Through the darkness, clickety-clack…
Coming closer, down the track…
Hold your breath so you can hear
Huffing, chuffing, drawing near.
-Steam Train, Dream Train by Sherri Duskey Rinker & Tom Lichtenheld
November is dark in England. Whereas I think of “winter” as being mid-December through mid-March in Chicago, the depth of our first winter here seemed to span from early November through early February. That meant that during the dark and wet and chilly days of November, I was planning a trip.
Like, a big trip. At first, it was going to be a quick dive to somewhere fanciful and romantically wintry like Hallstatt, Austria. Then, we found out that Soren was going to have to go to Berlin.
And then, we had our first snow.
Now, the snow itself was terrible, anti-climactic, laughable even--a thin sheen of slush barely visible on the neighboring rooftops. But during the first snowfall of every year, I look up the YouTube video for the song “Snow” from White Christmas, because how else do you keep the romance alive?
Snow, Those glist'ning houses that seem to be built of snow
Snow, Oh, to see a mountain covered with a quilt of snow
-”Snow”, Irving Berlin’s “White Christmas” (Watch on YouTube)
And guess where our beloved songsters are when they sing that song? ON A TRAIN! And a sleeper train at that!
Add to this that I was reading the delightful book “Steam Train, Dream Train” to Aksel every day (and the fact that I hadn’t flown with Aksel yet and was accordingly terrified of the prospect), and we had a plan: we were going to get Eurail passes and take a monster train trip through as many scenic routes as possible in Europe, beginning with a few days in Berlin and then traversing to everywhere beautiful and spending lots of time in the Alps!
Because two years ago, I finally learned that the best way to survive winter is to embrace it. How better to do so than to soak in the Black Forest and Salzburg and the Swiss Alps on a cozy train? Heck, why not add Vienna as well???
I cannot describe the manic obsession that overtakes me when I get an idea. It’s actually kind of a problem at this stage in my life, because I think Aksel does appreciate my attention from time to time, so when my eyes are glued to my computer as I look up train timetables and hotels, working out schedules and budgets, my “good mom” status definitely takes a hit.
“But Janel,” you say, “you didn’t mention the train or the Alps in your post about Berlin. What happened?”
In the midst of my train-mania, I was trying to book flights for our Christmas travels in the States, and I was dismayed at the cost of Christmas-week flights from Chicago to California. I decided to poke around and see just how expensive a train ride would be.
Now I'm transcontinental
3000 miles from my home
I'm on the California Zephyr
Watching America roll by
-”California Zephyr” by Jay Farrar and Ben Gibbard (Listen on YouTube)
The prices of trains were definitely competitive with the cost of flights, and if we changed our dates by a day or two, we could go direct from Chicago to Emeryville, CA on the California Zephyr, which has a whole, beautiful song written about it. We booked it. We also booked a flight, in case we decided it was crazy (both were flexible fare options), and decided that this could be a great way to test out the train before the monster Europe trip.
The flight and the train would both set out on December 28th. Fast forward to the week of Christmas, during which Aksel got ridiculously sick (and before which we forgot to buy travel insurance, which was a very expensive mistake), and we were torn. To fly, or to ride the rails?
On December 27th, we had to make a decision. We decided to take the 52-hour train trip, and in our next post, I’ll explain why that was one of the best decisions we’ve ever made.
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