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Comment by blueflow | Hacker News Reader

Some people grew up in a household too poor for travel-by-plane to become a thing. I only knew about airplanes because i could see them in the sky and in the TV. I thought it was a rich people's thing.

I'm telling that to make people aware that travel-by-plane is not only a carbon-intensive way to travel, but also a privilege not everyone has.

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When I lived in the USA, I flew almost every month - for work, for interviews, for a few days in some nice place. It really was like catching a bus. But, man was it stressy. Just getting to the airport, going through the security theatre, commuting on soulless American freeways for hours on end.

Now that I live in Europe I do the same, but with trains - and it is a far more pleasant experience.

I've even just taken the train for a couple of days so that I could get some work done - nothing gets the neurons firing better than an 8 hour train-ride to Prague or an overnighter to Hamburg or Paris.

Its a pretty decent office environment too, if you book things right, or take a sleeper car. I know some folks who just take the train to work, not to get to work, on a regular basis. I absolutely love to be able to see the landscape scroll by while I wait for a build.. and have even had a TV set up in my terrestrial offices with such videos on in the background, although I confess that these days I really like those hour-long "walk through <city>" videos as a viable attention-boosting tool.

And, this being Europe, Internet access is not so bad - never had issues with my remote shells being terminated due to altitude limits or zoning issues. Beer spills, and the opening of the disco car, on the other hand ..

I still remember my first times in the US at the end for the 1990ies beginning 2000s for business reasons. At that time before the security theater it was really much more like taking a bus. It was really like in TV where the relatives say God bye at the gate, because there was no (obvious) security in place at all.

I'm from and based in Germany. I haven't been much in the US in the last 10 years for several reasons.

In Italy, the most busy domestic route (Roma-Milano), was replaced by the high speed trains. Who would take a one hour flight if you can take a 3 hour train with no security controls, more space and arrivals and departures in the city center?

Yes, the rail lines of Europe really are a boost to ones quality of life.

Just the therapeutic action of gazing across the landscape for a few hours, then returning to the book or laptop on the table in front of you can be rejuvenating in ways that sitting on the 405 for a few hours in the afternoon, isn't.

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