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I would rather walk for six months than spend 5 hours squished into modern aircraft.
Not only would I be far more comfortable, I would have life experiences other than dealing with people I would rather be as far away from as possible, and I would be in better shape, and would likely make friends along the way.
Try living in New Zealand, where any flight other than to Australia, is around 12 hours.
I’d walk for 6 months to anywhere but the “holy” land.
Idk, Gary, IN isn’t that nice tbf.
It’s not like Gary is the worst place in the world… Even though I can’t think of any place right at this moment… but statistically… Well how about that town right at tip of the Great Lake’s cock where the sp called “Demon House” was? That place has to be much… What?.. It’s the same place? It is? Ohh…
Fuck the “holy” land.
What’s your problem with In-and-Out burgers?
“Animal Style”
Take that back. Vancouver is wonderful.
I agree. The Pacific Northwest of the US / Pacific Southwest of Canada is far “closer to god” than the Levant.
Even closer after consuming shrooms.
My favorite geography of Earth, tbh.
As someone that doesn’t have a car and uses coaches, public transit, or bicycles to get around, I’ve always found it ironic that people are willing to be stacked and piled into planes for hours but refuse to take a public bus ride for an hour. Planes are the only place where people can’t just take their car to go somewhere and really have to put up with all the BS of traveling with other people.
When I go visit my family and friends using public transit and it takes multiple hours, I sometimes fantasize that I could have gone to the airport and use the same amount of time to fly to a Caribbean island. People complain about planes but I’ve used public transit all my life so to me they’re just a tad worse than a packed public bus. At least planes have power and bathrooms, even if you have to climb over other people to use them.
I also love bike touring so sometimes instead of taking 2.5 hours to go visit my family using public transit, I use the greenways to cycle there, spend the night camping in a small provincial park, and finish the rest of the ride the next day. It usually takes about 7 hours of continuous cycling, without the pauses for rest/food and the overnight. I could rent a car and drive there in about 1.5 hour but then I wouldn’t spend a night there. It’s not always easy, but it’s usually much more rewarding.
So yeah, it’s relative.
I think that depends a lot on how available public transit is where you are.
I’d happily ride a bus for an hour except the bus lines near me would require 15 to 30 mins of driving, pay for parking, then wait for the line I want which only runs 2 or 3 times a day. OR I could drive direct.
Planes are the only time a lot of us can reasonably interface with public transit.
My FIL wanted to go eco for our last trip to visit my BIL and to get from Wilmington to Chicago there was literally ONE train per day that takes over 24 hours to arrive and it left at like 545am? It’s totally obnoxious.
they had nothing going on so who cares what you do
Pretty much. I’m watching Frieren and they spend a lot of time waiting around for the weather to die down, or for specific events. Often times, they do menial tasks for the townsfolk, train, or read a book.
The last JRPG I played, I was teleporting to grind monsters, play at the casino, trying to woo a NPC, and explore random dungeons, while ignoring all the optional fetch quests.
I think I’d be bored as hell (or connected digitally) if I had to do a 6 month walk.
Gonna say it is the Journey not the destination.
The journey itself is once in a lifetime opportunity to travel though many lands, cultures, languages. It had its high and lows, it was tiresome, but rewarding.
But modern travel has focused on profitability that it only has lows and it is generally a bad experience overall unless you are very rich.
Also, the value of life was different then.
People didn’t always survive traveling to far away places. In fact, the mortality rate was quite high for things like long-distance travel, from things like bandits to wild animals, to sever weather, to traveling by sea and the hundreds of ways you can die on a multi-month journey even before counting storms and shipwrecks. Many people died from very simple things, infected foot blisters, malnutrition, getting sick along the way, it was all just considered part of life and it’s why people through history have put such great meaning on their actions and goals. Life has been very brief and fragile for the majority of human history and everyone knew someone who died on a journey or disappeared.
Traveling to somewhere far away was rarely done on a whim, it was usually for some greater purpose, either financial or religious or deeply personal as a way to seek out enlightenment or discover things about the world. (Assuming you had the choice at all.)
This “meaningfulness” is very much stripped from today’s world of wonders. Yes, you can fly over an entire goddamn ocean in less time than it takes to read a short book, but without meaning behind your travel, the time spent waiting for your luggage feels unbearable.
We have everything, we’re basically gods of our world, and we’re miserable because we don’t know what the point is.
100% travel has been so stripped of wonder and adventure. I loathe “destination resorts” where you take a plane to chill in an hotel with a pool and buffet, which is identical to the thousands of destination resorts all over the world. a vacation in a Thailand resort is practically the same as a vacation in a Mexican resort.
leaving the traveler with zero personal growth
The greatest travels I’ve ever been on have been the disasters, when stranded, when forced to socialize and integrate, to learn about the actual world in which people live and work and play. I’ve lost luggage and had losses, but bathed in jungle waterfalls and helped locals prepare feasts and stayed with the kindest people on Earth for weeks or months and it absolutely reshapes your perspectives of the whole world.
