With a tip of the hat to Jimmy Page... <BR> <BR>What is your most memorable train ride? Any category - view, accommodations, fun experience, etc. - and any place. <BR> <BR>My favorite story is from my giant Viking friend who, while living in India, once rode a train through the countryside, hanging on to the outside of train...along with hundreds of small brown men. The visual is just too wonderful. <BR> <BR>

While backpacking through Germany as a much,,,,MUCH younger girl.. we (My best girl pal and myself) were surrounded by a bunch of guys from various countries who were on their way either to or from a bowling tournament in Dusseldorf. About 5 minutes before the train stopped.. a really handsome student for Portugal handed me a note that he had written in painstaking English.It said: <BR>You are beautiful, like a Goddess.. I have seen never such a beauty.. will you marry me? <BR> <BR>Of course I think the guy must have been drunk.. but it sure was romantic.. sadly we were all going in different directions.. like two ships passing in the night, but I treasure that moment...

I took a train across Canada once, from Vancouver to Montreal, and woke up early one morning to a breathtaking view of snowcapped mountains. It was near Banff, and I've always wanted to go back.

My favorite train memory was when I was in Poland. I was an exchange student in Scandanavia and my school took a week-long trip to Poland via train. <BR> <BR>The trip was only a month or so into my stay in Finland, so I was pretty hesitant about going - i didn't know who i would hang out with and that sort of thing. <BR> <BR>By the end of that trip, all of us had "bonded" and that's when i knew I would be just fine on my exchange and that everything would turn out for the best. <BR> <BR>Great topic, Elvira. I hadn't thought about those times in a while.

Unfortunately my most memorable train ride was memorable for all the wrong reasons!! I was heading home for university holidays from Brisbane in southern Queensland, Australia to my parents place in Cairns which is in far north Queensland & is some 1800 kilometers away I think. 3 hours into a 30 hour trip I was struck done by severe gastroenteritis which did not abate for the whole long, lonely journey home. For the good of your stomachs I won't get into the revolting detail but needless to say I had to get up & go to the bathroom every 5 minutes of the trip & was completely & utterly miserable beign struck on this blasted train. Fortunately the train manager moved me from my seat to my own private sleeper which was very nice of him (I had probably been grossing out the other passengers!! ;-) <BR>Although it was the trip from hell it hasn't put me off one day wanting to take a train trip through the Canadian Rockies!!! <BR>

Travelling on the Shinkansen in Japan. <BR>Never seen railways like Japan's ! Where else would the Porter bow to the entire carriage as he enters & leaves ?! <BR>Makes the UK railway system look like a disgrace to Uzbekistan !

Elvira - I think you mean Steve Tyler.... <BR> <BR>Unless that was a different train.....

Uh, no. before there was steven tyler and aerosmith, there was jimmy page and the yardbirds and jeff beck and the yardbirds - all of whom did train kept a rollin. <BR> <BR>before any them was johnny burnette, who wrote the tune in the '50s.

No: you're right - Johnny Burnett. We have a cd set of 50's rockabilly tunes at home called Loud, Fast and Out of Control, with Johnny Burnette's version on it. I really think the original is the best version. <BR> <BR>But about trains, the only trains I've been riding lately is on the Long Island Railroad, and nothing wonderful's happened to me on that.

Never had a train ride I didn't love but here are my two most memorable: <BR> <BR>1. Milan to Zurich -- first time in the Alps, when I was 23. After getting up very early and wrestling luggage over the heads of all the hordes of small, black-clad women through the windows just to get on the train, I was exhausted and fell asleep. I was awakened by the pressure on my ears as we entered a very long tunnel and will never forget the spectacular view of a mountain valley when we emerged. <BR> <BR>2. Twenty-five years later, in a failing marriage and professional cul-de-sac, I decide to take an overnight train to and from a college reunion rather than fly -- just to collect my thoughts and treat myself to my favorite mode of transportation. On the way back, my thoughts were full of Someone in my class I'd rediscovered and connected with quickly and stunningly. I couldn't sleep, so I hooked up the Walkman and listened to Phil Collins and Joni Mitchell all night while I looked out the top of my window at the stars and the moon over passing forests, ponds, and clouds.

I think my best ride was last year from Interlaken to Salzburg. The trip started nicely in Interlaken when the Avis agent happily drove us to Interlaken West after we returned the car. In Zürich an elaborate food fair was in progress in the main concourse. <BR>We walked around buying and eating food until we were so stuffed that we almost needed assistance to get to the train. <BR>When we boarded the Maria Theresia, we found that the ticket agent in Lauterbrunnen had sold us window seats, which made viewing quite easy. <BR>Fun trip.

