planes and trains

I've been taking the train quite a bit lately, most recently to Salzburg to visit my friend Erik. I've decided now that I like taking the train a lot more than flying. Why? It really comes down to the difference between the train station and the airport. A city's Hauptbahnhof (central station) is located just outside the center of town. It's a hangout, a meeting place and the springboard for amazing journeys all over the continent.

The airport, on the other hand, is almost always located on the outskirts of town. You don't go there unless you've got a flight to catch or you're picking somebody up. It's out in the middle of nowhere, and it's been sterilized to the point of being soulless. Even the nicest airport, like Denver, can only hope to be clean and pleasant. And these are airports at their best; they can never reflect the personality of the city or capture the tremendous energy or emotion that a train station contains.

A train station is such a ridiculous mixture of different emotions and circumstances that one can't help but be wrapped up in it. There are long separated friends meeting each other, couples saying goodbye, families buzzing with the excitement of a long-planned vacation and people just relieved to get home. Then there is the potential for adventure that I see every time I got to the train station. It's almost miraculous that I could easily get on this train and go to Hamburg or another and go to Milan or Vienna. Sure, you see this at the airport, but it's just a totally different atmosphere to be right next to the trains as opposed to looking at planes out the window.

Airports have eliminated this character and energy because the drop off and meeting point isn't even at the airplane anymore. Call me old fashioned, but seeing somebody off at the check-in counter and picking him or her up at baggage claim just isn't the same. Plus, people have to be dropped off an hour and a half before actual departure, further removing travellers from their loved ones.

There's just something magical about watching people at a train station. Where did these people come from? Where is she going and why can't he come with? What's in Budapest that would cause two old people to go there on vacation? An airport's clean, white and hospital-like interior kills the atmosphere that makes a train station so unique. Add the distance between the city and the planes, and the powers that be have successfully created a truly generic and emotionless hub of transportation.