The most boring have been trips to hotels. What’s the point of going around the world if you’re on a bed watching cable TV and there’s a 7-11 in the downstairs lobby.
What’s frustrating about talking about this is invariably I run into some well-off liberal American who talks about how they also promote “adventure” vacations where they stay in like, a Yurt in the woods and pay more money to get away from tourist locations, but really it’s just another instagram background for their timeline. Discomfort is what makes us grow, not views.
100% Travel isn’t what’s fun. is the adventure, being open to the chaos of humanity in unknown places.
resorts are the opposite. once travel is “safe” and predictable, it’s the exact opposite of what those vacation ads sell
Reading your post and looking back makes me realize that some of my best travel experiences were when, for some reason or other, things got out of control.
As a species, we are wired by millions of years of adaptation to do just that… find new situations to adapt to. Complacency breeds discontent.
at least they had full leg space without class difference.
We need everything to be available instantly, because we need our time to be bored and watch TikTok.
Reminds me of Yuval Noah Harari who spoke in a talk of his about how even kings back in the day, generally speaking people who get a lot of information handed to them all the time, when they needed to travel the country, they would have a week off and be detached from all the news whilst sitting in a carriage. Here we are having all the world news available to us every second of the day. No excuse not to be up to date on anything. What a comfort…
When I travel across Europe I do so by train, and I find it to be part of the experience that the journey takes time. Last year I visited Italy, from the Netherlands, and through the train window I see the landscape floating by, the flat Netherlands, the hills in Germany, the mountains in Switzerland and then the beautiful landscapes of Italy. Due to the time it takes you get a sense for traveling, for the distance you travel. I don’t mind the time, cause I’m reading a book, which is often the most enjoyable thing of my vacations anyway: I find time to read, without any distractions.
More broadly speaking I’ve noticed that I’ve become suspicious of comfort and convenience. Nothing may take time anymore, nothing may take effort. Everything good needs to be quick and easy, available instantly all the time. But is that really better, or did we actually like having to work for something, not minding that it takes time, and weren’t we more satisfied with the relief when we finished something, feeling like we spent our time well and brought something good unto ourselves. Isn’t that experience more meaningful?
You could say this is some sort of false romanticism, but i don’t think it is. Obviously we got a lot of good things, and I am not saying we should get rid of every comfort or convenience in our lifes. I’m just saying the opposite isn’t true either, some discomforts and disconveniences are blessings in disguise.
I agree with everything you’re saying. I just want to point out some caveats to trains (although I absolutely love them and prefer them to cars or planes as well). The obvious one is that few people have enough vacation days to spend multiple days traveling by train. Even if we aren’t talking about paid vacation, not every job/position lets you take unpaid time off. Some jobs don’t let you take more than one or two weeks in a row.
For families this can be additionally challenging since a lot of vacation days need to be taken when school or daycare is out, or the kid is sick, or the kid needs to go to some dentist appointment, leaving you with a total of a week of vacation.
Yeah, and kids in general. It is difficult to keep little children, who want to move and be loud, on a train for days. It’s not impossible, but most likely everyone will be a nerve wreck by the time of arrival. The other people on the train will hate you because you cannot “tame” your kid, or they will judge you because after one and a half days you decide to allow your kid to watch a movie on a tablet to have a break. The relaxing aspect of a train ride tends to vanish.
And last but not least, health conditions. Some people cannot sit for long periods of time and have to wear compression socks or even get heparin shots to prevent thrombosis. This is already the case for a 6 hour flight, but 6 days of minimal movement is difficult and not recommended. You can do it - there are ways to do it - but it is something that you need to keep in mind when travelling.
But nevertheless, I agree that long train rides and a break from the fast paced, information immersed world is great. Maybe this: as long as you can do so, do it! There might be a time in your life when this will be more difficult and you will have to pause and find a better suited alternative. But that doesn’t mean you can’t unpause when the time is right. Enjoy!
You’re right. It’s easy for me to hold this position, given that I’m without kids, without specific health problems, and live in the Netherlands where I have more than enough vacation days to spend.
Got one thing to add, that’s not contradictorary to what you’re saying but I just would like to share: I think we overvalue long distance holidays. People fly to the other side of the planet, but never visit beautiful places at 100km distance from home. We mistake the possibility of going very far away, for that being more desireable than going places relatively close by, which is not necesarilly the case. In saying this I don’t want to begrudge anyone and I don’t mean to say it’s not a legitimate thing for someone to want to see certain parts of the world some day.
