Trains
The Joys of Train Travel
Jun 8th
I love travel. I believe you do, too, and that’s why you are a reader of Global Traveler.
Recently, I’ve been doing a lot of local train travel, and I have found myself wishing I could travel more by train. Last week, I took Amtrak to Philadelphia, and this week I’ve been back and forth on MetroNorth almost every day to White Plains, NY. MetroNorth is certainly not a luxury train, but I get to go in and out of Grand Central Station, which is a treat for any commuter. Long haul, I would never turn down a premium ticket on an air carrier, but trains can be so convenient.
I would love to see more investment in our railroads. It would be great to have trains like the Acela, or even faster trains, to transport Americans around the country. Trains leave no carbon footprint, and I also find myself being productive and efficient while on trains. My favorite part is being able to pull into the center of the city I’m traveling to and walk (usually) to my final destination, rather than hopping in a cab. Most airports don’t deposit you into the center of the city, within walking destination of your final stop.
Bottom line — planes, trains or automobiles, I’m a happy traveler. However, it’s certainly nice to mix things up from time to time.
– Alex Young, vice president and associate publisher
Outsized in Shanghai
Apr 23rd
To a kid growing up viewing the small (but lovable) skyline of Philadelphia, New York City seemed bigger than life. On the train into the city, seeing the skyscrapers of uptown and downtown stretching to cover the island, I felt awe at the idea of just how much life and energy Manhattan held. Then, last week, I rode the train into a different city, in a different country, and learned a different meaning of the word “massive.” Welcome to Shanghai.
Shanghai wasn’t my first introduction to large cities in China; I had just come from Nanjing and had visited Beijing on a previous trip. Foolishly, I thought that Shanghai would measure around their size; mind-boggingly expansive at first, but not to the extent that you can’t wrap your head around it eventually. The joke was on me.
I can only imagine what the aerial view of Shanghai might be like; perhaps from 30,000 feet in the air you could see an end to the city. From the ground you can’t. If you enter the city via rail, your first introduction to what’s ahead are sprawling apartment complexes lining the tracks in clusters of 20, 40, 80 — each building exactly like the one next to it within its complex and each building holding upwards of 200 families. Try doing that math in your head: If each apartment holds three people, then each building houses 600 people; 600 per building times 20 buildings equals 12,000-plus people in the smallest complex. And these were only the suburbs.
Once you cross into the actual city, there is nothing but city. I took a taxi from (what I thought) was one side of the city to the other and still couldn’t find an end to the skyscrapers. Mind you, that taxi ride took 15 minutes on a superhighway, without traffic. If you took the same ride through NYC, you’d zip through from one side to the other in no time flat.
Shanghai is the only city thus far to completely baffle me, and I love it for doing so. I hope so much to encounter an opportunity to return and try once again to find my bearings amidst the insanity, although I think it would take living there for at least six months (probably more!) to actually say you know Shanghai. Then again, to know Shanghai is probably a fleeting feeling, because every day it stretches a bit closer to the horizon and to the sky.
Dear Philadelphia, I still love you. To New York, you gave it your best shot. But Shanghai’s the future, and America, we have a lot of catching up to do if we expect to be a part of it.
– Kate Gallagher, advertising and editorial coordinator
Dealing with the Unpredictable
Apr 18th
Mother Nature has sure thrown a lot of challenges at global travelers in the last six months. Major winter storms along the U.S. eastern seaboard and in Northern Europe in December wreaked havoc for holiday travelers by air, rail or roadways, and the “fun” continued into January and February. In addition to snow and ice, major wind storms and epic flooding on both sides of the pond throughout the winter and early spring not only made a mess of flight schedules but also caused millions of dollars in damage to infrastructure and personal property. Just when one could hope that the worst might be behind us as the days warm and lengthen into spring (although the annual thunderstorms and tornado warnings can not be discounted), a new challenge has reared its ugly head: volcanic eruptions.
The eruption of an Icelandic volcano this past week has sent clouds of ash drifting toward Northern Europe. Estimates are that nearly half of all scheduled flights in and out of the continent were cancelled over the last few days, and while the hope is that by the end of the weekend the ash will have largely dissipated, there are no guarantees that the volcano will not let loose again nor any way to predict when it could do so or how much ash it may emit. The flight cancellations and closing of major airports caused several finance ministers and officials to miss the start of a European Union finance meeting in Madrid, and there is concern that the arrival of world leaders for the state funeral of Polish president Lech Kaczynski and his wife on Sunday might also be delayed. Daily losses in the millions of dollars are predicted for large carriers such as British Airways and Lufthansa, and stock prices for these and other companies have seen a slight drop in the last few days. Not surprisingly, though, there has a been a marked increase in train travel throughout Europe over the same period; people and business continue to carry on as long as there is a will and a way.
