she doesn't never travel by train

• Rules/Help/FAQ Help/FAQ
• Members Current visitors
• Interface Language

Follow along with the video below to see how to install our site as a web app on your home screen.

Note: This feature may not be available in some browsers.

• English Only

he has never travelled by train

• Thread starter stephenlearner
• Start date May 3, 2020

stephenlearner

Senior member.

• May 3, 2020

Hi, Peter lives in mountains. he has never left his home. So he has never travelled by train. Can I say 'he never travels by train'? Do the two sentences mean the same? Thank you very much.  

stephenlearner said: Can I say 'he never travels by train'? Click to expand...

He has never left his home and he never travels by train do not mean the same thing.  

Sometimes people play word games, using the literal meaning of sentences. For example A says to B "I said he never travels by train. If he never travels, then he never travels by train, right?" Then B punches A (in the shoulder, to be nice) and says "Stop playing stupid word games!"  

He has never ridden on a train. He never rides on a train. Do the two sentences mean the same?  

stephenlearner said: He has never ridden on a train. He never rides on a train. Do the two sentences mean the same? Click to expand...

No, they don't mean the same. "He has never ridden on a train." talks about what he has done in the past (from birth until today). It talks about actions, not policy or "why". "He never rides on a train." states his current policy (for now and the future): his policy is "I don't use trains when I travel".  

By the way: Ride a train, or ride on a train ?  

Find anything you save across the site in your account

The Case Against Travel

By Agnes Callard

What is the most uninformative statement that people are inclined to make? My nominee would be “I love to travel.” This tells you very little about a person, because nearly everyone likes to travel; and yet people say it, because, for some reason, they pride themselves both on having travelled and on the fact that they look forward to doing so.

The opposition team is small but articulate. G. K. Chesterton wrote that “travel narrows the mind.” Ralph Waldo Emerson called travel “a fool’s paradise.” Socrates and Immanuel Kant—arguably the two greatest philosophers of all time—voted with their feet, rarely leaving their respective home towns of Athens and Königsberg. But the greatest hater of travel, ever, was the Portuguese writer Fernando Pessoa , whose wonderful “ Book of Disquiet ” crackles with outrage:

I abhor new ways of life and unfamiliar places. . . . The idea of travelling nauseates me. . . . Ah, let those who don’t exist travel! . . . Travel is for those who cannot feel. . . . Only extreme poverty of the imagination justifies having to move around to feel.

If you are inclined to dismiss this as contrarian posturing, try shifting the object of your thought from your own travel to that of others. At home or abroad, one tends to avoid “touristy” activities. “Tourism” is what we call travelling when other people are doing it. And, although people like to talk about their travels, few of us like to listen to them. Such talk resembles academic writing and reports of dreams: forms of communication driven more by the needs of the producer than the consumer.

One common argument for travel is that it lifts us into an enlightened state, educating us about the world and connecting us to its denizens. Even Samuel Johnson , a skeptic—“What I gained by being in France was, learning to be better satisfied with my own country,” he once said—conceded that travel had a certain cachet. Advising his beloved Boswell, Johnson recommended a trip to China, for the sake of Boswell’s children: “There would be a lustre reflected upon them. . . . They would be at all times regarded as the children of a man who had gone to view the wall of China.”

Travel gets branded as an achievement: see interesting places, have interesting experiences, become interesting people. Is that what it really is?

Pessoa, Emerson, and Chesterton believed that travel, far from putting us in touch with humanity, divorced us from it. Travel turns us into the worst version of ourselves while convincing us that we’re at our best. Call this the traveller’s delusion.

To explore it, let’s start with what we mean by “travel.” Socrates went abroad when he was called to fight in the Peloponnesian War; even so, he was no traveller. Emerson is explicit about steering his critique away from a person who travels when his “necessities” or “duties” demand it. He has no objection to traversing great distances “for the purpose of art, of study, and benevolence.” One sign that you have a reason to be somewhere is that you have nothing to prove, and therefore no drive to collect souvenirs, photos, or stories to prove it. Let’s define “tourism” as the kind of travel that aims at the interesting—and, if Emerson and company are right, misses.

“A tourist is a temporarily leisured person who voluntarily visits a place away from home for the purpose of experiencing a change.” This definition is taken from the opening of “ Hosts and Guests ,” the classic academic volume on the anthropology of tourism. The last phrase is crucial: touristic travel exists for the sake of change. But what, exactly, gets changed? Here is a telling observation from the concluding chapter of the same book: “Tourists are less likely to borrow from their hosts than their hosts are from them, thus precipitating a chain of change in the host community.” We go to experience a change, but end up inflicting change on others.

For example, a decade ago, when I was in Abu Dhabi, I went on a guided tour of a falcon hospital. I took a photo with a falcon on my arm. I have no interest in falconry or falcons, and a generalized dislike of encounters with nonhuman animals. But the falcon hospital was one of the answers to the question, “What does one do in Abu Dhabi?” So I went. I suspect that everything about the falcon hospital, from its layout to its mission statement, is and will continue to be shaped by the visits of people like me—we unchanged changers, we tourists. (On the wall of the foyer, I recall seeing a series of “excellence in tourism” awards. Keep in mind that this is an animal hospital.)

Why might it be bad for a place to be shaped by the people who travel there, voluntarily, for the purpose of experiencing a change? The answer is that such people not only do not know what they are doing but are not even trying to learn. Consider me. It would be one thing to have such a deep passion for falconry that one is willing to fly to Abu Dhabi to pursue it, and it would be another thing to approach the visit in an aspirational spirit, with the hope of developing my life in a new direction. I was in neither position. I entered the hospital knowing that my post-Abu Dhabi life would contain exactly as much falconry as my pre-Abu Dhabi life—which is to say, zero falconry. If you are going to see something you neither value nor aspire to value, you are not doing much of anything besides locomoting.

Tourism is marked by its locomotive character. “I went to France.” O.K., but what did you do there? “I went to the Louvre.” O.K., but what did you do there? “I went to see the ‘Mona Lisa.’ ” That is, before quickly moving on: apparently, many people spend just fifteen seconds looking at the “Mona Lisa.” It’s locomotion all the way down.

The peculiar rationality of tourists allows them to be moved both by a desire to do what they are supposed to do in a place and a desire to avoid precisely what they are supposed to do. This is how it came to pass that, on my first trip to Paris, I avoided both the “Mona Lisa” and the Louvre. I did not, however, avoid locomotion. I walked from one end of the city to the other, over and over again, in a straight line; if you plotted my walks on a map, they would have formed a giant asterisk. In the many great cities I have actually lived and worked in, I would never consider spending whole days walking. When you travel, you suspend your usual standards for what counts as a valuable use of time. You suspend other standards as well, unwilling to be constrained by your taste in food, art, or recreational activities. After all, you say to yourself, the whole point of travelling is to break out of the confines of everyday life. But, if you usually avoid museums, and suddenly seek them out for the purpose of experiencing a change, what are you going to make of the paintings? You might as well be in a room full of falcons.

Let’s delve a bit deeper into how, exactly, the tourist’s project is self-undermining. I’ll illustrate with two examples from “The Loss of the Creature,” an essay by the writer Walker Percy.

First, a sightseer arriving at the Grand Canyon. Before his trip, an idea of the canyon—a “symbolic complex”—had formed in his mind. He is delighted if the canyon resembles the pictures and postcards he has seen; he might even describe it as “every bit as beautiful as a picture postcard!” But, if the lighting is different, the colors and shadows not those which he expects, he feels cheated: he has arrived on a bad day. Unable to gaze directly at the canyon, forced to judge merely whether it matches an image, the sightseer “may simply be bored; or he may be conscious of the difficulty: that the great thing yawning at his feet somehow eludes him.”

Second, a couple from Iowa driving around Mexico. They are enjoying the trip, but are a bit dissatisfied by the usual sights. They get lost, drive for hours on a rocky mountain road, and eventually, “in a tiny valley not even marked on the map,” stumble upon a village celebrating a religious festival. Watching the villagers dance, the tourists finally have “an authentic sight, a sight which is charming, quaint, picturesque, unspoiled.” Yet they still feel some dissatisfaction. Back home in Iowa, they gush about the experience to an ethnologist friend: You should have been there! You must come back with us! When the ethnologist does, in fact, return with them, “the couple do not watch the goings-on; instead they watch the ethnologist! Their highest hope is that their friend should find the dance interesting.” They need him to “certify their experience as genuine.”

The tourist is a deferential character. He outsources the vindication of his experiences to the ethnologist, to postcards, to conventional wisdom about what you are or are not supposed to do in a place. This deference, this “openness to experience,” is exactly what renders the tourist incapable of experience. Emerson confessed, “I seek the Vatican, and the palaces. I affect to be intoxicated with sights and suggestions, but I am not intoxicated.” He speaks for every tourist who has stood before a monument, or a painting, or a falcon, and demanded herself to feel something. Emerson and Percy help us understand why this demand is unreasonable: to be a tourist is to have already decided that it is not one’s own feelings that count. Whether an experience is authentically X is precisely what you, as a non-X, cannot judge.

A similar argument applies to the tourist’s impulse to honor the grand sea of humanity. Whereas Percy and Emerson focus on the aesthetic, showing us how hard it is for travellers to have the sensory experiences that they seek, Pessoa and Chesterton are interested in the ethical. They study why travellers can’t truly connect to other human beings. During my Paris wanderings, I would stare at people, intently inspecting their clothing, their demeanor, their interactions. I was trying to see the Frenchness in the French people around me. This is not a way to make friends.

Pessoa said that he knew only one “real traveller with soul”: an office boy who obsessively collected brochures, tore maps out of newspapers, and memorized train schedules between far-flung destinations. The boy could recount sailing routes around the world, but he had never left Lisbon. Chesterton also approved of such stationary travellers. He wrote that there was “something touching and even tragic” about “the thoughtless tourist, who might have stayed at home loving Laplanders, embracing Chinamen, and clasping Patagonians to his heart in Hampstead or Surbiton, but for his blind and suicidal impulse to go and see what they looked like.”

The problem was not with other places, or with the man wanting to see them, but with travel’s dehumanizing effect, which thrust him among people to whom he was forced to relate as a spectator. Chesterton believed that loving what is distant in the proper fashion—namely, from a distance—enabled a more universal connection. When the man in Hampstead thought of foreigners “in the abstract . . . as those who labour and love their children and die, he was thinking the fundamental truth about them.” “The human bond that he feels at home is not an illusion,” Chesterton wrote. “It is rather an inner reality.” Travel prevents us from feeling the presence of those we have travelled such great distances to be near.

The single most important fact about tourism is this: we already know what we will be like when we return. A vacation is not like immigrating to a foreign country, or matriculating at a university, or starting a new job, or falling in love. We embark on those pursuits with the trepidation of one who enters a tunnel not knowing who she will be when she walks out. The traveller departs confident that she will come back with the same basic interests, political beliefs, and living arrangements. Travel is a boomerang. It drops you right where you started.

If you think that this doesn’t apply to you—that your own travels are magical and profound, with effects that deepen your values, expand your horizons, render you a true citizen of the globe, and so on—note that this phenomenon can’t be assessed first-personally. Pessoa, Chesterton, Percy, and Emerson were all aware that travellers tell themselves they’ve changed, but you can’t rely on introspection to detect a delusion. So cast your mind, instead, to any friends who are soon to set off on summer adventures. In what condition do you expect to find them when they return? They may speak of their travel as though it were transformative, a “once in a lifetime” experience, but will you be able to notice a difference in their behavior, their beliefs, their moral compass? Will there be any difference at all?

Travel is fun, so it is not mysterious that we like it. What is mysterious is why we imbue it with a vast significance, an aura of virtue. If a vacation is merely the pursuit of unchanging change, an embrace of nothing, why insist on its meaning?

One is forced to conclude that maybe it isn’t so easy to do nothing—and this suggests a solution to the puzzle. Imagine how your life would look if you discovered that you would never again travel. If you aren’t planning a major life change, the prospect looms, terrifyingly, as “More and more of this , and then I die.” Travel splits this expanse of time into the chunk that happens before the trip, and the chunk that happens after it, obscuring from view the certainty of annihilation. And it does so in the cleverest possible way: by giving you a foretaste of it. You don’t like to think about the fact that someday you will do nothing and be nobody. You will only allow yourself to preview this experience when you can disguise it in a narrative about how you are doing many exciting and edifying things: you are experiencing, you are connecting, you are being transformed, and you have the trinkets and photos to prove it.

Socrates said that philosophy is a preparation for death. For everyone else, there’s travel. ♦

New Yorker Favorites

Searching for the cause of a catastrophic plane crash .

The man who spent forty-two years at the Beverly Hills Hotel pool .

Gloria Steinem’s life on the feminist frontier .

Where the Amish go on vacation .

How Colonel Sanders built his Kentucky-fried fortune .

What does procrastination tell us about ourselves ?

