Train travel

One thing I always missed in the States was train travelling. I missed anything on rails, really. I can count the times I have seen a passenger train at the Tucson train station on one hand. There were something like three trains going to LA and three trains going the other direction – per week. Nevertheless, the Tucson train station is beautiful, and I would love to get off a train there one day. There was also the Old Pueblo Trolley - it was so old it made me feel like I was in a technicolor version of “The Third Man”, but unfortunately it was also completely impractical, so I almost never took it.

I think trains are great. They are powerful and elegant, even the most crummy of them. If they are too crummy to be elegant, they instantly transition to cute and nostalgic. There is something about the slow and steady acceleration, or the way they wind themselves through a mountainous landscape, or the torpedo-ish speed with which they fly along a suitably long and straight track. Austria does not have much in the way of real high speed trains, like France or Germany, but along the Danube valley, even the not-so-high speed trains can ramp up pretty impressively, certainly beyond anything you could legally do on an (Austrian) Autobahn.

There is much to be said for train travel in terms of the comfort, in particular on the not-so-crowded routes. Here I am, feet up on the seat opposite, typing this entry and getting more and more distracted by the gorgeous Alpenvorland landscape going by. I don’t get sick, I don’t get impatient, I don't get bored. I can read, type, sleep, walk around, eat, drink, you name it, all in as much comfort as you can really get while travelling (oceangoing cruise ships notwithstanding). And sometimes I meet very interesting people and have inspiring conversations with them. It’s easy to get talking on trains, especially in cars with those opposite seat arrangements. It’s not like on planes, where you and your neighbor are just too close and too stuck for real talking comfort. On the train, you are spaced just right, close enough that you can start talking, but just far enough that you can also quit talking again. And should you for some reason really need to flee, you can always pretend it’s your stop and find a new seat two cars down.

I can take two train routes from Vienna to Admont. One is longer, and the trains running on it are fast, the other is shorter, but the trains on it are of the “crummy” and “winding themselves through mountains” category. Ultimately, they both take roughly the same amount of time.

I LOVE the slow route. It begins at Wien Westbahnhof (the architecture of which is worth an entry by itself) with an Intercity train, the fast and elegant kind. Separate compartments for 6 people each, little brochure listing all the stops and connections, snacks & beverages cart, worldly long distance travellers. An hour later, at Amstetten, I change to the slow Regionalzug. No more brochures, no more compartments, no more beverage cart. No big train stations, either, but instead pretty views of small farms. As the train travels into the foothills of the Alps, the towns, houses, and farms grow progressively more picturesque, at first still perched on slopes and hills, then nested into small valleys. Eventually, the farmland is largely replaced by forest, and the mountains grow higher and higher. At the stations, you see people on the platforms dressed in the traditional outfits. As of, let’s say, Waidhofen an der Ybbs, I am the only person on that train typing on a laptop. Not because people don't own laptops, but because the pace of life is sufficiently slow that they don't feel the need to type on them while on the go. Then, after Weyer, the tracks turn into Ennstal, and the landscape starts to feel like home, childhood home, that is. Now there are no more villages: the valley is cut deep and there is only room for the train, the river Enns and a small road. The villages are on a terrace some 50 - 100 meters higher. It feels like time has stopped. The river is the same, the landscape is the same, there is that same little boat tethered to the shore at that one spot that was already there when I first travelled this route consciously, about 20 years ago. Only the seasons change on this part of the route, and no matter the season, the landscape is amazing. A blue, green, or turquoise river going through forests and by rocky cliffs, interrupted only by the occasional small run-of-the-river hydropower station. The mountains grow higher and higher, the train takes a turn and we enter Gesäuse, a narrow, rocky gorge with high limestone peaks towering over it. The river has turned into whitewater. As I am writing this, I am travelling through that very part. This time, everything is coated with a bright snow-white furry frosting of rime. It looks enchanted in the evaporating fog, with the sun slowly breaking through. (Unfortunately there are too many reflections in the window to take any pictures). Admont, on the other end of Gesäuse, will look like a respectably sized town, after all this lonely landscape. That whole slow transition from busy, metropolitan Vienna to the Alpine countryside happens so smoothly, it just makes me think: “This is how travel should be”. 

Of course, time has not stopped. The route used to run several times a day when I was a kid. No more. There’s a special train Saturday morning and another Sunday late afternoon. Which happens to work alright for me right now, but I am sad about the change in schedules nevertheless. The buses that have replaced much of the route at other times just are not the same thing. They are small and uncomfortable. If you have luggage, you have to open a disgustingly dirty trunk and cannot wash your hands afterwards because there is no bathroom. I can’t read lest I get carsick. They have a radio going (usually Ö Regional - if you don't know what that means, just rest assured: it's bad). And they don’t go through the empty valley, but up on the terrace, where the villages are. (I must begrudgingly admit that that makes sense.) So, I am treasuring every opportunity to travel the route by train.

I am sort of regretting never having taken the train from Tucson. It must be just as wonderful to see the desert landscape go by. But I am only sort of regretting it. I did look into it, and it turned out just a tad impractical: From Tucson to where? El Paso? Been there, seen no reason to return. LA? Perhaps, but what to do there without a car? Rent one, when you can drive your own there faster and for cheaper? Go just somewhere, for the sake of being on a train? For about 60 bucks, I could have gone to Lordsburg, NM, and returned the same day, provided it was a Thursday, or I could have gone there on a Saturday, and returned on a Sunday. Do not ask me what one can do in Lordsburg without a car to get out of there. The various stories of the unreliability of Amtrak’s passenger trains weren’t encouraging, either, so one may end up spending even more time in Lordsburg. So, I never got round to taking the train to or from Tucson. Too bad...