June 3rd 2024, 4:40PM
Spain has the second largest high-speed rail network in the world, only after China (measuring by operational length). Spain, at 3,966 kilometers, will not be catching up to China any time soon (China is at 45,000 kilometers, with 25,000 additional kilometers under construction). As a child growing up in Cincinnati, I saw clips on the nightly news of the “bullet train” of Japan, and for most of my adult life, retained that oversized mental image of those trains, thinking Japan was the only place they existed. One of my fondest memories of visiting Japan for the first time in 2019 was riding the Shinkansen. The smoothness caught me off guard, and standing in the aisle felt like flying, with the outside smearing by.
Little did I realize, by then high-speed trains were not so unusual. When Jim and I visited Spain in the spring of 2022, we bought train tickets from Madrid to Barcelona. Only after the train left the station did I realize it was high speed: the in-cabin speed readout soon hit 299km/hr. And now living in Barcelona, we have had the opportunity to take another high-speed train, this time from Barcelona to Donostia. Fascinatingly, the route is high-speed only part of the way, then normal(?) speed the rest of the way, but the train cars on this line are able to switch between the tracks, so passengers remain on the same train the entire way. None of the switching of lines in mazelike massive train stations, almost missing the connecting train as we did in Japan. After getting lost in the station where we switched lines, we stepped on the new train just seconds before it started pulling out of the station. Trains do not wait for lost gaijins.
Eating on a train is an especially lovely experience. On a plane, there is that constant anxiety, that Unexpected Turbulence may send your food and drink flying in to your lap, or even more awkwardly, your seat-neighbor’s lap. Maybe that would be secretly satisfying and schaudenfreudish if your seat-neighbor is an asshole. Still, in-flight eating is always an experience of not enough room, of making sure your drink sits in the cup divot so it does not slide off the tray soapdish, giving your feet a soda shower.
On a train, the ride is smoother, the seats are bigger, the tray tables are actually the size of smallish end tables, so finding space for your meal equipment and drinking containers is not a game of Tetris. Things generally stay where you put them. The windows are bigger.
Living in Phoenix, the fifth-largest city in the States, we had no passenger trains. Riding a passenger train meant driving up to Flagstaff, a couple hours north, unless it was Friday, as most of Phoenix drives up I-17 to escape the hellscape that is summer in Phoenix to the relatively cooler elevation of “Flag” as the hip like to call it, and at the long, gradual, steep upward climb where the interstate hits the major elevation change splitting the hellish southern Arizona region from the remarkably colder northern Arizona region, where there are signs commanding drivers to turn off their air conditioning lest their engines overheat, inevitably some poor vehicle will catch fire, creating a massive backup, turning a couple hour drive in to hours. And hours. Stuck on the hot pavement of a shitty interstate in summer.
Or, alternatively, we could drive south, to Tucson, again if there are no horrific wrecks on the interstate, usually in this direction caused by the so-called “haboobs” (aka dust storms), a roughly two-and-a-half hour drive for us, coming from the north side of Phoenix. The first forty-five minutes of the drive are just getting out of Phoenix, which has metastasized in to a Los Angeles wannabe, as far as land coverage goes. Last I roughly estimated on Google Maps, Phoenix is now about forty-five miles wide. Making plans to meet with friends became an exercise in logistics, planning around driving times, avoiding rush hour, remembering freeway closures for the constant construction, finding a place meeting strange and inscrutable dietary requirements/dislikes (something the Spanish do not appear to be so hung up on).
Apparently the States has 136.6 kilometers of high-speed rail, although an additional 1,600 kilometers are under construction. I never had the opportunity to take high-speed rail in the States - I could not even tell you where it is. I have done a bit of train travel in the States, and enjoyed it, but now that we have flown the coop, those future 1,600 kilometers will not do us much good, but I hope they serve plenty of American travelers well. Many times I have positively spoken about my experience with train travel with other Americans, only to hit a wall of cynicism and a laundry list of reasons trains are bad, BAD. The American hangup against trains and any other form of non-private-car-based transportation is a mystery to me, one that I no longer need to concern myself with, now living in a country with a spider’s web of high-speed, and normal(?) trains. One of many things I love about my new country of residence.
? - I have no idea what the proper term is for a not-high-speed train.