Fiction by Patricia Highsmith: “The Trouble with Mrs. Blynn, the Trouble with the World”

Sign up for our daily newsletter to receive the best stories from The New Yorker .

By signing up, you agree to our User Agreement and Privacy Policy & Cookie Statement . This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.

By Katy Waldman

By Deborah Treisman

By Lauren Oyler

By James Wood

Filed under:

Air travel is a huge contributor to climate change. A new global movement wants you to be ashamed to fly.

Greta Thunberg gave up flights to fight climate change. Should you?

Share this story

• Share this on Facebook
• Share this on Twitter
• Share this on Reddit
• Share All sharing options

Share All sharing options for: Air travel is a huge contributor to climate change. A new global movement wants you to be ashamed to fly.

It was 2007, during a trip to visit her sister in Norway’s pristine Lofoten Islands , when Maja Rosén had an unsettling thought.

As she took in the breathtaking archipelago north of the Arctic Circle that is dotted with mountains, carved with fjords, and circled by sea eagles, she remembered she was looking at one of the fastest-warming regions of the planet.

And she realized that how she got there was part of the problem.

She’d carpooled with friends to Oslo from her home in Gothenburg, Sweden. The final leg was a short boat ride to the islands. And in between was a 500-mile flight from Oslo to Bodø.

For the distance, short flights produce a larger amount of greenhouse gas emissions per passenger compared to longer routes. That fact wasn’t something that struck her on her previous jaunts, like her flights to the United Kingdom to visit friends.

But upon basking in the fragile and sublime wonders of Lofoten, Rosén began to consider how her own actions might be threatening the region. The contradiction between her admiration for the scenery and her pollution from getting there, she decided, was too much to bear.

“It felt so wrong that my flight there was contributing to destroying that place,” Rosén, now 38, said. Soon after, she drastically curbed her flying, but in 2008, she concluded it wasn’t enough. “That’s when I decided not to fly again, and I have not regretted that decision,” she said.

Rosén has only become more alarmed and more determined to reduce emissions from air travel since then. Last year, she gave up her spot in medical school to focus on convincing other people to join her.

She founded a group called We Stay on the Ground in 2018 to recruit people to pledge to give up flying for one year. But the pledge only kicks in once 100,000 people in a given country have committed to doing the same. The threshold is a way to show participants that they’re not alone.

“For most people, it’s to know that others have made this decision. That’s really the most powerful way to make people change their minds,” Rosén said. So far, more than 8,000 people around the world have made the pledge.

Her effort may now be getting a boost from another Swede, 16-year-old climate change activist Greta Thunberg . She gained recognition when she went on strike from school last year to protest her government’s inaction on climate change, sparking a series of worldwide demonstrations, most recently the September 20 strike that drew an estimated 4 million people around the world.

But even after becoming a global celebrity, Thunberg has led by example, traveling to events around Europe mainly by train . She’s currently sailing from the US to Portugal to attend the UN climate meeting in Madrid in December.

Some Swedish airports have now reported a decline in travelers , which some activists attribute to the “ Greta effect ,” a newfound awareness of humanity’s impacts on the planet and a desire to make a difference.

The Swedes have even coined a word for the shame that travelers are beginning to feel about flying: flygskam , pronounced “fleeg-skahm.”

Rosén is trying to use flygskam to her advantage. She resolved last year to swallow her squeamishness about making her friends reckon with their own travel “because I sort of got fed up with being more scared of being socially inconvenient than climate collapse,” she said.

It’s not just Sweden; environmental activists, scientists who study the climate, and ordinary people in other countries like Switzerland , the United Kingdom , Germany , and the United States are curbing their air travel, if not giving it up outright.

However, the growing global alarm about the environmental impacts of aviation comes as air travel continues to rise. A record 31.6 million passengers are expected travel on US airlines this week for the Thanksgiving holiday, CNN reported . Our global economy is tightly interwoven with aviation as it carries goods and facilitates commerce. Leisure flights are also increasing, and growing demand for services like two-day and overnight shipping has led some companies like Amazon to invest more in cargo aircraft.

All this demand is expected to soar higher, particularly as prices for flights decline and wealth grows in emerging economies.

For regular flyers, air travel is often the dominant contributor to their greenhouse gas footprints. With the window rapidly closing to limit global warming to a bearable level — scientists warn that the planet has as little as 12 years to halve global emissions to restrict warming to 1.5 degrees this century — it is more critical than ever to find a way to shrink aviation’s carbon footprint. Every bit of carbon dioxide we emit now will linger in the atmosphere and warm the planet for decades, but completely decarbonizing aircraft will likely require technologies that are decades away. Reducing the number of flights is one of the few surefire ways to curb emissions in the meantime.

But unlike many other activities that contribute to climate change, air travel serves a valuable social function. It gives remote towns a lifeline to critical fuels, food, and medicines. It helps families stay connected across continents. It opens the door to life-changing experiences.

So reducing air travel demands a difficult moral reckoning, even if we make the decision solely for ourselves. But activists like Rosén say these actions have consequences for the whole world, so we cannot afford to make them without forethought.

Flying’s growing effect on the environment

If you’re a regular flyer, odds are that your biggest single source of greenhouse gas emissions each year is air travel. It likely dwarfs the footprint of all the lights in your home, your commute to work, your hobbies, and maybe even your diet.

“Euro for euro, hour for hour, flying is the quickest and cheapest way to warm the planet,” said Andrew Murphy, aviation manager at Transport & Environment, a think tank in Brussels.

That’s alarming because humanity can only emit so much more carbon dioxide to limit warming this century to 1.5 degrees Celsius, the more ambitious goal under the 2015 Paris climate agreement. An international team of researchers last year reported that meeting this target would require halving global emissions by as soon as 2030 , reaching net-zero emissions by 2050, and even getting to negative emissions thereafter.

Right now, the world is flying in the opposite direction. Global emissions reached a record high last year, and so did atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide .

Air travel is a big reason why. A one-way flight across the Atlantic from New York City to London emits one ton of carbon dioxide per passenger. There are upward of 2,500 flights over the North Atlantic every day.

And that’s just one air corridor. Around the world, aviation emits about 860 million metric tons of carbon dioxide every year, or about 2 percent of total global greenhouse gas emissions. Those numbers are poised to soar. The International Civil Aviation Organization projects that emissions from air travel will grow between 300 and 700 percent by 2050 compared to 2005 levels.

Those emissions in turn stand to have a devastating impact. The planet has already warmed by 1 degree Celsius since the dawn of the Industrial Revolution, which has caused rising seas and more frequent and intense heat waves. Every metric ton of carbon dioxide emitted leads to 3 square meters of Arctic sea ice loss . Aircraft also emit several other pollutants at altitude, like particulates, sulfur compounds, and nitrogen compounds, which have an additional warming effect. In some parts of the Arctic under busy air routes, these pollutants combined contribute one-fifth of the warming .

So the environmental costs of air travel are huge and growing, and the worst impacts will befall future generations. At the same time, there are very few options to limit those emissions except to not fly.

But that’s if you fly to begin with. In the United States, fewer than half of travelers in 2017 took a trip by air, according to an industry survey . Globally, less than one-fifth of the population has ever buckled in for a flight. That means a minority of frequent flyers contribute a disproportionate share of emissions. So reducing air travel is one of the most effective things individuals can do to shrink their carbon footprints.

Why flying is such a challenge for the environment

The fundamental problem behind decarbonizing air travel is the physics. To fly, you need an energy source that crams a lot of power into a small space, and right now, there is nothing as energy-dense as jet fuel , which has a specific energy of 11,890 watt-hours per kilogram.

Batteries aren’t even in the same airport. The best lithium-ion batteries top out at 265 watt-hours per kilogram , which is nowhere near enough get an airliner across the Pacific. The technology is improving, but one estimate shows that electrification of airliners will only start to make a dent in air travel emissions by midcentury.

At the same time, there is very little room left for making air travel more efficient. The current generation of jet engines is already closing in on its maximum efficiency. Fuel is also often the largest single expense for airlines, so they already face intense pressure to go farther with less.

One strategy to deal with aircraft emissions is to purchase credits or offsets. Many websites will calculate the emissions of your flight and sell you means to offset them, whether through planting trees that take up a given quantity of carbon dioxide or financing renewable energy projects to displace fossil fuels. But these offsetting programs are only as good as the accounting behind them, and for some, their effectiveness so far in limiting greenhouse gas emissions is questionable .

“The research shows that three-quarters of the offsets don’t deliver the reductions they claim to deliver,” said Anja Kollmuss, a policy analyst in Zurich who studies emissions trading.

Another option is to use a carbon-neutral fuel. Airlines are experimenting with biofuels derived from plants. Since plants recycle carbon that’s already in the atmosphere rather than introducing new carbon into the air, in theory, fuels derived from these crops have no net effect on the climate. In practice, it can be tricky to manage the energy balance of growing biofuels such that you aren’t expending more energy than you get out of them. Fuel crops also require land, and it’s not clear where all the land needed to sustain a wholesale shift of the global aviation industry will come from. Right now, biofuels are also expensive.

Yet another possibility is electrofuels . That’s where you use electricity to power a mechanism that stitches carbon dioxide from the air into longer molecules that can serve as fuels. However, it requires gobs of zero-emissions energy, and the technology is still in a gestational phase.

While there may be technology solutions for cutting the emissions for aviation in the future, there are few options available today beyond simply flying less. “We see this as individuals taking this into their own hands after governments have failed to act,” Murphy said.

Shorter flights have a disproportionately large carbon footprint

It takes a lot of energy to get a fully loaded airliner 6 miles into the air. On short flights, upward of 25 percent of the fuel used is consumed during takeoff.

Once at cruising altitude, though, the aircraft becomes much more fuel-efficient. That means longer, direct journeys have a smaller carbon footprint than shorter connecting hops. But only to a point.

For extremely long hauls, the extra fuel needed for the journey adds enough weight that the flight’s fuel efficiency is reduced, thereby increasing its carbon footprint per mile.

Depending on the aircraft and the route, there is an optimal distance for an air route that minimizes carbon dioxide emissions per passenger per mile — it follows a bathtub curve. One estimate from the Worldwatch Institute pegged the most fuel-efficient flight length at 2,600 miles, a bit longer than the distance between New York and Los Angeles.

But short-haul flights are increasing as countries like China, India, and Brazil open new routes to accommodate a voracious demand for domestic air travel.

Flying first-class also carries a larger carbon footprint, upward of three times larger than passengers in coach — partly because first-class seats are heavier and take up more floor space than cheaper sections of the aircraft.

A worldwide movement is growing. Sweden is its current epicenter.

Sweden is a somewhat odd place to emerge as the leader in flying shame and staying on the ground: It’s not the country with the most air travel or the highest per capita emissions . But in recent years, Swedish celebrities started pushing the idea into the mainstream. In 2015, Swedish Olympic biathlon gold medalist Björn Ferry committed to stop flying. Then in the fall of 2017, 10 Swedish celebrities published an article about deciding to no longer fly.

In 2018, the Swedish government began debating a tax on flying, and more national celebrities began to weigh in against air travel; the renowned Swedish writer Jens Liljestrand published a well-read article with the memorable title “I’m fed up with showing my child a dying world.”

The potential impacts of climate change also became startlingly vivid to many Swedes last year as an oppressive heat wave baked the country and dried out its forests. That heat helped fuel wildfires, with several igniting north of the Arctic Circle .

“It’s the first time Swedish people felt the consequences of climate change themselves,” Rosén said. “[L]ast summer was so dry and things were just looking yellow, and we were lacking water.”

Then in August 2018, Thunberg began her strike outside the Swedish parliament building, an action that soon launched her message worldwide.

Birgitta Frejhagen, 76, was so inspired by Thunberg that she founded a group called “Gretas Gamlingar” (Greta’s oldies). Her goal is to encourage older people to get involved in climate activism. She is currently aiming to recruit 10,000 Swedish seniors to participate in the World Action Day for the Climate on September 27 to coincide with a global youth climate strike .

Frejhagen noted that despite the alarm about the climate, flying is hard for Swedes like her to avoid. Many have family spread out over the large, sparsely populated country. Frejhagen broke her hip earlier this year, so long train or bus journeys are a painful ordeal.

“There is a shame of flying, but sometimes you have to fly,” she said.

Rosén said there isn’t anything unique in the Swedish soul that has made so many across the country so concerned about flying. “This could have happened anywhere,” she said. “We’ve had some good coincidences that have worked together to create this discussion.”

Nonetheless, the movement to reduce flying has created a subculture in Sweden, complete with its own hashtags on social media. Beyond flygskam, there’s flygfritt (flight free), and vi stannar på marken (we stay on the ground).

Rosén said that judging by all the organizing she’s seen in other countries, she thinks Sweden won’t long hold the lead in forgoing flying. “I wouldn’t be surprised if the Germans would follow us soon,” she said.

Scientists are having a hard time overlooking their own air travel emissions

Kim Cobb, a climate scientist at the Georgia Institute of Technology, has curbed her air travel by 75 percent.

