Getting From A to B - Using Wheels, Water and Rails

We sold our cars before we left Omaha and have relied solely on our feet or public transportation for the past 7,000 miles. Of course we’ve ridden buses, metros and trains. But we’ve also been transported by ferries, bicycles, a funicular, a barge and a cruise ship during the past three months.

We have found traveling by bus between cities can be a good option when we don't have far to go. They are inexpensive, comfortable and convenient for luggage. But they can be much slower than trains and a more inconvenient schedule when traveling a log distance.

Almost daily, we crossed rivers using ferries on our week long bike and barge trip in the Netherlands. We were told ferries for the vehicles and pedestrians are more feasible than bridges because the river is just narrow enough that bridges would have to be too steep to accommodate all the boats and barges that would pass underneath.

We traveled from Belgium to London on the Eurostar train that uses the 35 mile undersea tunnel below the English Channel. That did make me a little nervous, because I don't want to scuba dive or be in a submarine or be anyplace without ready access to oxygen. But it went completely fine. 

Then we saw a display with a Eurostar engine and a representative cross section of the "chunnel" at the National Railway Museum in York, England. 

The Best (So Far)

Our experience with public transportation in Geneva, Switzerland, was phenomenal, especially the tram system. The system has a wide network of routes, stops every half mile in dense areas and trams that arrive every four to six minutes. 

Many users, including tourists (yes, us), get free or low cost passes. All strata of the community are riders. We saw day care workers shepherding groups of toddlers wearing yellow vests on and off, people in wheelchairs accessing the cars via ramps extended to the stop platform, passengers bringing aboard bikes, scooters, shopping carts, dogs, wagons full of work supplies, and SO many people (women) with strollers.

Each car has limited seating, but many people are riding for only a few stops and older people are often offered seats. (We haven't seen that same courtesy practiced in Great Britain at all.)

A ticket or pass is required, but there is no way to scan it upon entering and checks are infrequent. But we regularly saw people buying passes and were told by tour guides that occasionally a swarm of monitors board from all entrances to check your pass and issue heavy fines to those without a pass or with one that has been bought online since the monitors entered the car.  

The Most Eventful

We also are very confident using the metro in Washington, D.C. Most rides are uneventful, but not all. Some of the very long escalators are problematic for me and I have to approach each new station cautiously. 

Wheaton station escalator, just outside Washington, D.C. It is 230 feet long at a 30 degree angle. This escalator is the longest single-span escalator in the Western Hemisphere. 

During our three week visit to D.C. in April, we experienced a few metro slowdowns, with conductors announcing a medical emergency on the platform ahead, a mechanical issue with a train ahead and a train passing across the tracks ahead. But the ride always resumed normally within one to two minutes.

However, one of our last metro rides was a mid-day outing that was quite memorable. Chris and I were seated in a nearly empty car. The only other occupants were two men facing the opposite direction and completely enclosed in coats, hats and face masks, apparently snoozing. A young woman entered soon after us and sat across the aisle. She wore casual work attire and started typing on a laptop she pulled from her backpack.

Another slowdown started. The car continued moving, but at a walking pace. Chris and I barely noticed and continued chatting but soon noticed the young woman pacing frantically in the aisle in front of us. “I have panic attacks when the train slows down like this,” she gasped and moved to the bench facing us, grasping at the seat and her neck.

She was breathing quickly and clearly overheating. She unzipped her coat and said “I usually ride my bike but I couldn’t today.”   

I moved to block her view of the outside tunnel, held her hand and tried to start a conversation to distract her. We asked about her background and talked about what little she knew about our hometown, Omaha. “Should I take my panic medicine?” she asked. I did not know how to advise her – I wondered how long it would take to have an effect or how it might impact her later. We tried to maintain a somewhat normal conversation and, fortunately, within just a few minutes, the car began to pick up speed and she immediately became calmer. “I think I am going to be ok now,” she said and moved back to her original seat. She thanked us many times and picked up her laptop.  

As we neared our stop, I asked “How many more stops do you have?”, wondering if we should stay on board in case something else happened. Fortunately, she was getting off there, too.

Later, I thought about how she must have to be very conscientious about what metro car she rides. The two snoozing men never raised their heads or moved during the entire incident, so I imagine she would have been truly frantic if we hadn’t been nearby to react.

The Most Perplexing (But, then, It’s France)

In June, we caught the early morning #10 bus in Avignon, France, to travel from inside the city’s medieval wall to the regional train station on the outskirts of town. The bus arrived at 7:29 am, opened its doors and we, along with a few others, boarded and waited.

