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Eight hours, 291 kilometers, through 91 tunnels, over hundreds of bridges: this is the route of the Glacier Express, described by rail guru Seat61 as one of Switzerland’s two most scenic train trips. I had sampled the first before the pandemic, craved a return to Switzerland to round out the short list. Please regard this…
Ironically, the Madrid Metro I ride during the pandemic is the best I have used since my move here in 2016. Some travelers fear the subway now, have sought alternatives. Public transit ridership in Spain fell forty percent this summer; sales of polluting old cars rose. I reap a dividend: the commuter now gridlocked on…
I first wore a mask on the Madrid metro on March 3, on the way home from our Tuesday Spanish/English language exchange. This was about four months after the coronavirus emerged in China, and one week after the first cases were diagnosed on mainland Spain. Before the statistics skyrocketed, before the fear set in. I…
Yet another post! Despite an implied battening-down-of-hatches in 2015. I’m sorry. I still lived stateside in 2015. My perspective has changed. For now, four more bright red subheads: LOS ANGELES AND SAN FRANCISCO TRANSIT VS MADRID TRANSIT: NO COMPARISON My ’14/’15 tourist treks showed me the chasm between transit West Coast and transit West Europe.…
You’re coming to Spain! You want to stroll among the beautiful people on Calle Arenal, ponder Madrazo at the Prado, chug-a-lug calimochos in Latina, black out in a Malasaña patrol car. But, before or after your well-deserved arrest, you’d like to sample the Spanish rail system, too, and book a day trip. Maybe you’ll find an…
Zurich, Berlin, Copenhagen and Munich have their S-trains. Parisians ride the RER; Long Islanders, the LIRR. Torontonians brave snowdrifts on the GO, perhaps while grunting ‘Eh?’ at one another after maple syrup-sogged moose chases. (I haven’t visited Canada in awhile.) Commuter rail is the inadequate and often misleading moniker for transit services of this type. Bigger…
The free, pdf’d, certified-as-official-and-requested-by-absolutely-no-one transitophile guide for English speakers navigating the Moscow Metro is online at: https://transitophile.com/chango/files/moscowmetroguide.pdf The 200+ mile Moscow Metro carries more yearly riders than any earthly subway system outside of Beijing, Shanghai and Seoul. The lion’s share of construction credit has to go to the maniacally paranoid Stalin, who masterminded a propaganda…