“I really started thinking about my carbon footprint after Trump was elected,” she said. “Doing my climate science and donating to the right candidates was never going to be enough, even if you took that to scale.”

She created a spreadsheet to track her personal carbon footprint and found that flying formed the dominant share of her emissions. “By the end of 2017, 85 percent of my carbon footprint was related to flying,” she said.

Much of Cobb’s research — examining geochemical signals in coral to reconstruct historical climate variability — required her to travel to field sites in the equatorial Pacific.

While she doesn’t anticipate giving up those visits entirely, Cobb has taken on more research projects closer to home, including an experiment tracking sea level rise in Georgia. She has drastically reduced her attendance at academic conferences and this year plans to give a keynote address remotely for an event in Sydney.

I have begun replying to invitations “Due to the climate emergency, I am cutting down on air travel ...” Have been pleasantly surprised how many take up my offer of pre-recorded talk & Skype Q&A’s @GreenUCL @UCLPALS @UCLBehaveChange https://t.co/Hlxc4R6Lj3 — Susan Michie (@SusanMichie) June 29, 2019

Cobb is just one of a growing number of academics , particularly those who study the earth, who have made efforts in recent years to cut their air travel.

While she doesn’t anticipate making a dent in the 2.6 million pounds per second of greenhouse gases that all of humanity emits, Cobb said her goal is to send a signal to airlines and policymakers that there is a demand for cleaner aviation.

But she noted that her family is spread out across the country and that her husband’s family lives in Italy. She wants her children to stay close to her relatives, and that’s harder to do without visiting them. “The personal calculus is much, much harder,” she said.

She also acknowledged that it might be harder for other researchers to follow in her footsteps, particularly those just starting out. As a world-renowned climate scientist with tenure at her university, Cobb said she has the clout to turn down conference invitations or request video conferences. Younger scientists still building their careers may need in-person meetings and events to make a name for themselves. So she sees it as her responsibility to be careful with her air travel. “People like me have to be even more choosy,” she said.

Activists and diplomats who work on international climate issues are also struggling to reconcile their travel habits with their worries about warming. There is even a crowdfunding campaign for activists in Europe to sail to the United Nations climate conference in Chile later this year.

But perhaps the most difficult aspect of limiting air travel is the issue of justice. A minority of individuals, companies, and countries have contributed to the bulk of greenhouse gas emissions from flights and profited handsomely from it. Is it now fair to ask a new generation of travelers to fly less too?

Airlines and climate-concerned travelers

At least one airline is beginning to acknowledge the concern around flying. KLM CEO Pieter Elbers wrote in a letter in June that “we invite all air travellers to make responsible decisions about flying.” The letter showed no sign of the airline itself changing its ways, but the fact that KLM was even hinting at shaming its own passengers shows that climate concerns are difficult to ignore.

Cultural changes could become a big part of reshaping demand for air travel. Shifting tastes away from impressing friends with distant, Instagram-perfect destinations and more staycations could eventually yield some reductions in greenhouse gases from aircraft.

Transport & Environment’s Murphy also noted that for a long time, aviation fuels in many countries weren’t taxed, nor were their greenhouse gas emissions, so the aviation sector hasn’t faced the same pressure to decarbonize as the automotive industry. In fact, many countries directly and indirectly subsidize air travel, whether through tax breaks for aircraft manufacturers or government ownership of airlines. While this is slowly changing — France is set to introduce a new tax on airlines, for example — much more drastic policy action is needed to curb emissions from air travel.

However, targeting the consumers of goods and services rather than just their producers is a much more fraught political debate. It’s a more direct way of changing behavior and it shifts some of the costs directly to buyers, making the costs of curbing emissions much more visible, and contentious. Cutting consumption also brings up concerns about justice. Many activists argue that the heaviest burden of fighting climate change should be borne by large institutions rather than individuals. So while some airlines would prefer to embarrass their customers, climate campaigners say it’s the airlines themselves that should feel most ashamed.

Should you, dear traveler, feel ashamed to fly?

“Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts,” wrote Mark Twain in The Innocents Abroad . “Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things can not be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one’s lifetime.”

Air travel has yielded immense benefits to humanity. Movement is the story of human civilization, and as mobility has increased, so too has prosperity . Airplanes, the fastest way to cross continents and oceans, have facilitated this. And while some countries have recently retreated from the world stage amid nationalist fervor , the ease of air travel has created a strong countercurrent of travelers looking to learn from other cultures.

Compared to other personal concessions for the sake of the environment, reducing air travel has a disproportionately high social cost. Give up meat and you eat from a different menu. Give up flying and you may never see some members of your family again.

So it’s hard to make a categorical judgment about who should fly and under what circumstances.

But if you’re weighing a plane ticket for yourself, Paul Thompson, a professor of philosophy who studies environmental ethics at Michigan State University, said there are several factors to consider.

No need to tell me about your feelings of guilt. I see no reason for you to feel guilty. You already excel at ethical thinking in many other areas of your life and relationships. Judge for yourself what the times require of you, personally and politically. Act or don't act. — flyingless (@flyingless) July 17, 2019

First, think about where you can have the most meaningful impact on climate change as an individual — and it might not be changing how you are personally getting around. If advocacy is your thing, you could push for more research and development in cleaner aviation, building high-speed rail systems, or pricing the greenhouse gas emissions of dirty fuels. “That’s the first thing that I think I would be focused on, as opposed to things that would necessarily discourage air travel,” Thompson said. Voting for leaders who make fighting climate change a priority would also help.

If you end up on a booking site, think about why you’re flying and if your flight could be replaced with a video call.

Next, consider what method of travel has the smallest impact on the world, within your budget and time constraints. If you are hoping to come up with a numerical threshold, be aware that the math can get tricky. Online carbon footprint calculators can help.

And if you do choose to fly and feel shame about it, well, it can be a good thing. “I think it’s actually appropriate to have some sense of either grieving or at least concern about the loss you experience that way,” Thompson said. Thinking carefully about the trade-offs you’re making can push you toward many actions that are more beneficial for the climate, whether that’s flying less, offsetting emissions, or advocating for more aggressive climate policies.

Nonetheless, shame is not a great feeling, and it’s hard to convince people they need more of it. But Rosén says forgoing flying is a point of pride, and she’s optimistic that the movement to stay grounded will continue to take off.

Will you help keep Vox free for all?

At Vox, we believe that clarity is power, and that power shouldn’t only be available to those who can afford to pay. That’s why we keep our work free. Millions rely on Vox’s clear, high-quality journalism to understand the forces shaping today’s world. Support our mission and help keep Vox free for all by making a financial contribution to Vox today.

We accept credit card, Apple Pay, and Google Pay. You can also contribute via

Why are so many young people getting cancer?

Can we protect and profit from the oceans, sometimes kids need a push. here’s how to do it kindly., sign up for the newsletter today, explained, thanks for signing up.

Check your inbox for a welcome email.

Oops. Something went wrong. Please enter a valid email and try again.

I Hate Traveling Solo—And I’m Totally Okay With That

By Candice Rainey

A couple of years ago, when I was the executive editor of Condé Nast Traveler , I copped to loathing solo travel in the middle of a meeting with several other travel editors, most of them women. This was post Women’s March, pre #metoo, and the collective reaction could only be described as “stunned.”

I get it. After all, this was a time when we were exerting independence in every facet of our lives. Moving confidently through the world felt urgent. Necessary , even. So when I admitted I wasn’t a fan of traveling by myself despite being an independent 40-year-old woman, and a travel editor no less, it came off as if I was actively dodging empowerment. Or worse, that I didn't know how to be alone. That’s not my problem. Like most writers, I require pockets of time by myself and have no trouble filling hours alone. Organizing my closet and blowing through the entire Haim catalogue on Spotify is my high church.

But for me, traveling solo has never been empowering, much less restorative. If anything it feels like painful work—like therapy that’s not going well. When I’m in an unfamiliar place by myself for a stretch, I’m hilariously incapable of exuding worldly swagger. I’ll research my brains out and make plans to experience whatever city I am in—locking in the of-the-moment restaurant reservation, figuring out what museum to hit, where to get that afternoon macchiato in that burgeoning, cool-kids neighborhood—and then promptly second guess all of those plans, with nobody to talk me out of bailing on them, and retreat to my room early to polish off a few mini bottles from the hotel mini bar and binge-watch Netflix on my iPhone.

Once, when I was in London on assignment, I decided last minute to head to Somerset by train (which is saying a lot since cracking train travel has never been my strong suit). The plan was to stay one night at a pretty country-estate hotel surrounded by seemingly endless fields of tall grass and hulking majestic trees that looked more like hyperrealistic drawings. It was all painfully beautiful and it was a privilege to be there, but no matter what I did—drank a pint by myself in the bar, read a book on an overstuffed lawn chair, swam in the indoor/outdoor infinity pool—I couldn’t...settle. I kept thinking about what it would be like to come back here with my daughter and husband, and dedicated way too much headspace to what my dog was doing (sleeping on my side of the bed most likely, not thinking about me). I skipped dinner, holed up in my room, and stayed up far too late watching a bad movie before leaving early the next morning, not even giving the claw-foot soaking tub a whirl.

It hasn’t gone like that on every trip—sometimes I’ll go somewhere alone, muscle through, and come back feeling wrung out, in a good way, because I was able to take care of myself and all of my appendages, including my iPhone. Feeling capable is utterly satisfying. But I’ve also not taken assignments, like gorilla trekking in Rwanda , because the thought of preparing for and experiencing that kind of herculean adventure by my lonesome fills me with paralyzing, mood-killing dread. Whereas if I have someone to share the anticipation and fear with—and stoke my Gorilla-loving fires—well, go ahead and count me in.

As the number of female solo travelers continues to rise (in 2018 British Airways found that more than 50 percent of the 9,000 women surveyed had taken a solo vacation, with 75 percent planning solo trips in the near future) it’s embarrassing to admit you’re a reluctant solo traveler in a time when other women seem to be ticking off their bucket list destinations on their own—and with a palpable fervor. But I don’t apologize anymore for it. What I realized is that I love to travel because it imprints you in a way that a million hot yoga classes, or juice cleanses, or work or whatever else we are organizing our lives around at the moment never can. And for me, to really sink into a place and come back changed, jolted even, I need someone to share it with. If that makes me less of a badass explorer, I can live with that.

In fact, I’ve given myself permission to never have to travel solo again if I don’t want to. Which is exactly why, when I landed a dream assignment to drive 1,200 miles around Portugal —in an Alfa Romeo, no less—I did what any respectable, independent woman would do. I called my mom.

My mom and I drank too much Port and held our breaths as we inched our way down medieval cobblestone streets in a very expensive rental, where we definitely left pastry crumbs behind. That’s a trip I’ll remember for the rest of my life. And isn’t that the whole point of going anywhere? To remember it not solely for the anxiety or loneliness you felt awash in, but for the connection you made to other humans. One that would have never happened had you not been some other place than home.

By signing up you agree to our User Agreement (including the class action waiver and arbitration provisions ), our Privacy Policy & Cookie Statement and to receive marketing and account-related emails from Traveller. You can unsubscribe at any time. This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.

Why Americans aren’t travelling by train anymore

The US and railways once went hand in hand, but since the mid-20th century, rail passenger use across the country has sharply declined. The reasons are down to the country’s unique history

In May 2015, an Amtrak Northeast Regional passenger train, transporting 238 passengers and five crew members at a speed of 102mph, derailed in Philadelphia, killing eight people and injuring another 200. While many politicians shared their condolences in the wake of the tragedy, US Vice President Joe Biden did so more emphatically than most: “Amtrak is like a second family to me”, he said. “For my entire career, I’ve made the trip from Wilmington to Washington and back. I’ve come to know the conductors, engineers, and other regulars – men and women riding home to kiss their kids goodnight – as we passed the flickering lights of each neighbourhood along the way.”

Biden – sometimes called ‘Amtrak Joe’ due to the regularity with which he praises the state-subsidised train company – went on to say that “the victims could have been any one of our parents, children, or someone from one of our communities”. Without doubting the sincerity of Biden’s words, the reality is that very few Americans are likely to ever be caught up in such a tragedy, as the vast majority of them simply never use train services. For decades now, passenger rail use has been steadily declining in the US, and although the country is criss-crossed with extensive railway tracks, the majority of these are used to carry freight, not passengers.

Although the country is criss-crossed with railway tracks, the majority of these are used to carry freight, not passengers

When measured in passenger-kilometres (the standard measure of passenger use on trains, whereby a single passenger-kilometre represents one passenger travelling one kilometre), American rail use is disproportionally small compared with much of the rest of the developed – and even some of the developing – world. According to The Economist , in 2010 “American railroads accounted for just 17.2 billion passenger-kilometres”, while the EU’s various railway systems were responsible for nearly 400 billion. Likewise, per capita “the Japanese, the Swiss, the French, the Danes, the Russians, the Austrians, the Ukrainians, the Belarussians and the Belgians all accounted for more than 1,000 passenger-kilometres by rail in 2011”. Most surprisingly, while Amtrak, the US’ state-subsidised rail service, carried 31 million passengers a year, Mozambique’s railways carried 108 million passengers in 2011.

