Welcome to the weekend coffee share. This week I thought we could have a coffee and a conversation while enjoying one of my favourite ways of transportation, travel by train. In my experience, the best conversations takes place while doing/experiencing something together. One of the things that I really like when traveling by train is to have conversations while enjoying breathtaking views, without having to worry about focusing on the road, like you have to when you drive a car.
Since choosing to not have a car a little more than six years ago, I’ve made up a plan in my head for my transportation needs. If the place I want/need to go to take me less than 15 min of walking, I always walk. If I have more time I walk longer distances as well. If the place I want/need to go to take me somewhere between 15 min and one hour on foot, I choose to ride my bike, or on rare occasions I take the bus. If the place I want/need to go to take me more than one hour on the bus, I take the train.
This week I needed to go back and forth to Stockholm two days. I booked my train tickets a long time ago, to get the best price. The photos in this post is from the first train ride. It is early morning and a fairytale landscape unfolds outside the window, while I am sipping my morning coffee and reading a book.
There was almost no people on that first train, and no-one sitting anywhere near me. If you where there, what would we talk about?
While sitting on the train I remember thinking a lot about the landscape outside the window, seeing first big pine forests, slowly exchanged for farming country, and later smaller towns and as we got closer to Stockholm the cities got bigger and you could see big parking areas, factories, office buildings and the roads and houses grew bigger as we approached Stockholm. It takes three hours by train to get to Stockholm, not very long for a train ride, but still a lot to see on that journey. I like the forest and farming land the most, then there’s some really ugly suburbs, but when entering Stockholm it somehow gets beautiful again. I do love the architecture of the old, but well taken cared of buildings in Stockholm. There’s a lot of history everywhere you look.
I’ve always enjoyed traveling by train, something I’ve been doing my whole life, but naturally there’s also one more and very important reason that I choose to travel by train – it is a more sustainable alternative compared to travel by car, or plane. I also like that you can read a book in quiet one minute, and the next minute find yourself in the middle of a lively conversation with strangers (that by the end of the journey aren’t strangers anymore). I haven’t even mentioned the thrill of going to sleep in one place and wake up somewhere completely different, perhaps even in a different country, when taking a night train.
As I write about all these things that I love, I experienced a major malfunction in the shape of my train getting canceled as recent as yesterday, one of the two days I really needed to go to Stockholm. So I did only go there one day this week. I could have taken a later train, or bus, I was offered that, but if I did I would have missed the reason why I needed to go. Next year is election year in Sweden, and I personally will definitely take in consideration those politicians that are promising to ensure that older parts of the railways are improved..all things considered, I still love taking the train, but I would prefer to not experience canceled trains.
Have you ever taken a longer train ride? Do you like traveling by train? Do you even perhaps have a “dream train ride” on your bucket list? Help yourself to a refill on that coffee and tell me all about it!
Maria
GreenDreamsSweden 
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