I agree so much with that! I love long distance travelling, but due to financial and, more importantly, environmental costs I hardly ever do it. During my early 20s I found a fondness for holidays close by. I am not a big fan of nature (I mean, I am, but I don’t need to be immersed in it if you know what I mean), but there are so many cities and towns to explore nearby. To be fair, we are kind of privileged in Europe, me in Germany even more so. Due to the history and Germany basically being a plethora of kingdoms sewn together in the mid 1800s, you really have so many different cultures within a single country and don’t need to cross borders to experience a different world. (However, growing up in Munich, it was faster to drive to Italy’s coast than to Germany’s.)
Everything is relative even if we agree that some things are absolute by convention. An unchanging signal doesn’t carry much information. 😄
Everything is relative
Yeah, but this is a cheeky meme. Less an issue of relative experience and more an issue of crusaders being zealous idiots who had no idea of the logistics of long distance travel. The history of the Crusades plays out more like a locust epidemic than a military campaign. It was half a year of religious militants moving from village to village along the Mediterranean coast, stripping small communities to the bone and vacuuming up other easily indoctrinated young men or butchering them if they were in opposition.
The Crusades were - at least at the outset - a European solution to the “surplus males” problem that have plagued civilizations with heavy concentrations of wealth since time immemorial. When you have a bunch of old people who are terrified of being murdered in their beds by upstart ambitious youths, you can promise them fantastic rewards for doing something absurdly dangerous and stupid. It wasn’t a jaunt across the country for a week at the Useless Corporate Crap Convention. It was a kind of self-inflicted eugenics.
One is a 6 month travel vacation, the other is 5 hours of boredom in cramped space. And before that comes waiting for the flight, stress with boarding, TSA, jet lag,…
And you are supposed to ignore all that and work normally the next day. Or perhaps on the same day, or even on the flight.
Alternatively if you’re American - you are expected to work on the plane, and in the airport, in the Uber to the hotel, and then again in the hotel.
Who the fuck wants to travel like that?
It just work but in increasingly uncomfortable locations
our ancestors never could have imagined the horrors of having a middle seat on a plane. there isn’t any room for you to manspread, and manspreading is by far the most comfortable way to sit. when i don’t manspread i feel like i can’t breathe
Woohoo! Oregon trail time! Let’s go!
You have died of dysentery
Everyone here saying they want the medieval travel version because modern air travel is sooooo terrible should really be joking.
To start, safety. Going on a 6 month journey in the middle ages came with a significant increase in your chance of a gruesome death relative to staying home. Of course, mortality was higher at home than it is today as well, but travel increased mortality even more, since you could very well run into thieves/pirates/slavers, new and exciting diseases your immune system wasn’t adapted to, end up stranded and/or lost in the wilderness, or just get kicked by a horse. In contrast, modern air travel is one of the safest ways to travel today - which makes it one of the safest ways to travel in all of human history.
Next, comfort. As an average traveller in the middle ages (not a noble person), you will be walking. Maybe you have a horse or donkey in your group to help carry food and supplies, but the supplies will take priority, and the only way you get to ride that animal is if you break your leg. To any fans of camping/backpacking, remember that you will not be using modern tents, backpacks, or shoes. Your shelter for a night out will be, at best, a good wool blanket or cloak - mosquitos or gnats buzzing in your ears, rain falling on your face, the cold ground sucking away your warmth. Your backpack, at best, is a sack with shoulder straps, or perhaps a few sticks lashed together with a few ropes to hang over your shoulders - and it may just be a sack that you sling over your shoulder and carry from the front with both hands, your body bruised, aching, and chaffed after just one day of handling such a load. Your shoes are floppy bits of leather - no support or padding to be heard of. If you get sick? Keep walking, or the group is leaving you behind. Get to a villiage? Maybe you’ll get a respite by sleeping under the eves of someones roof or on the hard wood floor of the local church. Food? Heard of hard tack? Shit your pants? Well, you’ll just have to walk in your shit pants for 6 months. But yes, yes, tell me how this is so much better than being mildly uncomfortable sitting in a climate controlled airplane for a few hours while you look down on the earth like a LITERAL FUCKING GOD.
And finally, time. People here seem to think like medieval people travelled for 6 months just for funsies. But no, this is not like taking a year long vacation. For one thing, the other two reasons above - your life is going to be very shitty for basically the whole time, and you might just die due to an ill-tempered musselman or an evil jew witch cursing you to shit blood. But also, you are giving up the opportunity to do anything else to improve your life or the life of your family for a whole year. Your mom could get sick and die. That sexy somebody you keep making eye contact with could marry someone else. The part of the community crop land you’ve been angling to get assigned to your family will get snaked by Bill - of course. Fucking Bill. What a dick. And really, until you show up again, no one is going to do anything to help you out because, again, there is a good chance you die on your trip.