Westward-bound Rail travel has played a decisive role in American history. As one writer for Vice magazine notes, passenger rail travel conjures up the “quaintly nostalgic… image of a Great Depression-era hobo carrying a bindle”. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the vast expanse of railways symbolised the open potential and pioneering-frontier ideal of the US.

Passenger rail was also instrumental in shaping the country as we know it now. The US has always had a transient population – as Richard Jensen, Research Professor of History at Montana State University Billings told Business Destinations , compared to Europe’s localism at the time, “the idea of relocating 200 or 400 miles became commonplace in the US after 1850, and if a family had done that once, it was easier do it again. The West Coast was the extreme case: it would take a week of travel to get to Los Angeles from the East Coast or the Midwest, but tens of thousands of families did it starting just as soon as the rail lines opened in the 1870s”. The westward expansion of Americans after the Civil War was reliant upon the use of rail and, as Jensen notes, “the railroads were decisive in shaping the 19th century expansion. Practically everything west of Chicago grew up because of rail connections.”

Driving to the suburbs Yet railway use by passengers began to decline in the post-World War era. In the early 20th century, American roads had been precarious and underdeveloped, with many made up of little more than compacted dirt. This made travel – long distance or otherwise – by any means other than rail a burdensome task for most Americans. In the 1950s, however, President Eisenhower introduced the Federal-Aid Highway Act, thus creating a national inter-state highway system that totalled 46,000 miles, connecting the US in its entirety and making automobile travel far easier. The post-war era was also an era of growing prosperity, resulting in two related trends: the rise of the mass automobile, and the move to the suburbs – which in turn dealt a further blow to passenger rail use.

Mass-produced automobiles such as Henry Ford’s Model T – alongside growing prosperity and disposable incomes – turned Americans from passengers into drivers. Dr Allan M Zarembski, an expert in railroads at the University of Delaware, noted how the “rise of personal automobile”, facilitated by Federal-Aid Highway Act, made “auto travel fast, convenient and comfortable”. At the same time, automobiles became more suitable to new patterns of living, as more Americans moved to scattered and sprawling suburbs and it became less conducive to travel on foot.

As railway passengers disappeared, so too did the political will to maintain or invest in them. In the 1970s, freight trains were no longer mandated to include passenger cars, eventually resulting in the creation of Amtrak to replace these services for the remaining rail riders. The quasi-state company, however, has suffered from chronic underinvestment, with only delays and running problems to show for it. According to the National Journal , “Amtrak’s most punctual trains arrive on schedule 75 percent of the time” – hardly an appealing time-keeping record for commuters or holidaymakers.

Underfunding, lack of investment and a general lack of concern from US officials has been a persistent problem for American rail in recent years. “Hurricane Katrina washed out the tracks from New Orleans to Florida”, according to the National Journal . “The service was never restored, and the Gulf Coast has been without rail travel for nearly a decade now.”

West, again Whether or not American rail can go through a revival is yet to be seen. However, it is perhaps fitting that one part of the contiguous US made accessible by rail – and with a history associated with it – could be the site of rail revival: Elon Musk of Tesla has grand plans to build a high-speed railway service from Los Angeles to San Francisco, which would, through the use of pressured tubes, propel passenger cars from one city to the other in around 30 minutes. However, this vision seems many years away. Additionally, California is working on its own, more conventional speed rail line on the LA-SF corridor, which is a more immediate prospect.

According to Zarembski, “the corridor concept is of real potential in the US since it avoids our very large intercity distances associated with coast to coast travel [3,000 miles] and makes travel times more manageable; along the European model”. Jensen, however, sees little prospect of a revival of trains in general, or the high-speed rail project in California. The high-speed train from LA to San Francisco “will go nowhere”, he said. “It is far too expensive, and requires a commute to the station.”

While he sees railways as having played a decisive role in US history, he believes that the future of transport relies on future technologies, not attempts to revive old ones. In Jensen’s view, “once self-driving cars become widely available in a decade or so, much of the tension around high-speed driving on crowded turnpikes will disappear. If the new technology works, the same stretch of turnpike or interstate will service more cars at higher speeds, with less travel time and far fewer accidents”. Just as in the past, Jensen said that “forthcoming technology still favours the automobile” – not its competitors, such as rail, which in the US has reached the end of the line.

23 Thrilling & Chilling Books Set On Trains

This post may contain affiliate links that earn us a commission at no extra cost to you.

If you love to travel by train, we have just the reading list for you! Don’t miss these books set on trains to inspire (or detract) your next vacation by rail.

Nothing beats sitting on a train from Florence to Lucca, watching as the Italian countryside blurs by. The anticipation of the destination — bike riding on the city’s walls — is half of the adventure.

Personally, I love travel writing on long train rides. There is something especially soothing and meditative about a train’s gentle sway.

In literature, trains represent a way for people to escape or daydream. They possess both positive and negative connotations.

Trains carry people to work, new lives, and exotic destinations. Strangers and friends converge.

Trains also offer up the unknown. Sometimes they are an ominous setting filled with death and heartbreak. They might be a last-minute attempt to escape or resolve a situation. Trains are hope.

Back for one of our Uncorked Reading Challenge themes, we explored some of the best books set on trains.

Don’t miss these train thrillers, train-set mysteries, and contemporary and historical fiction train novels sure to make you want to hop on or off a train.

For some of these books, trains or their tracks will sit in the backdrop. For others, one train ride might change their entire life.

Read more Books Set Around The World .

P.S. A few ways to snag these train books:

• Audible Plus : From Amazon, listen to Amazon Originals, podcasts, and audiobooks. They add new titles every week.
• Book of the Month : Get the month’s hottest new and upcoming titles from Book of the Month. You might snag an early release or debut author. Along with selecting a book a month, find terrific add-ons, both trendy and lesser-known titles.
• Amazon Prime Video – Stream thousands of ad-free movies and TV series on demand with Prime Video.
• Express VPN – Using Virtual Private Networks (VPNs) allows you to view movies worldwide – and they help keep your information safe. Our writers couldn’t have such diverse film reviews without using a VPN.

Table of Contents

Historical Fiction Books Set On Trains

The Last Train To Key West by Chanel Cleeton

For one of my favorite books about trains, The Last Train To Key West is slightly a stretch but also a must-read historical fiction novel featuring inspiring women . You do not have to read the first two in the ‘series.’

Cheer for pregnant Helen who is trapped in an abusive marriage. Watch Mirta question if she can fall in love with her new mafia-tied husband.

Keep an eye out for Elizabeth who is looking for her veteran war brother to escape being married to a criminal.

Their lives collide during Florida’s deadliest hurricane in the mid-1930s.  

Uncover multiple romances and a gripping narrative to devour in one or two sittings against the brief backdrop of Flagler’s railroad to Key West.

The Last Train To Key West is also one of our favorite novels set in Florida . Amazon | Goodreads | Read More

Orphan Train by Christina Baker Kline

Based on the 1854-1929 ‘orphan trains’ that carried abandoned children from the East Coast to the rural Midwest, readers meet Vivian Daly, an Irish immigrant.

Vivian recalls her childhood when a young woman helps clean out her attic.

Molly is a Penobscot Indian and foster child completing community service for Vivian. With their budding friendship, the two learn more about survival and second chances.

It’s been a while since I’ve read Orphan Train , but it was a solid 3.5-star historical fiction read, for me. Amazon | Goodreads | Read More

Take The Uncorked Reading Challenge!

Travel around the world with our Uncorked Reading Challenge. Never be late to the party with unique new book releases. Get the latest movie and book lists straight to your inbox.

Outbound Train by Renea Winchester

For indie books set on trains, don’t miss Renea Winchester’s Outbound Train . Set in Bryson City, North Carolina, head to the 1960s where a violent night on the train tracks forever shapes Barbara Parker’s life.

Barbara’s daughter, Carole Anne, is caught up in the same vicious cycle of poverty, disgusting men, and corrupt leaders that make biased decisions based on socioeconomic stereotypes.

Carole Anne wants and deserves so much more.

Like The Conners , learn more about hope, second chances, and growing up in rural Appalachia. A slower and more reflective read, Outbound Train is contemporary historical and literary fiction. Amazon  |  Goodreads | Read More

Along With Outbound Train , head to North Carolina With These Books .

Mysteries & Thrillers Set On Trains

Strangers On A Train by Patricia Highsmith

One of the older and more famous spooky books set on trains – published in the ’50s – don’t miss Strangers On A Train by Patricia Highsmith.

This 1950s train thriller gained popularity when Alfred Hitchcock turned the book into a movie. And yes, the movie is different and, for me, better . *Gasp.*

Guy Haines is sitting on a train hoping to divorce his cheating, pregnant wife when he meets Charles Bruno. A renowned architect, Haines wants to marry his new love. Bruno is, well, a psychopath.

When rambling Bruno suggests that they swap murders — he’ll kill Haines’s wife Miriam if Haines kills his father — Haines brushes him off. Until Miriam is found strangled to death at a fair…

The characterization in Strangers On A Train is everything. Although a bit dry and excessive at times, you can’t help but get drawn into this wild plot. Amazon | Goodreads | Read More→

Save This Train-Set Reading List For Later

Confessions On The 7:45 by Lisa Unger

Imagine meeting a stranger on a train who could forever change your life. You think that sharing a nip is an innocent gesture until someone ends up missing…or dead. Clearly, Selena never read Highsmith.

If you are looking for a surface-level train thriller and fast-paced mystery, Unger’s Confessions On The 7:45 will have you questioning who is running this money-making scheme and why.

Reading much like Pretty Little Wife by Darby Kane and inspired by Highsmith’s Strangers On A Train , Selena catches her husband screwing the nanny and confesses to a random commuter.

With the nanny now missing, who is responsible?

Something more sinister is at play, and in the end, you’ll doubt your own ethics. Personally, I loved the conclusion even though the story started a bit blasé. Find even more New York City books on this reading list . Amazon | Goodreads | Read More

Violet by S.J.I Holliday

Recommended by an Uncorked Reader , Violet is a train thriller and mystery set on the Trans-Siberian Express. On my TBR list, not only does Violet sound like a great destination armchair adventure, but you just know never to talk to strangers …

Carrie decides to take her around-the-world train trip even though her best friend can no longer come with her. When she meets Violet at the Beijing Hotel, Carrie takes an impulsive leap of faith and decides to offer her the extra ticket.

The friendship becomes quickly tainted with manipulation. Someone has something to hide. Reviewers depict the story as bizarre and intense. I’m all in. Amazon | Goodreads

The Girl On The Train by Paula Hawkins

For psychological train thrillers, you cannot go wrong with Hawkins’ The Girl On The Train , especially if you champion Gone Girl.

Although I don’t always buy into the hype of these suspense novels, I’d put Hawkins a few notches above Unger.

Rachel watches ‘Jess and Jason’ from her daily commuter train. In her imagination, she gives them the perfect lives that she craves.

When she witnesses something that disturbs her happy narrative, Rachel decides to get involved.

A recovering alcoholic, Rachel suddenly wakes up covered in blood and is now part of a police investigation. Her ‘Jess’ is missing. The Girl On The Train is also a movie. Amazon | Goodreads

Murder On The Orient Express by Agatha Christie

A classic and one of my favorite Christie’s, Murder On The Orient Express isn’t one of the scariest books set on trains but the title will leave you questioning everyone and their intentions.

Samual Ratchett is found stabbed to death in his cabin on The Orient Express. The killer is still on the train, and no one is safe. Of course, they are all trapped.

Can Detective Hercule Poirot solve the mystery before it’s too late? The newer movie is equally enjoyable.   Amazon  |  Goodreads

If you love chilling books, we have just the Beach Books Reading List for you…

Romance Train-Set Books

One Last Stop by Casey McQuiston

One Last Stop is one of our all-time favorite friendship books and romances.

Twenty-three-year-old August has jumped from school to school and all over the United States. She’s trying to find herself along with romantic love.

However, August is witty and much cooler than she thinks. Her newfound New York City community and roommates are just as quirky and amazing.

One day, on the way to class, everything changes when August meets a beautiful and mysterious woman on the train.

Something is off, though, because Jane looks a little old school and is always on the same train as August.

As August soon uncovers, Jane’s from the 1970s and displaced in time. Can August help release Jane from the train’s energy? And if she does, is she losing the love of her life forever?

For books set on trains, this is a feel-good, older coming-of-age story. One Last Stop is also one of the most heartwarming time travel romances .

You might recognize bestselling author Casey McQuiston from Red, White, & Royal Blue — one of the best LGBTQ+ books perfect for new adults. Amazon | Goodreads

Field Notes On Love by Jennifer E. Smith

For sweet LGBTQ+ YA books set on trains, meet Mae and Hugo. Mae is an aspiring NY filmmaker that didn’t get into the college she wants. As her now ex-boyfriend notes, she doesn’t show enough of herself in her films.