Of course, this isn’t a “new” challenge at all, really. In just over a month, we in the Pacific Northwest will be commemorating the 30th anniversary of the catastrophic eruption of Mount St. Helens on May 18, 1980. That event and several subsequent eruptions accompanied by massive ash clouds disrupted air traffic often. In addition, car engines became clogged with the tiny particles, and citizens throughout the region snapped up face masks to protect their respiratory systems.  The initial eruption also wiped out bridges along the major north-south interstate, I-5, and led to expensive silting-up of important shipping lanes in the Columbia River. Just last year, the Redoubt volcano near Anchorage, Alaska,  spewed ash into the atmosphere and caused nearly a week’s worth of flight cancellations with a ripple effect that spread down the West Coast. A similar eruption in 1989 caused all of a KLM flight’s engines to quit, with the plane descending some 14,000 feet before the pilot was able to restart the engines and make an emergency landing.
The eruption of Mt. Galunggung in Indonesia in 1982 led to similar engine failures in at least three different jumbo jets. In each case, after the passengers and crew suffered through the nightmare of gliding for several minutes while losing altitude, the engines were restarted once the ash cloud had been cleared and enough of the clogging silica in them had  fallen away. Incidents such as those have led air traffic controllers to have a great deal of respect for the danger that volcanic ash clouds, not generally visible on weather radar systems, can present. As bothersome as cancelled flights and closed airspace can be, they are preferable to the disastrous consequences that could be suffered if planes continued to fly in those conditions.
– Patty Vanikiotis, proofreader
Consuming Travel
Feb 9th
On a recent trip to New York City, my husband and I took the train from New Haven’s Union Station. On our way out of Grand Central Station, we passed a bakery, and the aroma of fresh-baked bread stopped me in my tracks. “On the way back,” my husband promised. “We’ll get bread to bring home.” He was right. We were headed to the Andaz Wall Street for the GT Tested Awards and a two-night stay. What was I going to do with a bag full of bread?
The hotel was fabulous, the event even more so. And, true to his word, on our return trip, my husband steered us straight to Grand Central Market, a long arcade of food stalls on the ground floor of the terminal, with access to the street at one end. Featuring everything from Greenwich Produce to Penzeys Spices, from Murray’s Cheese to Pescatore Seafood, it is a foodie’s paradise. But it was bread I was after, and bread I found at Zaro’s Bread Basket. There was such a large selection, I couldn’t make up my mind; and with our luggage getting in everyone’s way, I had to decide fast. We ended up with a bag full of ciabatta and other crusty creations to take home and a couple of focaccio loaves, loaded with delicious toppings, for the train.
It’s hard to get a good loaf of bread in our part of Connecticut. There are few bakeries to begin with, even fewer that bake their own bread, and fewer still that bake really good, crusty bread.
My passion for bread goes way back. In the 1980s, after a week in Paris with a friend, dining on fresh baguette morning, noon and night, I bemoaned the dismal lack of good bread at home. Enduring one too many complaints about “this doughy American stuff,” my husband had had enough: “Then learn to make your own!” And so I did, and I’ve been baking baguettes ever since.
Some of the finest souvenirs I have brought home from my travels are not the usual tchotchkes. Sure, I’ve carted my share of china cups and coffee mugs, original watercolors by local artists and Gustav Klimt prints from Vienna. I’ve stuffed my suitcase with fine woolens from Ireland and Iceland, and lugged back a huge pottery half-moon from the Caribbean. Each year my Christmas tree is adorned with ornaments from around the world — Delftware from Dutch St. Maarten, bright red wooden lobsters from Maine, Bermudian bobbies, Tyrolean jumping jacks. I even schlepped a cuckoo clock halfway through Europe on a backpacking trip when I was 20. And some items have inspired whole collections, as with our Wayang Golek (Java puppets), which we accumulated over many years of traveling through the Caribbean.
But fabric fades. China chips and cracks. It is the more intangible things that stay with me. Like learning to bake baguette, I seem to collect new abilities wherever I go, new traditions to incorporate into my life that remind me of where I’ve been.
In Germany, one taste of Schwarzwalder-Kirsch-Torte (Black Forest cake) and I had to possess its lush chocolate-and-cream secrets. I found a recipe and practiced making it — even impressing my father-in-law with a torte for his birthday one year.
Other locations have led to other additions to my culinary repertoire: Johnny cakes and plantains as they are served in the lolos of Grand Case, St. Martin; Irish scones, brown bread and potato soup; dim sum inspired by a trip to San Francisco’s Chinatown.
But musical fare can have the same effect as food. On a visit to Doolin, the traditional music capital of Ireland, I was so taken by the local music that I needed to possess it myself and bought two tin whistles — I have learned three songs in three years — and if I had room in my suitcase would have lugged home enough instruments for a whole band: bodhran drums, bones, spoons and maybe even uilleann pipes. On one trip to the Caribbean, I was convinced I could be a steel drum player; luckily, there were no drums for purchase on the island.
I suppose it’s my passion for a place, for its people, that inspires this sort of madness in me, this need to replicate what I have found and instill it into my daily life. Perhaps it is a way of keeping the memories alive. I am loath to leave some places and head home to my ordinary life.
What I have yet to figure out, though, is how to carry home more esoteric things, like an entire way of life. How, for instance, to institute the Spanish siesta into my afternoon? How to take a two-hour lunch and still get work done? How to stay as relaxed as I am on the beach in the Caribbean, as enthused as I am in a Parisian art museum, as connected to people as I am when encountering another culture?
Ah, but that’s exactly what vacations are for.
– Jan Hecht, associate editor
