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Topic: Travelling and such (Read 2361 times)

Travelling and such

There's a way to share your trips, to make maps of them or whatever, but I haven't done it

https://www.cnet.com/how-to/make-interactive-maps-to-track-your-trip/
https://www.amcharts.com/visited_countries/

I haven't done it because I have not travelled much. As much as I have, I have mostly visited countries neighbouring my own, which is not too interesting. Other than that, I have visited a few penfriends privately, and I don't share that too much.

List of countries and places I visited, in random order:

Russia - Komi, Moscow, St. Peterburg, Tula, Pechory
Finland - Helsinki, Lahti, Turku
Sweden - Stockholm, Värmland
Latvia - a lot
Lithuania - Vilnius, Kaunas
Poland - Gdansk, Malbork, Warsaw, Krakow
Czech - Prague
Germany - Frankfurt
Austria - Vienna
Slovenia - Postojna, Ljubljana
Croatia - Istria, Zagreb
Romania - Cluj, Bistrita
France - Paris
UK - London
Greece - Athens
US - Florida, NYC
Costa Rica - Arenal volcano, Monteverde

Evidently few enough so that I can list them all like this.

The most obvious way of travelling is to go on a vacation or tour to a place where everybody has been, such as Canary Islands or Caribbean. So, how do you travel and where have you been? Do you prefer to rent a car, go on a guided tour, use public transportation, hike, or are you satisfied with what you see from the airplane/airport windows during and between flights? Do you travel on vacations, for business purposes, or more methodically as part of profession or way of life?

Re: Travelling and such

Reply #1 –
I think the extent of my foreign travel this year may have been limited to three or so trips to the Netherlands, although in reality going by e.g. Liège is a lot more foreign than the Netherlands.

I won't take the time to list places I've visited — at least not right now — but in summary:

- Benelux a lot
- former West Germany a lot
- Chicagoland quite a bit
- Italy a fair bit
- former East Germany a bunch
- northern France a bunch

The rest starts to look more like individual places and cities akin to your list. Mostly around Europe, but also a few weekend trips from Chicagoland (e.g., the Dells, Saugatuck, Holland, Detroit).

I'd normally get around by public transit or by rented car, depending on the specifics. And of course loads and loads of walking (or "hiking" if that's the word you prefer for walks in the countryside — maybe I'd agree to call a mountainwalk a hike :P).

Re: Travelling and such

Reply #2 –
My list of travels was exhaustive spanning my entire life. Many of the trips are recent. I have paced up lately.

Quote from: Frenzie on
I'd normally get around by public transit or by rented car, depending on the specifics. And of course loads and loads of walking (or "hiking" if that's the word you prefer for walks in the countryside — maybe I'd agree to call a mountainwalk a hike :P).
I prefer to have everything within walking distance and stay on one spot as long as possible. That failing, I take public transportation. That failing, I'd rent a bicycle or a car, but things never got this desperate yet.

There's a difference between walking and hiking. Hiking involves staying overnight somewhere else than where you were last night and walking the distance in between. Or, it involves walking in some nature park all day, carrying all your meals of the day with you. Something like that.

Re: Travelling and such

Reply #3 –
Quote from: ersi on
I prefer to have everything within walking distance and stay on one spot as long as possible. That failing, I take public transportation. That failing, I'd rent a bicycle or a car, but things never got this desperate yet.
Desperate is a funny word to use. :P In your average city a car would obviously be a worse way to get around, but on the island I'm from I'd definitely pick a bike (or perhaps a car or public transit) to get between places to walk (whether villages or nature areas).

Quote from: ersi on
There's a difference between walking and hiking. Hiking involves staying overnight somewhere else than where you were last night and walking the distance in between. Or, it involves walking in some nature park all day, carrying all your meals of the day with you. Something like that.
I might do the latter in the sense of taking lunch along (although not recently; think in the Ardennes, Luxembourg or the Eifel more so than around here), but am probably somewhat unlikely to do the overnight thing.

Re: Travelling and such

Reply #4 –
Mass tourism turned into a plague everywhere.
A matter of attitude.

Re: Travelling and such

Reply #5 –
I've done a few more trips meanwhile but let's talk about just one place, Milano Malpensa airport. I tried to walk there from Gallarate. It is a walkable distance as far as the mileage goes. However, walkers were blocked, first by repeated signs of "sidewalk ending":



These I was able to bypass, even though sidewalks really did end https://goo.gl/maps/ccsmteggZ6XYpSYe7

Past this point there were occasionally some zombie crossings that take the pedestrian from nowhere to nowhere, from a non-sidewalk to a non-sidewalk
https://goo.gl/maps/WMxrxkpZFKousnLa6

Eventually there was no way at all to walk further, a cars-only road (speedway) started https://goo.gl/maps/ePpgxCEcYYmrfHf47
Below this sign I tested the famous hospitality of Italians by trying, for an hour or so, to get a driver to pick me up, but to no avail. (Since when do Italians obey traffic signs?)

Later I was able to get past the point on a bus. In my opinion, given the curvature of the road, the viable traffic speeds did not justify it being a speedway. The cars-only arrangement was there not to keep pedestrians safe, but to keep them away for good.

Finally, a literal stone-throw away from the airport there's a neighbourhood called Case Nuove, a residential area that includes some hotels. This is where the bus took me. From there I tried to reach the entrance of the airport again by walking almost halfway around the airport, but entrances were carefully fenced off from every direction. Pedestrians and hikers can only reach the airport by climbing some three-meter-high fences.

Thus far the only walkable major airport in the world I know is Tallinn Airport. And it is truly comfortably walkable, with a major shopping centre a five minutes away and the city centre an hour away if you walk very slowly. These days there's a comfy airport tram available, but you can walk easily if you prefer.

All those YT urbanists talk a lot about walkable cities, but I have not seen a single one of them address the walkability of airports.

Re: Travelling and such

Reply #6 –
As long as you can conveniently get to the airport by tram/bus/train I don't see what difference it makes? Noise pollution-wise it seems better to have it at a slight distance.

Re: Travelling and such

Reply #7 –
If it makes no difference, then why go out of your way to block walkers so that there is no chance in hell? And when there is some residential neighbourhood, town or village just a stone-throw away, is there some good reason for the airport-builders to take meticulous care to prevent the people closest to the airport from using it?

Edit. It's like many famous hydroelectric projects where the power is taken to the capital or major city a hundred miles away or more, while the villages next to the station get power with a delay of half a century or simply never.

Re: Travelling and such

Reply #8 –
Quote from: ersi on
If it makes no difference, then why go out of your way to block walkers so that there is no chance in hell?
I wasn't talking about Milan Airport of course. That the airport should have proper infrastructure goes without saying. I have no idea what they're smoking over in Italy; that sounds more like something you'd find in Texas. It also goes without saying that you can stroll over from Schiphol to Hoofddorp (or to Amsterdam, but that'll probably take you 3+ hours), or from Zaventem (Brussels Airport) to, um, Zaventem (and Brussels), though I also know walking over from Brussels Airport won't be the most pleasant walk, not in line with the Netherlands.[1] Walking up to Antwerp Airport is perfectly pleasant though, unless you expect to be able to walk across the runway.

Anyway, my point was I don't see a problem with for example Schiphol being a 3 hour walk from Amsterdam given that it's only a 10-30 minute train/bus ride away. And keep in mind the airport also serves many other cities. Being more properly in Amsterdam would arguably make its location worse, geographically speaking.
1 See here for what parts of that might look like. But maybe there are some nicer paths to be found?↵