Then there’s Hugo from England. Recently dumped, Hugo is in need of another M. Campbell to take his ex-girlfriend’s train ticket.

Can the two teens remain casual friends on this cross-country train trip? The audiobook version had me in stitches with some of the cute conversations with their families.

This is also a great story if you love themes of self-discovery typically found in road trip novels . Amazon | Goodreads

A Night On The Orient Express by Veronica Henry

Another train-based book recommended to me by our readers, hop on the train from London to Venice. Find multiple character’s stories filled with tragedy, love, and family that all converge on the train

In the backdrop and behind one of the characters, readers also follow a 50-year-old love story. If you enjoy people-watching, I’m told this one is for you. Amazon | Goodreads

Head to Italy With These Dreamy Books .

Books Set On Trains That Our Community Is Reading

For one of our Uncorked Reading Challenge themes, these are some of the books set on trains (and books with trains) that our Uncorked Readers read and enjoyed. To see more, join the TUL Facebook Group .

Which books set on trains have you read?

What’s your favorite book set on a train? What are the common themes that you’ve noticed across these books? Why do you think many of the novels set on trains are historical fiction or thrillers? Let us know in the comments!

Where Should You Head Next?

Books For People Who Dream Of Traveling Through Time Audiobooks Perfect For Driving (And Trains!) Famous Travel Writers & Their Books

Christine Frascarelli

Hey! Loving your lists, such great recommendations! The Last Train by Michael Pronko is on my tbr list, looking forward to reading it. I recently read The Bullet Train by Kotaro Isaka, such a good book, loved the entire journey (better than the film, in my opinion!)

Hope you’re well 🙂

Thank you! And, thank you for the recommendations!

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

• Skip to main content
• Keyboard shortcuts for audio player

Book Your Trip

In 'snowpiercer,' a never-ending train ride and a society badly off track.

In Snowpiercer, Curtis (Chris Evans) and Yona (Ah-sung Ko) are trying to fight their way to the front of a train that is cruelly class segregated. "[It's] similar to Occupy Wall Street in terms of the 99 percent versus the 1 percent," says South Korean director Bong Joon-ho. "That's something that happens in other countries and also in Korea." Radius TWC hide caption

In Snowpiercer, Curtis (Chris Evans) and Yona (Ah-sung Ko) are trying to fight their way to the front of a train that is cruelly class segregated. "[It's] similar to Occupy Wall Street in terms of the 99 percent versus the 1 percent," says South Korean director Bong Joon-ho. "That's something that happens in other countries and also in Korea."

The world has frozen over in the movie Snowpiercer. Set after a climate change disaster, all the action happens aboard a train that has to keep circling the globe for its passengers to stay alive.

More From The Book Your Trip Series

For more great train tales, check out NPR's Book Your Trip series. We've got recommendations for literary travel by train, plane, car, bike, boat, foot, city transit, horse, balloon, rocketship, time machine and even giant peach.

The movie itself is uniquely international: Snowpiercer is based on the French graphic novel Le Transperceneige by Jacques Lob, Benjamin Legrand and Jean-Marc Rochette. It's directed by a Korean auteur and stars Hollywood A-listers including Tilda Swinton and Ed Harris. The movie opened in South Korea last summer. Since then it has played all over the world, and certain Americans have been wildly impatient for Snowpiercer to open here.

What kinds of Americans, you ask? Well, film nerds, science fiction nerds, Tilda Swinton nerds and fans of director Bong Joon-ho.

Grady Hendrix, who co-runs the New York Asian Film Festival, says Bong's movies, such as 2003's Memories of Murder , masterfully subvert genres. "His serial killer movie was actually an amazing movie about Korean history but also delivered the thrills you want in a serial killer movie," he explains.

And Bong's 2006 movie The Host was both a sly critique of American intervention in Korea dating back to the Korean War — and about a giant monster eating people. The Host smashed South Korean box office records and became an international sensation.

Wealthy children inhabiting the front of the train are offered luxuries such as education, while those who dwell in back, (from right) Curtis (Chris Evans), Grey (Luke Pasqualino), Yona (Ah-sung Ko) and Namgoong Minsoo (Kang-ho Song), live in squalor. Radius TWC hide caption

Wealthy children inhabiting the front of the train are offered luxuries such as education, while those who dwell in back, (from right) Curtis (Chris Evans), Grey (Luke Pasqualino), Yona (Ah-sung Ko) and Namgoong Minsoo (Kang-ho Song), live in squalor.

So it was hardly a surprise when the director's next big action film — Snowpiercer — was immediately snapped up by Hollywood distributors Bob and Harvey Weinstein.

"Uncle Harvey. We had a long process," Bong wryly remembers during an interview at NPR West in Culver City.

Snowpiercer 's U.S. release was delayed for months as Bong and Weinstein — known in the film world as Harvey Scissorhands — wrangled over Weinstein's insistence over cutting 20 minutes from the two-hour film and adding a voice-over. Bong adamantly refused. The international film community rallied behind Bong Joon-ho. Eventually, the Weinsteins agreed to release Snowpiercer intact.

"Their idea to simplify was a very silly one," Hendrix observes. "The movie is incredibly simple. It is a train. The poor people live in the back. The rich people live in the front. And the poor people in back want to get to the front."

Bong says an oppressed underclass rebelling against huge wealth gaps is not exactly science fiction right now. "[It's] similar to Occupy Wall Street in terms of the 99 percent versus the 1 percent," he says. "That's something that happens in other countries and also in Korea."

The film has been getting rave reviews, partly because of Bong's knack for keeping viewers off balance. Take a meditative, dreamlike scene where the freedom fighters pause for a snack in a train car that's also an aquarium and a sushi counter. (Of course, sushi is sort of shorthand for the preferred food of the 1 percent.)

"Outside the window, you can see the frozen ocean, where the fish inside the tanks used to swim," Bong says.

Before the ocean was ruined — partly to make this food. Such pointed, ironic juxtapositions are Bong's stock in trade.

"It's really about having fun with the audience," he explains. "People go to the movies with certain genre conventions in mind. They go to the movies to have certain expectations met. It's always fun to play around with those expectations, to deliver what they came to see, but also give them things they didn't expect."

Like a message about income inequality or environmental cataclysm — in a high-octane summer action flick. That's what Bong delivers — along with violence, explosions and special effects.

Read A Review

Movie Reviews

The satisfying chill of the audacious 'snowpiercer'.

I'm a 24-year-old who's never been out of North America — and I don't plan on changing that any time soon

• I'm 24 and I have never been out of North America.
• This is for a lot of reasons, including my fear of flying and my financial situation. 
• I'm not planning on changing this anytime soon, and I wish people would stop judging each other for their choices. 

It's no secret that, as a whole, society is obsessed with traveling. From the Instagram accounts dedicated to dream-like destinations to news stories about  people who  quit their jobs to spend all of their money on traveling , we love to romanticize the hell out of navigating the globe. 

It makes complete sense. Traveling can open you up to new experiences, friendships, perspectives, and life goals. But it's just not for me. 

There are a million articles online about how great it is to travel (see all of the wonderful content on INSIDER's  Travel section ), but there aren't as many that speak to my experience: a 24-year-old who has never traveled out of North America and has no desire to. 

Let me explain myself. 

I am terrified of flying, to the point of panic attacks. 

Being nervous about air travel is not exactly uncommon. In fact, the Federal Aviation Administration estimates that about  1 in 3 adults have some qualms about flying . But my fear of flying is intense. So much so, that my last plane trip resulted in me hyperventilating and being mocked by an entire baseball team. 

I haven't flown commercial in about 12 years and haven't flown at all in about eight. After my last flight, which was through a thunderstorm, I quite literally kissed the ground at the Pittsburgh International Airport and vowed to never put myself through that again. 

I know that with some work I could get over this fear, but right now, it's not exactly a priority for me. 

I suffer from anxiety, which makes traveling more terrifying.  

Traveling can stress out even the most "normal" people. Now throw in the fact that I have high anxiety, and it's a recipe for disaster.

Itineraries stress me out, and I spiral at the thought of plans not lining up perfectly. Being in a new place overwhelms me, as there are a lot of unknowns and I easily lose control of the situation. Something as simple as a taxi driver getting lost can make tears run down my face, which is just plain embarrassing. 

It's not that I avoid trips because of my anxiety. I still travel, thanks to Amtrak, but it takes a lot out of me. This makes traveling a lot less fun, though I try to enjoy myself. 

I've never really been able to afford to travel. 

Anxiety aside, money is the biggest factor that stops me, and many others, from traveling. We act like it's so easy to just stop buying cups of coffee and afford a trip to Italy, but it's not that simple. 

Related stories

I have massive amounts of student debt. I have a cat. I live in one of the most expensive cities in the world. But even when I lived in a smaller city in the Midwest, keeping food on the table was what weighed on my mind, not traveling. 

According to the Huffington Post, the average cost of a flight to Europe from New York is $832:  That doesn't even begin to cover food, activities, and lodging. Not to mention care for my cat, and the fact that I'd still have to pay rent that month. If you looked at my savings account, you would know that it's just not possible for me right now. 

People who didn't grow up well-off might find themselves in a similar mindset. Some fight it off and put any disposable income into traveling. For me, if I'm not using my money towards something tangible, it  feels like money wasted. 

We tend to shame people who choose not to travel and call them materialistic. But just because some people can save for a while and eventually afford a ticket doesn't mean it's possible for everyone. Some of us don't have that money to scrape to begin with and, if we do, we use it in a different way — and that's OK. 

I never thought traveling was an option. 

For those who grew up in a metropolitan city or with parents who traveled often, my resistance to travel may seem absurd. But you have to understand that, for me, traveling is not a natural thing. 

No one in my immediate or extended family has ever been to Europe (besides those who were born there and don't remember it). Only one has been to Asia, and that was for work. Trips outside of the US were pretty unheard of in my town. 

Of course, this has changed some. As I've gotten older, more of my friends have studied abroad and traveled on their own. Hell, my friend who didn't step on a plane until she was 17 is now a flight attendant seeing the world. 

It still blows my mind that my boyfriend often just drives to an airport and gets on a plane. It's just not something that seems like a "normal" occurrence for someone like me. 

I've never said I wasn't stubborn, so it may just take a while for me to adjust to the fact that I could get on a plane right now if I wanted to. But until recently, it never even crossed my mind. 

I've had life experiences that were just as beneficial as traveling. 

So many people I know value travel experiences above anything else in life. They frequently tell me how much my life would change if I drank wine in Paris or hiked in Thailand. And maybe they're right. 

But I also think that I've had life experiences that have benefited me in ways people who travel to every country in the world wouldn't get. 

As a journalist, I've spoken to animal trainers, ghost whisperers, survivors of unimaginable violence, architects, and pop stars. I've been to dozens of US states, and even parts of Canada. I've camped high in the mountains and rested on beaches. I've lived next to a farm and in a high-rise. I would not call my life insignificant just because I don't have a full passport. 

I consider myself a well-rounded person, though I'm sure others would not. And as I get older and (hopefully) more financially stable, I may also have an enviable Instagram. 

But for right now, I'd like us all to stop shaming people for their informed life choices. What's right for you may not be right for me, and that's OK. 

And if you see someone crying from fear on a plane, maybe try offering them your hand to squeeze, rather than pointing and laughing. It may just be me. 

Follow INSIDER on Facebook .

Watch: From the launch of Airbnb to the rise of travel influencers, here are the biggest ways we changed the way we travel this decade

• Main content

• Artists add

Meet Virginia

90 comments.

Lyrics submitted by kevin

Meet Virginia Lyrics as written by Pat Monahan James Stafford

Lyrics © Sony/ATV Music Publishing LLC

Lyrics powered by LyricFind

• Highest Rated
• Most Recent
• Oldest First

the very first line completely obliterates the possibility of the drag queen theory. "she doesn't own a dress." have any of you EVER heard of a drag queen that didn't own a dress? they own more than women just to compensate for the lump of skin between their legs.

and how does wearing high heels when you exercise make you a stripper? i think that represents a woman who is so concerned with making sure that she always looks her best, that she dresses up when most people are in sweats and sneakers.

every reference to this woman seems to imply that she is just too big and too much for the box life has her trapped in. she is capable of so much more than life has offered her, yet she makes the most of what she gets.

every time i hear this song, i think of my mom. she gets so frustrated with life but loves who is in her life enough to stay put. she's got this fire and you'd think she would bolt if given half the chance, but she's got a lot of loyalty to those who love her as well. i can totally see her working out in heels and makeup even. she loves surprises, but hates the suspense. loves babies.

she wants to be omnipotent: to own the world and rule all who live in it. but then again, who wants that kind of stress? she realizes this every once in a while, and she wants nothing to do with being queen of the world. she's on her way to better things.

but i think he is singing about a woman he's never met, but definately wants to. a woman with those simple, yet so hard to come by, oddities.

the name "virginia" means pure, which can the opposite of jaded. the girl he is looking for is definately not pure, she is leaning more toward jaded which could just be a play on words with the name. irony, if you will.