As the bus’s displayed clock turned to 7:36, its scheduled departure time, the driver closed the door and started to inch away from the curb. Immediately, a thin young man wearing long shorts and a backpack appeared at the driver’s door holding up his bus card. The bus had not moved more than five feet and was traveling at the same pace as the man was walking. The driver, who was probably the same age as the would-be passenger, continued pulling out into the busway.

The man walked along and paused a few feet in front of the windshield, looking expectantly. The driver pulled to the end of the busway and turned left onto the street. The man jogged alongside as the bus continued another 100 feet, accelerating to no more than 10 miles an hour, and then stopped at an intersection. Again, the man approached the door. But the bus started moving and turned right onto the street.

Although the bus never exceeded a speed of 20 mph, and usually was going much less as it maneuvered the narrow streets inside the old city wall, the man continued to jog alongside. At one point the man was in front of the bus, but had to step aside and wait because the upcoming passage was so narrow there was no room for both him and the bus.

After arriving at the next stop, in a travel time of less than three minutes, the bus stopped, the driver opened the door and waited several seconds for the man to arrive. The man got on, was barely breathing hard because it had been a short distance at slow speeds, pressed his bus card to the scanner and walked to the back of the bus to take a seat.

Sometimes It's the Little Things

The train station in Antwerp, Belgium, is one of the few really beautiful stations we've encountered. 

And the first time we ever encountered an escalator like this! It climbs, then flattens, then climbs again.

The Most Stressful

We had a very long travel day Tuesday, June 17. We spent 11 hours traveling through three countries on seven trains to move from St. Moritz, Switzerland to Maastricht, Netherlands. It is not an itinerary we would recommend, but it was necessary because we impetuously decided to take the Glacier Express scenic train through the Swiss Alps just a few days before we were scheduled to start a week long bike trip 500 miles away in the Netherlands.

Miraculously, 95 percent of the travel day went as planned. That is not to say it wasn’t stressful to gather our luggage and change tracks within the eight to 15 minute window we had at each stop. Stressful because changing tracks usually means:

1.   Going up and down a significant stairway. We’ve taken trains in four countries so far and found that a few stations have ramps, escalators or elevators (which may be full or not working or have a line of bicyclists and women with strollers waiting). But, usually, moving to a new platform requires carrying your luggage up and down stairs. I do not know how disabled people manage this and may be why we never saw disabled people on the inter-city and regional trains.

2.  Verifying that you are on the right track. Again, this is often pretty straightforward because electronic displays list the departures and tracks and even how the train will be positioned so you can wait close to where your assigned car will land. But, we have occasionally encountered no displays, except on the actual track where the train will arrive, which means going up and down several sets of stairs to check multiple displays on multiple tracks. Once I was able to use my camera to zoom in on a sign two tracks over and read its information. 

Also, we’ve gotten paranoid and try to triple check everything because once we encountered a train that had absolutely no signage that resembled any of the train numbers on our tickets. How could we possibly know that we should board the train marked RE18966 when our ticket said CBF7?

3.  Jostling to be one of the first to board because, just like overhead bin space is limited on airplanes, luggage storage space is limited on trains, and you don’t want to be caught carrying your luggage from car to car trying to find space or having to store it far from your assigned seat.

You want to board a train quickly to snag luggage storage space near your seat. But that also means blocking the aisle for people who also want to board quickly.

Anyway, our final train was scheduled as a one hour trip from Aachen, Germany to Maastricht, Netherlands. Almost too late, we realized Maastricht has three train stations, so we needed to verify that our train would stop at the station closest to our accommodations. Done.

Then we learned that our arrival in Aachen was delayed 20 minutes. Not a good reflection on the German train system. And a definite problem for us since we only had 15 minutes for our track change to catch our last ride to Maastricht. Checking online as we waited, we could find no travel alternatives if we missed that connection. So we shifted our hopes to making up time on our way to Aachen. The train engineer came through, and we arrived in Aachen with eight minutes to spare. All well and good, except the display now showed that the train would stop at one of the Maastricht stations far from our accommodations. How did that happen? Our ticket said Station A, why was it now going to station B? Soon enough, that concern was eclipsed by the announcement that said “This train is ending at Voerendaal. If you want to continue to Maastricht, you will need to get off and go to platform 2.”

So, we followed those instructions and now had a seventh transfer and eighth train. Even more mayhem and confusion ensued, but we were eventually able to get off where we wanted and haul our luggage to our accommodations.

Then we began the adventure to get into our apartment. We found the location and  the keys that had been left for us, but found no indication of what unit we were assigned to. The recording from the hallway cameras likely showed me trying the electronic key on nearly a dozen doors before it worked on one.

Mind the Gap

It's true that the London Underground announcements are constantly reminding riders to "Mind the gap" as they enter and exit the subway cars. Every train, every stop, every day.