Now, of course, everyone on Lemmy will hate to hear this, because of course, sitting next to a baby on a plane because of THE CAPITALISTS is literally the worst thing that ever happened to anyone, ever, and it was definitely better to die of plague while living under the rule of a literal feudal lord.
But what they’ll hate to hear even more is that if you really want to go on a year long pilgrimage, you can fucking do that. You could start today. And it would still be better than your medival counterparts’, almost no matter what. You can quit your job, break your lease, and start travelling with a few dollars in your pocket - and when you want to return to normal life, just say “oh, I was travelling”, and all the hiring managers will think you are super cool. You can hitchhike across countries where you don’t speak the language, and use your smartphone to translate. You can eat for free out of dumpsters because we throw out tons and tons of perfectly edible food every day. If you are reading this now, you can make money easily simply by travelling to a particular place and speaking a language you already know. If you decide to walk through the wilderness for days, weeks, or months, you can find free maps, mapping software, and information not just about the safest routes, but the most beautiful. You can pick up extraordinarily light, comfortable, and functional equipment from a thrift store. YOU CAN SEE AT NIGHT WITH THE CLICK OF A BUTTON. And if, during your travels, you find out your mom has fallen ill, or Bill is about to swindle the family farm, you can beg, borrow, or steal enough money to catch an oh-so-uncomfortable plane ride home and deal with the situation.
Holy shit, YES, flying economy on an airplane is so much better.
This reeks of dark ages pop history talking points
I’m sure people in the middle ages where adapted to most of the situations. For example If you don’t wash for a few days or sit near a fire mosquitoes are less of a problem. Most towns, inns or taverns where less than 1 days march from the next in medieval Europe, so you would not have to sleep in the woods. There where also seasonal workers who would not live in one place, but move depending on the season to help sow or harvest fields, or work at different cities in their trade to learn new skills from different masters to see different countries.
Eh if you’re a peasant and stay at home you might be conscripted to fight for your lord against the people lord the next county over just because they have a disagreement or maybe because they’re bored or whatever. Probably gonna die a gruesome death either way. Going on a pilgrimage you at least see some of the world before you meet your gruesome death.
They let bots on lemmy now? No human would bother to write all that out over a silly meme like that.
And even if it were written by a human, I won’t ever read that just cause it might be AI.I write stupid long ass comments like that all the time, I just have ADHD. If you’re incapable of reading such comments, perhaps you also have a disorder of some sort.
Truly, road trips are more fun than flights
Yes, but when you’ve got 300KM between petrol stations and those are bloody expensive, so you’ve really got to plan ~1000KM of fuel, is a lot more of a task than just booking a flight.
But still more fun.
1000km? So like two thirds of a tank?
This comment sponsored by the diesel gang
Aussie detected
My entire issue with flying is not it taking a few hours. It’s that airlines make it as shitty as they can. They really go all out in that way.
Flying does suck.
They do pack people like sardines but I don’t think the airline industry is making big margins. If they didn’t treat you like shit there is a possibility that you might be priced out entirely.
You can always pay to be one of the pod people.
Before the 2010s, airlines upgraded people if all first class seats aren’t filled. Today they give you an option to pay the difference between an economy seat and first class, which I’ve never heard of someone choosing.
It doesn’t have to be that bad, I have 2 short flights on Air China today, both come with a meal, carryon, 1 checked bag (sometimes 2 if the cargo space isn’t sold out).
I think this comes down to the type of competition; US airlines compete only with themselves and a handful of other airlines, and at some level they understand a good economy experience competes with their business class at 5x price. Here in asia, you have a lot more countries airlines, but you also have trains and even ferries can be competitive.
5 hours out of a 3 day vacation w/ another 5 hours at the end. Also you’re gonna have to do some shit when you get back home to be ready for work on Monday.
Vs.
Hey we’re going to be traveling for 6 months, this is just your life now.
5 hours trapped in a small, uncomfortable metal box with not much to do vs months on a camp-hike.
I could be wrong but I feel like the death rates for those trips were also very high
Yes but to be fair, the death rate of staying home was also high
At least on a pilgrimage I can lie down
More than that. Planes are just fancy flying cattle trucks. A lot of the time I’m in one it’s so I can get to a destination I’ll be hiking for several days lol. I’m all for Team Pilgrimage.
I’d prefer the plane if I could be emulsified and piped into a holding container.
Or maybe if I got to be in the cargo hold with the dogs.
I am still waiting on Fifth Element style sleeping pods! Sadly they can’t do them even if they wanted to due to regulations.
And die of dysentery. Yayyy.
And no jet lag