• 1 Reply Log in to reply

@evened The way you speak of your Mom is so beautiful. I love your comment.

This song is about a woman who hates all of her quirks, and the man who loves her for them. In the first verse when it says 'she doesn't own a dress', it shows that she may not be comfortable enough with her body to wear one, but that she doesnt really care that much about the way she looks because 'her hair is always a mess'. Because if you 'catch her stealin' she won't confess', she is slightly bipolar and always wants to be right. When the singer says 'she smokes a pack a day', but then remembers that it's him, it means that he is so similar to her that he can't quite remember what makes them different. Even though he has his imperfections too, she loves him for it and 'thinks he's beautiful', and he thinks that she is beautiful because he loves that she loves him.

This idea is kind of beautiful..

I heard from some where that this song was about a DRAG QUEEN. and it does kind of make sense. how here hair is always a mess, and she wears hie heels when she exercises... and it keeps sayign how she wants to be the queen... and it says "the shape of her body-unusual" i was wondering what anyone else thought about it. i am not sure if thats what its about. so if ya disagree or agree please tell. thanx

• 2 Replies Log in to reply

Peculiar as it may seem, you make the most sense...

@Jessa_05 I disagree. The very first line of the song is "She doesn't own a dress". It would be impossible to be a drag queen without a dress. I think she's just someone who was always raised to be a certain way and she hates it. She's fighting to get out and escape the norm.

i'm wondering if she knows the 'real her.' my best friend thinks she kills herself and the song is a kind of eulogy. after having heard this theory i can't decide if she's right or not. i do know that i can't listen to the song without the idea in the back of my mind. has anyone else thought about this?? also what are thoughts on virgina being an actress?

• No Replies Log in to reply

virginia doesnt exist, he wants to meet a girl like that

i love this song. to me, it says there is perfection in imperfection, you know, beauty in the abnormal.

"she doesn't own a dress, her hair is always a mess"

this shows she isn't vain and she doesn't care much about looks. shows that beauty is on the inside

"you cath her stealin', she won't confess"

this shows she asserts her values, and even though stealing may not be one of her 'values', it still shows her tenacity

"smokes a pack a day, but wait thats me but anyway"

shows that he also has his imperfections

"she doesn't care a thing about that, hey, she thinks im beautiful"

this shows that she loves him and accepts him no matter what his flaws are

"she never compromises"

again, showing she asserts her values, kinda showing shes the strong independent women type

"loves babies and surprises"

this shows she likes the unexpected in life. babies and suprises are both things that just come new, things that no one knows what'll happen with. (not saying babies are always unexpected, just their actions)

agh, i gotta go, but i'll go the rest later

I agree that it's about a woman he's never met, but an ideal woman that he hopes to meet.

This song is actually about fitting in with society. In the song, he is describing her a unconventional and outside the box, but he thinks of her as beautiful. basically he likes that shes not normal. I think the whole i dont really want to be the queen line is commenting on how unaccepting society can be. Like if most people met someone like Virginia, they would classify her as weird, too different to comprehend without really giving her a chance. So she says she wants to be the queen, but then she thinks about her scene and realizes...queen of what? These people who have hurt her for being a nonconformist? So in the end she decides that she really doesn't want the queen afterall, because she's comfortable in her own skin just the way she is.

I was wondering if anyone had any theories about what happens to Virginia in this song. There's been an on-going debate between me and a couple friends and I'm intrested in other views.

@lilk9too I think she's a girl who was always raised to be a certain way but she hates it. She was always raised very classily but she's more of a tomboy. When it says "she pulls her hair back as she screams "I don't really want to be a queen", she's finally having an outburst towards her parents and telling them: this isn't what she wants.

ok, i continue....

"wears high heals when she excercises"

this line is figurative, meaning she is still very beautiful and elegant and lady-like while still doing work and being strong and independent

"well she wants to be the queen"

she realizes all her flaws and imperfections and she wants to be perfect and admired for once

"then she thinks about her scene"

she thinks about all the changes she'd have to make

"pulls her hair back as she screams"

she is frustaurated because she is indecisive and doesn't know what she wants in life

"i don't really want to be the queen"

she wants to be admired and loved, but she doesn't want to have to conform to do so

"daddy wrestles alligators"

this just shows she came from a quirky, deff. not upper class family

"mama works on carborators"

this shows that her mother is also quirky, strong, and independent, since she has a job that w woman would not normally hold

yea, well, gotta go again. ergh, stupid mom. but i'll do the rest later.

peace and love -ally

@inlovewithled You seemed smart. I sure miss my Mom, gone too soon!

I think this song is about a woman that commits suicide.

My reason why I think this? I could go on for hours, but most simply are these lines.

"Well she wants to be the queen and Then she thinks about her scene Well she wants to live her life Then she thinks about her life Pulls her hair back as she screams I don't really wanna be the queen I, I don't really wanna be the queen I, I don't really wanna be the queen I, I don't really wanna live this"

She thinks she wants to rule all or to be a royal figure, but she thinks about all the people she'd have to please. Then she starts thinking about living her life. She thinks her situation is too stressful or bad to handle. So, either she suicides by tugging her hair and falling to her death, which is unlikely, if she wanted to fall to her death she would have jumped or just fell, OR she just suicides in general.

Of course, this is just what I think it is.

Add your thoughts

Log in now to tell us what you think this song means.

Don’t have an account? Create an account with SongMeanings to post comments, submit lyrics, and more. It’s super easy, we promise!

• Artists - T
• Alive at Last [Live]
• Meet Virginia Lyrics
• Artists - S
• Speedy Ortiz

More Featured Meanings

Most popular lyric tags

• contentment 1
• character study 1
• about a girl 1
• manic pixie dream girl 1

More Train Lyrics

• Drops of Jupiter Lyrics
• Hey, Soul Sister Lyrics
• Hopeless Lyrics
• Calling All Angels Lyrics
• When I Look To The Sky Lyrics

My Girlfriend Wants to Travel But I Don’t (Here’s What to Do About It!)

I’ve been in the situation where my girlfriend wants to travel but I don’t, and I was able to find a compromise.

If you’re in the same situation and it looks like her desire to travel is going to break your relationship, don’t give up just yet!

There are some things you can do to compromise, and if the two of you love each other it’s worth trying to work through it.

Here’s my story and some tips to help you figure out if it’s right to stay together, for her to travel or not, or to travel with her:

My Girlfriend Wants to Travel But I Don’t (Things to Consider)

If your girlfriend really wants to travel but you don’t, here are some things to consider, question, and talk about to try and find a resolution:

How Long Does She Want to Travel For?

The first thing to think about is how long your girlfriend wants to travel for and what her reasons are.

Is she talking about a month-long trip? A year break? Or does she want to quit her job and move to Europe for good?

Her reasons for wanting to travel will likely fall into one of three categories: She’s curious and wants to see the world (this is usually a shorter trip).

She feels like she needs a break from her current life (this could be for a month or a year).

Or she’s not happy with her current life and wants a change (this is usually a more permanent move).

Once you know why she wants to travel and how long for, you can start to figure out how to compromise.

Related – Here is how to tell if your girlfriend is tired of you .

What Are Your Reasons for Not Traveling?

The next thing to think about is your reasons for not wanting to travel.

Do you have a good job that you don’t want to leave?

Are you comfortable at home and don’t like the idea of being away from familiar things?

Do you have responsibilities like a mortgage or car payments that make it difficult to travel?

Are you scared or just don’t like the idea of traveling?

Whatever your reasons are, don’t feel bad.

We’re all different and have different wants and needs, and sometimes those don’t align with our partners.

It just helps to have an honest discussion about your reasons for not wanting to travel so your partner understands.

Just as you understand the reasons why she wants to travel.

Can You Meet Her at Points on Her Travels?

This is how I found a compromise with my girlfriend when she had her heart set on traveling and I couldn’t due to my job and some other commitments at home.

If your girlfriend is set on traveling for an extended period of time, see if there are places she’s going to be where you can visit her.

You might have to use up some vacation days or take a long weekend, but it’ll be worth it to see her and spend some time together.

Take it from me, it’ll mean the world to her.

This demonstrates that it means a lot to you that you’re able to experience some traveling with her, and that you’re doing your best to find a workaround.

My girlfriend went traveling for six weeks throughout the summer and I met her in France in week two, and also in Switzerland in week four.

Is This Simply a Deal Breaker Because You Want Different Things?

I get it, we’re all different and sometimes people just want different things.

In some cases, traveling is important to one person in a relationship and not the other.

In cases like this, you have to accept that she might go traveling and it may mean the end of your relationship.

It doesn’t always have to mean that you split, but it’s a conversation that you need to have.

It depends on how long she wants to go traveling for and what your feelings are about it.

The traveling bug is hard to shake, too. This might not be the only time she gets the itch to go traveling, so that’s something to discuss, too.

Don’t Put Your Needs Before Hers

It’s also important to be mature about this situation and not try to put your needs ahead of your girlfriends.

I’m sure it hurts to think that you’re going to lose her, or even that she’s going to have a great time without you if you don’t go traveling.

But if it’s important to her, even if you can’t go, you need to be happy for her and do everything you can to support her.

If you’re adamant you can’t go, it’ll mean the world to your girlfriend to help her plan her trip.

You can chat about all the places she wants to go, what she wants to see and do, and help her book accommodation and figure out flights.

At the end of the day, you’re only a phone call or text away , right?

Facetime is pretty awesome, too. My girlfriend and I used Facetime a lot, and it almost felt like I was there when she was visiting the Brandenburg Gate, Cologne Cathedral, La Sagrada Famíla , and loads of other cool places.

Related – Here is how to tell if your girlfriend will miss you .

Communication and Honesty Is Everything!

The only way to find a resolution, even if that means that your girlfriend goes traveling without you and your future is uncertain, is through communicating clearly and being honest about how you feel.

You both need to be on the same page about your relationship and where it’s going, so you can make an informed decision together.

You also both have to encourage each other to follow your dreams and do what makes you both happy.

If you’re not, it can only lead to more pain down the road.

Good luck, I hope you find the best solution!

Image credits – depositphotos.com/stock-photo-woman-packing-suitcase-on-bed

Phil lives in England, UK, and has around 20 years experience as a professional life, career and executive coach. He started this blog to help others find and define their own self development journey. Blogging about a wide range of topics to help facilitate a better future.

Leave a Comment

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

"Meet Virginia" lyrics

• Train Lyrics

• Songwriter Interviews
• Song Writing
• Fact or Fiction
• They're Playing My Song
• Songfacts Pages
• Songwriting Legends
• Songfacts Podcast
• Amanda Flinner
• Bruce Pollock
• Corey O'Flanagan
• Dan MacIntosh
• Laura Antonelli
• Leslie Michele Derrough
• Maggie Grimason
• Nicole Roberge
• Roger Catlin
• Shawna Ortega
• Stephanie Myers
• Trevor Morelli

Meet Virginia by Train

• She doesn't own a dress Her hair is always a mess If you catch her stealin', she won't confess She's beautiful Smokes a pack a day Wait that's me, but anyway She doesn't care a thing about that, hey She thinks I'm beautiful Meet Virginia She never compromises Loves babies and surprises Wears high heels when she exercises Ain't that beautiful Meet Virginia Well, she wants to be the Queen Then she thinks about her scene Pulls her hair back as she screams "I don't really wanna be the queen" Her daddy wrestles alligators Mama works on carburetors Her brother is a fine mediator for the President Well, here she is again on the phone Just like me hates to be alone We just like to sit at home and rip on the President Meet Virginia, alright Well, she wants to live her life And she thinks about her life Pulls her hair back as she screams "I don't really wanna live this life" No, no No, no No, no No She only drinks coffee at midnight When the moment is not right When timing is quite unusual You see her confidence is tragic But her intuition magic And the shape of her body unusual Meet Virginia I can't wait to Meet Virginia Yeah, yeah, hey, hey, hey Well, she wants to be the queen Then she thinks about her scene Well, she wants to live her life And she thinks about her lies Pulls her hair back as she screams "I don't really wanna be the queen" I, I don't really wanna be the queen I, I don't really wanna be the queen I, I don't really wanna live this Writer/s: James Stafford, Pat Monahan, Robert S Hotchkiss Publisher: Sony/ATV Music Publishing LLC Lyrics licensed and provided by LyricFind
• More songs from Train
• More songs with girls' names in the title
• More songs that were an artist's first hit
• More songs with famous people in the video
• More songs with U.S. states in the title
• More songs from 1998
• Meet Virginia Songfacts
• Train Artistfacts

