegal dumping ground, and even the EU has fined them for it. Also Kalymnos has a decades-old issue with burning trash - they even call it "trash volcano". Lots of other islands also have illegal dumping issues. Also many nature areas in mainland Greece are not in the most pristine state, often littered with junk, often junk that you can tell has been there for a long time. Whenever I went exploring by car, we would find the most beautiful areas but almost always trash everywhere :( Maybe it's gotten better though, I haven't been back since 2019, though I'm not sure I really want to.
[0] https://www.thenationalherald.com/arsonists-run-amok-in-athe...
To figure out which angle is more correct, you need to consider facts about the specific regions.
Backwards regions are subsidised by the cities. Sicily can be made into a tourist resort for pensioners.
Or perhaps building a bridge will enable them to bring water in easily from the mainland?
Speaking with the experience of someone who has spent a good half of his life on that island: Sicily's problems are mainly due to the following factors, in this order: culture and mismanagement. Everything else (yes, including the organized crime) comes in a very, very distant third place.
Per-capita GDP is very low for Sicily relative to other regions - but it still has an overall GDP of around $100B, which is similar to Costa Rica or Croatia. Giving it a car/rail connection to the mainland would be a huge boon for the region and Italy in general.
Or probably most of those big infrastructure construction projects.
> Sund & Bælt, the Danish transport company overseeing the project, has now confirmed that IVY has not yet completed full testing and has not received final approvals from relevant authorities, despite arriving on site last October. The preparatory delay is about 18 months, a setback that project managers say makes meeting the original 2029 opening target difficult.
> There is also an issue with restrictions around the working conditions. Contracts for the main construction works were signed in 2016, before German planning approval had been granted. That timing meant certain later-imposed requirements – notably restrictions on underwater noise from work vessels and limits on sediment spill in German waters – were not written into the original contracts, complicating attempts to speed up work now that the rules are in place.
It does make sense since tunnels won’t need to closed for high winds like bridges do.
I might have misremembered bits of this.
An initial study into a problem poses a preferred solution.
Time and effort is put into deep study of the solution path. Unfortunately, in this case the study proves it is far less ideal than initially assumed.
The project is switched to Plan B.
Granted, sometimes this kind of early change in direction is for dumb or dishonest reasons, but one cannot perfectly know the results before the studies are completed.
I am in rail design. We are currently designing things for needs in 2030-2060. The world is complicated.
But the BBT also needs supporting infrastructure from Kufstein to Munich, the so called Brenner Nordzulauf [1], some of which (the Truderinger Spange) is also covered by the Ausbaustrecke 38 programme [2]. Unfortunately, the Brenner Nordzulauf has been hotly contested [3] with very good points being raised - among others, some of the route proposals run through nature protection reservates, people are skeptical of years worth of construction, noise, debris, rail and road blocks, and separation of entire areas by another rail track.
[1] https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brenner-Nordzulauf
[2] https://www.bahnausbau-muenchen.de/projekt.html?PID=29
[3] https://www.sueddeutsche.de/muenchen/ebersberg/brenner-basis...
And the Edinburgh Tram Project
Future:
- Heathrow Third Runway (assuming the government meddle in it heavily)
- Lower Thames Crossing
However, it's now a good service, popular and the trams are probably going to be expanded to much more of the city?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edinburgh_Trams
Also the Queensferry Crossing bridge was built with relatively little fuss - there were some delays but those were down to some spells of very bad weather.
It was a "litany of avoidable failures" as the Hardie report explained.
It does look like a tremendous success now though (not financially though. A double whammy for the taxpayer). The ends justify the means I guess?
Mind you - the investigation into the trams itself took far longer than expected and cost far more than anyone thought it should...
It's like the dessert coming out after the buffet! Doubles all round!
I've also been on the second-to-last train of this type a few times (Snälltåget from Sweden via Denmark to Germany). That one also got canceled for the same reason – mega bridge construction (Fehmarn Belt). There, you used to get off the train to go up to the canteen for lunch with the truckers.
The Snalltaget sleeper train from Berlin to Malmo used to run on the ferry from Sassnitz to Trelleborg avoiding Denmark altogether, that stopped because the ferries don't run on that route any more, and the train also runs via Padborg.
I don't know about this specific instance, but the Germany-Denmark train-on-a-ferry carried the whole Diesel-powered train, engine and all. It drove onto the ferry on its own, and left it on its own as well.
I had no idea that trains got put on ferries, although I had been puzzled by the way the route on the route map crossed the sea but had assumed it was just to make the diagram simpler. It was quite a surreal thing finding myself unexpectedly on a train on a ferry. It was nice though as you could go and wander round the ferry and it was quite fun seeing it go off the ferry which had special train tracks on it onto the normal train tracks on the land.
Now, I don't really mind this, it's a bit of a tradition if you want, but I asked a relative of mine who used to work for the Italian national train company, and he told me that this train works like this cause in the past all the Sicilian migrants would travel with a lot of luggage, and it would be very impractical for them to transfer all of that twice. Nowadays this is not really the case anymore.