Comments: 20

• Anonymous I don’t know when you had an opportunity to be around the woman you sing about the tribute however is beautiful perhaps she could write a song about the appreciation Most of life is a lot of fun and the rest of it is like going to school Hugs and kisses from one Virginia that emotionally enjoyed your performance — on the international Vibing Highway known as telecommunication — i’m better alive and I’m sure you are too.
• Hen from Virginia Think of the song as the state of Virginia. Can definitely be interpreted that way “the shape of her body, unusual” and””she wants to be the queen” and “I don’t really want to be the queen” - no formal dress, doesn’t mind smoking (tobacco history) …. So many interpretations you can consider in any artists song, regardless of intent
• Christy Erie Pa from Erie,pa Maybe we should ask pat about his friend Freddy and where he got a lot of these lyrics and songs from
• James from Southwick Ma I think that Virginia , in the song, is actually a figment of his imagination . I believe Virginia is the girl of his dreams. The girl he wishes he would meet. Toward the end, there is a lyrics that says "I can't wait to.... meet Virginia" .
• Terry from Grafon, Wi This song will always take me back to the age of 16, driving around in my ex-boyfriend Blake's blue truck. I hear the first few lines, and I can't help but close my eyes, take a deep breath, and look back on my teenage years. The cold Wisconsin air, the shift of the truck changing gears, him holding my hand as I sang this song under my breath....everywhere we went, we would hear this song. It reminds me of a guy falling for a girl when she is obviously less than perfect. He sees the beauty in all of her little quirks, and thinks they're all beautiful. Blake always managed to make me feel like I was someone important, and someone beautiful, and although I was different from a lot of girls my age, there was nothing wrong with that. That's what he loved about me. I will always treasure this song and it will always take me back to a time I will never forget :)
• Jessie from Saldotna, Ak A song can mean 100 things to 100 very different people but this song really touches me. I'd have to say it's one of my favorites. Well she wants to be the queen Then she thinks about her scene Pulls her hair back as she screams I dont really wanna be the queen This part of the song creates a image in my head that says "Hay, this is a girl with really low self easteam and her past doesn't help it." I think Train did a amazing job with this song. I love it.
• Matt from Ashland, Va This Song Makes me think of a friend or old friend Kelsey... He loves her for everything but she doesn't love herself... She wants things she can't have but the people and things aren't her and she knows it... dispite it all and all her imperfections and qurks. she's beutiful. The writer loves her
• Kim from Norfolk , Va I think that this song is about his imagined ideal girl. She's all these fabulous and sort of quirky things, but he is realistic too - he knows girls are sometimes frustrated and unhappy, but he loves that nonetheless. He "can't wait to Meet Virginia." She his ideal woman. Maybe she is an amalgam of women he's known or just things he'd have in a woman if he could design her.
• Mickey from Mars, Pa This song is like something said by a man who really loves a girl for everything she does and doesn't do. It might be because I'm a writer, but I can see clear pictures of the couple, and her, and just everything. I get goosebumps listening to this!
• Renee from New York, Ny This song is amazing.. it makes me wanna cry because it's so beautiful... and so damn true. we all can relate
• Lorena from Melbourne, Australia This is song is amazing.. I first heard it when my sister played it to me about 3 years ago and I just came across it again recently.. I love the way this guy describes this girl, it's obvious he loves her deeply... its a good song to relate to when you're having a (deleted) day... lovee it!! -Lorena, Melbourne, AUS
• Mandie from Spokane, Wa Meet Virginia,? from Train?s first album, also inspires some unusual images about a woman who ?wears high heels when she exercises? and ?only drinks coffee at midnight.? This song, Monahan said, came from some of the ?interesting? people he?d met. ?I was new to San Francisco and I actually watched a woman play baseball in high heels and a long dress. I saw how confident women were, but also how self-conscious they were. It?s difficult to be a woman. I have incredible respect for women and the struggles they have in this man?s world. I was raised by an incredible woman and I?m in love with an incredible woman and I watch my daughter. It?s tough sometimes, I think, for a woman to be herself and want to be special but not really want to be the queen of anything - just herself - and not apologize for it. A woman friend of mine told me that the song always made her feel like she was allowed to think of herself as beautiful.? Now this was a quote straight from http://www.songwriteruniverse.com/train-123.htm. I totally agree, I have meet some great woman out there and I know as a indepent woman, its hard to live in this "man's wold" but I love how this song describes it! I love this song. I, along with every other woman out there have a lil Virgina inside too! So just keep beig you, no matter who stands in your way!
• Stefanie from Rock Hill, Sc Those lyrics are pretty amusing.
• Valerie from Evansville, In Aw, I love this song! It always makes me think of my friend Stephanie from junior high- it was her favorite song at the time. The lyrics are so amusing- "She smokes a pack a day, wait that's me, but anyway..."
• Stefanie Magura from Rock Hill, Sc Kate from san diego, I think i agree with your interpretation of the song. i first heard it when my sister was listening to it. I think she knew about the song before it really caught on. My sister's name is Ursula though, not virginia.
• Kate from San Diego, United States i think the song is kinda obviously about a sad, eccentric girl when she says she "i dont really wanna live this life" i think shes either contemplating suicide or stuck in a life she doesnt want but doesnt know how to fix it the narrator is in love with her despite her problems this is my fav song
• Jim from South Bend, In I forgot to mention my mom's name...you guessed it, Virginia!
• Jim from South Bend, In I think "Meet Virginia" was about my mom. I don't know how they knew her, but get this. She and I used to sit and rip on President Clinton all the time. She drank coffee late at night and I could never understand how she could sleep. She had severe scoliosis so her spine was actually shaped like an "S", (the shape of her body - unusual). "I don't really want to live this life", (here is the weird part), she died October 15, 1998, after a long illness, three days before I heard the song for the very first time. It had just hit the top 40 in South Bend.
• Shawn from Loganville, Ga On Storytellers, Pat (the lead singer) said that he wrote this song about how beautiful women are without make up, and how he loves imperfection.
• Keri from Lansing, Mi This song is about a girl who wants to be something that she is actually is not and then she relizes what she wants to do is actually not what she wants to do.

More Songfacts:

Time After Time Cyndi Lauper

Cyndi Lauper came up with the title "Time After Time" when she saw it in TV Guide magazine. It's the name of a 1979 movie about a man who invents a time machine.

Personal Jesus Depeche Mode

"Personal Jesus," a song about "being a Jesus for somebody else," was inspired by Elvis and Priscilla Presley.

Nothing Compares 2 U Sinéad O'Connor

Two tears roll down Sinead O'Connor's face. toward the end of the video for "Nothing Compares 2 U." They were shed because she associated the song's lyrics of love and loss with her mother, who was killed in a car accident in 1985.

Do You Realize?? The Flaming Lips

The Flaming Lips' "Do You Realize??" was named in March 2009 the official Rock Song of Oklahoma. Four years later, Oklahoma's governor Mary Fallin pulled the tune as the state's official rock song in a move her office said had more to do with priorities than musical taste.

All Summer Long Kid Rock

Kid Rock's "All Summer Long" is a mashup of "Werewolves Of London" and "Sweet Home Alabama." The album it came from was released in October, 2007, but they held off until summer, 2008 for a more seasonable release.

This Is How We Do It Montell Jordan

"This Is How We Do It" by Montell Jordan was the first hit to mention a designated driver in the lyric. Before he gets "faded," Montell gives the DD the keys to his truck.

Editor's Picks

Barney Hoskyns Explores The Forgotten History Of Woodstock, New York Song Writing

Our chat with Barney Hoskyns, who covers the wild years of Woodstock - the town, not the festival - in his book Small Town Talk.

Classic Metal Fact or Fiction

Ozzy, Guns N' Roses, Judas Priest and even Michael Bolton show up in this Classic Metal quiz.

Gary LeVox Songwriter Interviews

On "Life Is A Highway," his burgeoning solo career, and the Rascal Flatts song he most connects with.

Steven Tyler of Aerosmith Songwriter Interviews

Tyler talks about his true love: songwriting. How he identifies the beauty in a melody and turns sorrow into art.

Steve Cropper (Booker T & the MG's, Blues Brothers) Songwriter Interviews

Steve Cropper on the making of "In the Midnight Hour," the chicken-wire scene in The Blues Brothers, and his 2021 album, Fire It Up.

Grunge Bands Quiz Music Quiz

If the name Citizen Dick means anything to you, there's a chance you'll get some of these right.

Songfacts® Newsletter

A monthly update on our latest interviews, stories and added songs

Information

• Terms of Service
• Our Privacy Policy
• Google Privacy Policy
• Songfacts API
• Music History Calendar
• Song Licensing
• Affiliate Disclosure
• Privacy Manager
• X (Twitter)

Contribution

• Message Boards
• Songfacts Writers

©2024 Songfacts, LLC

Search form

• A2 listening

Trains and travel

Listen to five different conversations at a train station and do the exercises to practise and improve your listening skills.

Instructions

Do the preparation exercise before you listen. Then do the other exercises to check your understanding.

Preparation

Do this exercise before you listen.

Passenger:  Excuse me? Which platform does the train to Cambridge leave from?

Train station attendant:  The 10:15 train or the 10:40?

Passenger:  The 10:15.

Train station attendant:  The 10:15 train leaves from platform 3.

Passenger:  Thanks.

Passenger:  Hi. Could I have a ticket for the next train to Manchester, please?

Train ticket vendor:  Single or return?

Passenger:  Errr, single please.

Train ticket vendor:  The next train is at 12:30pm, leaving from platform 2.

Passenger:  And how much is it?

Train ticket vendor:  £13:50

Ticket inspector:  Tickets, please. Can I see your ticket, please?

Passenger:  Yes, here you are.

Ticket inspector:  This ticket is for Oxford.

Passenger:  Yes, that's right.

Ticket inspector:  But this train doesn't go to Oxford, it goes to Liverpool.

Passenger:  What? Liverpool? Oh no!

Train station announcement:  The next train arriving at platform 1 is the 15:45 train to Exeter, stopping at Bristol Temple Meads and arriving at Exeter St David's at 18:30.

Harry:  What time is our train back to London? 

Angel:  It leaves at 4:30. We've only got 5 minutes.

Harry:  What platform does it leave from?

Angel:  Platform 2. Look, over there. 

Harry:  I can't see our train anywhere. Let me see the ticket. Look, it says 4:20, not 4:30!

Angel:  Oh no, we've missed it.

Harry:  No we haven't, it's late. Look, here it is now.

Angel:  Phew, that was lucky!

Check your understanding: matching

Check your understanding: question and answer, worksheets and downloads.

Do you often use a train? What is your favourite type of public transport? Why?

Sign up to our newsletter for LearnEnglish Teens

We will process your data to send you our newsletter and updates based on your consent. You can unsubscribe at any time by clicking the "unsubscribe" link at the bottom of every email. Read our privacy policy for more information.

Mistakes People Make When Traveling By Train

T aking a train is one of the best ways to travel, although it can be easy to make some mistakes riding the rails. Beyond the well-deserved romanticization of this mode of transport, it's one of the more enjoyable ways to move between destinations. The ever-increasing hassles, disruptions, and necessary early arrival time of air travel don't exist, and someone else handles the stress of driving! And, wherever in the world you are, enjoying the scenery from the comfort of a train seat is more relaxing than from the driver's seat of a vehicle you're responsible for keeping in control.

Rail seats also tend to be more spacious than those on buses and planes, which only adds to the positives of traveling by train. Additionally, on most carriers, you aren't charged extra (or moved at the last moment) if you want to be seated with traveling companions. In fact, if you purchase tickets on the same booking, you're almost always seated together unless it's extremely last minute and a packed train. If you're conscious about your carbon footprint, trains are much more eco-friendly than driving (even in a carpool) or flying. However, if you're not accustomed to it, or even a frequent train traveler, it can be easy to make simple errors. Keep reading to avoid potential mistakes next time you ride the rails.

Read more: This Is What You Should Never Do When You Travel

Thinking You Can Just Decide, Book, And Board On The Same Day Of Travel

Sure, train travel doesn't require the same months of preparation that booking plane itineraries does, but you do need to plan a bit. This is especially true for long-distance journeys . A short, regional ticket between two southern French cities in the same department, like Avignon and Arles, can be bought the day before (or even the day of) without much of a price difference. But try doing that for a TGV (high-speed) ticket between Paris and Marseille or Berlin and Vienna, and you could be stuck with fares that are double or triple the price available in advance. 

What will spare you this sticker shock is including train research very early in your trip planning. As soon as you have a rough route in mind, look up the train options and note if a long-distance, high-speed train will be required. You don't necessarily need to book the tickets right away. But it's wise to enter some hypothetical dates to get an idea if there's a big difference in price if you buy that same day versus a month (or a few) ahead of time. If advance booking looks like the best option, make sure to book flexible tickets in case your plans change.

Not Booking On The Right Website Or App

Booking websites such as Rome2Rio, Omio, and Trainline are good for research, as each of them does a solid job of providing all the options for your desired route. However, once you've determined your path, go directly to the rail operator to buy tickets. Only book on an alternative provider if there is a huge price difference (i.e., an unbeatable deal) or if your departure is soon and you're unlikely to cancel or adjust the ticket. It is also a good idea to always check the flexibility of the ticket.

Additionally, you don't always get the same rights on a third-party ticket as you would for one booked directly with the rail company. For example, with regional TER trains in France, you can usually take any train for the route you've booked on the day you bought a ticket for, as long as it's not high-speed (those require reservations.) So if you bought a ticket between Rennes and Saint-Malo in Bretagne for October 25, you can take any train that day, even though SNCF (the French national carrier) usually requires you to choose a time when you purchase. However, that's not always true if you book a third party. Usually, those sites charge a fee to adjust ticket times.

Assuming There Will Be Food

Many high-speed and long-distance trains have dining cars where you can sit and enjoy a meal or grab a coffee and sandwich to bring back to your seat. However, this is not guaranteed on any route or in any country. You can check your booking confirmation for details about the train, and it'll usually indicate if there is a dining car. But, even if the app or ticket says there's a dining car, the train could change at the last moment, or a technical issue might arise, and suddenly, they have to swap the train for one without food and drink amenities. These events are rare, but in general, you should bring plenty of water and snacks to be on the safe side. This is usually a cheaper option than purchases made on the train.

Additionally, sometimes unofficial food carts will make their way on board thanks to a savvy entrepreneur who knows certain routes don't provide refreshments. Again, these aren't guaranteed, and purchases from unofficial vendors are at your own risk.

Assuming There Will Be Wi-Fi And Other Tech Amenities

On many of the longer-distance and high-speed routes, there is Wi-Fi, but it's never guaranteed. Even when it is provided, the connection is often slow or faulty and can randomly stop working at any moment. Connection issues are fine if all you want to do is occasionally check messages or the weather at your destination. It's less than ideal if you plan to get work done (a good idea on longer journeys) or stream something en route. Check your journey details as it'll usually indicate whether Wi-Fi is provided, but don't bank on it working well. Bring your own hotspot (even if it's just a cellphone) or download entertainment ahead of time to avoid disappointment.

Additionally, there might not be a place to charge electronics on-board. If there is, sometimes the plug-ins can be spread unevenly throughout the train and not necessarily be near your seat. This can be particularly problematic on long-distance routes where seats are assigned. So, if yours isn't near a power plug, you'll need to rely on the kindness of other passengers. Sometimes, the outlets don't even work. If being online during your journey is a must, bring a portable power bank along with a hotspot.

Not Reading The Itinerary Carefully

It's all well and good to research, plan ahead, and feel excited about transportation before your trip. But it's always a good idea to double-check. One of the mistakes people often make when traveling by train is not reading itineraries carefully. They book a ticket from Cologne to Munich and fail to recognize the small indication on the app noting a connection in Frankfurt. Now, you would usually figure this out at the station when you board the indicated train and don't see your final destination listed, but it's nice to avoid surprises where possible.

Another mistake people make is not realizing many cities have multiple train stations. This is rare in North America, but in Europe, even smaller cities like Lyon have a few stations. Paris has six. If you book a round-trip, sometimes you depart and arrive at a different train station. Again, it is not the end of the world, but it could cause unnecessary stress if you don't know the area well or have booked accommodation far away. Finally, even if you know that there's a connection, did you check carefully that the second leg departs at the same station? Again, this is rare, but sometimes itineraries require a change of station, so be aware of that ahead of time or avoid a ticket with that as a requirement.

Not Checking Luggage Restrictions And Requirements

Luggage norms depend on the company, route, and where you're traveling, of course, but don't assume there won't be any restrictions. Sure, it's not Ryanair or Spirit where charges arise for every little extra thing possible, but don't show up with five suitcases and expect not to be charged, or at the very least, given a few odd looks. You'll be responsible for getting it on and off the train yourself, so if you're okay with doing that (and paying) for multiple bags, go for it. If not, try some light-packing methods.

Additionally, there can be limited storage space for luggage. Even if your ticket includes one or two bags, that doesn't actually mean there's space for everyone to bring that. This is especially true if you're taking a direct high-speed train from an airport in Europe where everyone is arriving from further afield and likely has a bag or two. Your suitcase won't be left behind, but you could end up in an uncomfortable (if comical) situation where you are standing with your bag in the aisle or near the doors. Also, ensure yours is labeled. For peace of mind, first of all, but it's also required in most countries with most carriers.

Not Validating The Ticket

It is clear that buying a ticket is necessary and might need to be booked quite far in advance. If you don't do so, you could face steep fines no matter where you ride the rails. However, a lesser-known or often forgotten fact is that in Europe, your ticket frequently needs to be validated before departure. This is an extra step that is not always required in North America, so make sure to do your due diligence before boarding the train.

If this little detail slips your mind before arriving at the station, don't stress, as tickets can often be validated up until the last minute. You'll see signs and little machines around the station indicating whether or not it's required. Usually, all you do is stick your paper ticket into the validation slot, and voilà, you're all set to travel. Alternatively, tapping your ticket (electronic or paper) on a card reader can also validate it. The required form of validation will usually be listed somewhere on your confirmation email. With the increased use of e-tickets and app-loaded tickets, validation is less common than it once was but crucial where required.

Not Bringing ID

You need a valid (and validated) ticket or rail pass to board and travel, but what can often be forgotten is that you often (although not always) also need to show a valid form of identification along with your ticket. This is so the conductor and rail workers can confirm you're the person listed on the ticket and of the age indicated because youths and seniors often receive discounts. It's not always asked for, but it's good to have on you should it be requested.

Depending on the company, ID can be a passport, driver's license, or national ID. If traveling outside your country of nationality, have your passport and visa (if applicable) and/or residence card if it differs from your citizenship. If you're a student, bring a school ID with you, as it'll be asked for if you purchased a student ticket, which often means significant discounts. Minors don't need a form of ID, but the adult listed on the reservation typically does.

Not Downloading The App

We know, we know, we're all sick of needing an app for everything. But, in this case, there is often an excellent reason. The rail company's app, like airline apps, usually has the most up-to-date information regarding your journey. The app will alert you via a mobile notification and an email if your train is delayed, canceled, or has a change in platform. Sure, you can also find out this information upon arrival at the station, but if there's a long delay (or cancelation), it's much nicer to find out before you trek all the way there.

Apps are also quickly becoming the most common way to receive tickets and are the easiest way to make a change to your itinerary if needed. There will also typically be additional details provided, such as the location of your particular car (where seats are assigned), the direction of the train (essential in the case of "choose your own seat" tickets to ensure you face forward), and whether or not food, Wi-Fi, and other amenities are provided.

Not Familiarizing Yourself With The Route

It's always a good idea to have at least a cursory awareness of your route . This goes beyond where you board and get off. You should also know the estimated time you expect to be on the train and a few of the stops that precede yours. Why? To avoid stressing about missing your stop or if it's coming up soon. This way, you'll know when you're close. Announcements are usually made a few minutes before arriving at a stop. That's when you should gather your things and move towards the door, as stops are generally brief.

And even if the announcements aren't in English, you can usually understand the stop names. What is becoming increasingly common worldwide is for announcements to be made in the local language (or languages) first before being repeated in English. However, this is only sometimes the case. When in doubt, ask the conductors or a fellow passenger.

Not Paying Attention To Strikes

These are more common in Europe than in other parts of the world, although not unheard of elsewhere. Strikes are typically announced in advance, as well as information about routes and specific trains affected. The time frame can vary, from months and weeks ahead of time to just a few days. Make sure to monitor if your itinerary could be affected if strikes are announced. If your train is canceled, rebook as quickly as possible, as alternatives can be sold out quickly.

Last-minute rebookings can be expensive due to limited availability. In this case, don't forget to check alternatives like buses (Flixbus has a broad range of international options) and rideshares such as BlahBlahCar, which can be a great help. In the case of a route cancelation, passengers often get the option to change to another train or receive a full refund. If not, check the company's policy and see what options are available.

Not Following Train Etiquette

To avoid less-than-friendly interactions with your fellow passengers, pay attention and follow the local train culture. Often, outside the U.S., people talk at a much lower volume, especially on public transportation. And, out of basic politeness, you should always wear headphones when listening to audio or a call. In many places worldwide, you may even need to step out to make a phone call.

In France , for example, train staff will make announcements on the subject and signs direct passengers to designated areas for phone calls. Many places around the world, likewise, have dining carts for the sole purpose of not having people eating on other parts of the train. In some parts of the world, it's actually against the law (not just rude or annoying) to sit in someone else's spot. For female passengers, many countries like Egypt and Japan offer female-only cars for the comfort and safety of those taking the railways. Not adhering to the norm while taking the train is one of the most common but least obvious mistakes travelers make when on board. Don't be that obnoxious tourist, and do a bit of research before your trip to ensure a smooth journey.

Read the original article on Explore .

Why Can’t America Have a Better Passenger Train System?

Imagine a high-speed train system with a wide availability of routes that allowed us to make trips directly.

By Emma Gisclair, UCF Forum columnist | April 8, 2020

Last summer I traveled to England and Scotland, and my life—or at least my outlook on travel—changed.

Why? Because I experienced the magic that is traveling by train. From an overnight sleeper train between London and Glasgow, to the channel-crossing, high-speed Eurostar to Paris, to the scenic 4½ hour trip (which would take more than seven hours to drive!) from Edinburgh to London, my husband and I came home with one overriding question:

Why can’t America have trains like that??

My childhood memories are filled with family road trips. Freedom from school, seeing new places, visiting family and friends—these were the highlights. The downsides? Being stuck in the backseat with my two brothers for hours on end. No escape. No opportunity to stretch our legs or use the restroom until our parents agreed to pull over at a rest stop.

Although I no longer have to worry about my brothers crowding my personal space, adulthood has brought new downsides to road trips. Driving long distances gives me nearly unbearable neck and back pain. There are the monotonous stretches of highway that cause a drowsiness even a good playlist can’t cure. And of course, there’s the tension when one driver makes the third wrong turn and no, they are not lost, but if the person in the passenger seat would just be better at giving directions…

There’s a lot I love about road trips. It’s not just about the end destination,

Don’t get me wrong. There’s a lot I love about road trips. It’s not just about the end destination—getting to experience a new city or seeing an awe-inspiring national park or spending time with family.

It’s about the journey, too. While parts of a long drive may be boring, there’s a lot of beauty to see too. I love watching the scenery pass by—observing Florida’s flat, cypress- and palm-filled landscapes turn to Georgia’s pine trees and gentle hills, which transform into North Carolina’s majestic Blue Ridge Mountains—while listening to a new podcast and eating way too much junk food. I love long conversations with friends and road trip games.

For most of my life, there have only been two options when I wanted to travel: driving, with all its positives and negatives, or flying. Traveling by plane comes with its own list of pros and cons. Sure, you get to leave the navigation and work to a professional, you don’t have to pull over and delay your arrival even more each time you need to use the restroom, and you get where you’re going faster.

On the other hand, instead of being crammed into the back seat of a Camry with your siblings, you’re packed tightly into economy seating with a hundred other people. Airport security is a nightmare. And do you really want to use that airplane toilet?

And then there are trains. What I love about traveling by train:

• Someone else takes care of the business of getting you from Point A to Point B
• You still get to enjoy the passing scenery just like a road trip
• It’s cheaper than flying
• It’s faster than driving
• The entire train station experience is much less stressful than an airport (and less time-consuming)
• Passengers aren’t packed together like sardines
• Bring your own picnic lunch if you’d like!
• You can get up and stretch your legs whenever you want

Unfortunately, because there aren’t many direct passenger train routes across our country today, a trip to visit my in-laws in Louisiana (a nine-hour drive), would take 55 hours by Amtrak (with a very out-of-the-way stop in Washington, D.C.) and cost at least twice as much as a plane ticket.

Imagine an American high-speed train system with a wide availability of routes that allowed us to make that Louisiana trip directly in five hours.

Imagine a cross-country trip where you don’t have to worry about driving drowsy or getting distracted by bickering kids in the back seat.

Imagine arriving directly into New York’s Grand Central Station in the middle of Manhattan instead of the JFK Airport in Queens.

I know there are plenty of reasons—from the political and financial to the cultural and social—why America doesn’t have a train system like Britain’s or Europe’s. That doesn’t stop me from wishing that we would get serious and overcome those hurdles. It doesn’t stop me from dreaming.

But now every time I have to make a long drive or deal with the hassle of flying, a frustrated part of me will always think:

Why can’t America have a better passenger train system?

Emma Gisclair is a library technical assistant at the UCF Library’s Curriculum Materials Center. She can be reached at [email protected] .

The  UCF Forum  is a weekly series of opinion columns from faculty, staff and students who serve on a panel for a year. A new column is posted each Wednesday on UCF Today and then broadcast on WUCF-FM (89.9) between 7:50 and 8 a.m. Sunday. Opinions expressed are those of the columnists, and are not necessarily shared by the University of Central Florida.

More Topics

Pegasus magazine.

Founded to help fuel talent for the nearby space industry , UCF continues to build its reputation as SpaceU. Here's a look at the early days of UCF's space ties and journey to new frontiers.