Sorry about the Aerosmith thing, guess I'm showing my age and lack of knowledge on the music thing. On the train ride, though..... I've often driven the route from Frankfurt up the Rhein. This April I took a train for the first time, up as far as Dusseldorf. It was a beautiful day and what a relaxing way to travel!!! It was such a different experience than driving it. I sat in the smoking car (sorry - I'm one of those) and enjoyed a beer and the scenery. What a peaceful way to spend 3 hours. At one point a young girl and her younger sister (15 and 8) shared my table while the younger girl ate. They were great companions for a while, they were traveling from Munich to Cologne to visit their father and they both spoke perfect English. Very sweet.

<BR> <BR>I have had a number of memorable train trips... I want to share 3 <BR> <BR>As kids growing up in UK we occasionally took a holiday to India to visit family and took the opportunity to see some of the country... I recall vividly my trips on Indian trains... firstly I remember the sleeping compartments, where you would have two seats which were also beds, and two bunks above them. A window with a sliding slash opening with a tiny sink infront of it between the two bunks... I remember trying to sleep to the click clack click clack and the rolling rythmic movement... I remember the picnics packed by mum and her sisters... each dish packed in a cylidrical metal container, these all stacking up with a weird joiner rod into one tall high cylinder... I remember stopping at the stations on route to listen to the cries of the chai walas selling hot tea the Indian way (stewed, milky and very very sweet)... and the cries of the men selling hot groundnut, and watching as they deftly made paper bags out of a sheet of newspaper... I remember sitting on the platforms waiting for the trains buying cheap Ritchie Ritch and Jughead and Veronica comic books... <BR> <BR>Another memorable train journey was on a teenage holiday en famille, in Alaska; a train to Denali National Park (or was it through it)... I saw these majestic mountains and thought they must be the backbone of the world... We saw on that trip some wonderful grizzly bears, three babies running after mummy, one getting left behind after examining a clump of flowers and then his desperate catch up race across the hillside.... <BR> <BR>The last I want to share is the trip from Moscow to St Petersburg, I think in 93, with a bunch of students from my uni... we had stocked up on vodka and partook of it plentifully, as did the rest of the passengers, who were all Russians, our group made the only foreigners on board... In this respect (the vodka) we seemed to be following the behaviour of the locals... and we sang all trip... I think the favourite was Extreme's ballad, More Than Words, which was in the charts not long before our trip... We communicated with our fellow passengers by singing, sharing bottles of vodka and gesticulating inarticulately... but we were somewhat the worse for wear when we arrived... <BR> <BR>Thanks for bringing these memories back to the surface... <BR> <BR>Kavey <BR>

Two good train trips. One was an Amtrak trip from Chicago to Portland, OR, Seattle, WA, and Glacier National Park, MT, and then back to Chicago. On those trips, you get to choose any three stops on the route; and we consider our choices to have been great. <BR> <BR>The best, though, was from a small station outside Baumholder, Germany, where we were visiting Army kids, to Paris. We shared a cabin with two young girls who had been backpacking through the former Eastern Bloc countries. Another young woman asked in French if she could join us and turned out to be from Virginia, which seemed like a neighbor since we are from KY.

Two stories. <BR>When we were about 10 my cousin John and I traveled from on the train from Northern Main to Rhode Island with his dog ‘The Golden Nugget of Barrenco’ , otherwise known as Lassie. She was a beautiful collie and looked just like The Lassie (even though The Lassie was male). We walked with the dog from the North Station to the South Station in Boston and then caught the train to Providence RI. When my Aunt and Uncle (John’s parents) came to look for us the other passengers told them that we were in the Baggage car. They would not let us bring the dog into the passenger cars but agreed to let us ride with the dog in the baggage car. They were very surprised about that and shocked that we had walked through Boston. They had given us money to take a cab. <BR> <BR>One day about 10 years ago, I had to spend a week at my bank’s headquarters doing some training on a new system. When I had to go downtown LA I would take the commuter train. One day waiting for the train I spotted a couple of very attractive young women waiting on the platform for the train. I followed one of them onto the train and sat beside her. I started chatting during the 45 minute ride to my stop. At first she had her nose in a book but finally looked up and started responding. The next day when I got to the station I noticed her again and went up to her and asked if she would like to sit together. She answered in the affirmative so we chatted again and found out a little more about each other. This went on for the rest of the week and on Friday I gave her my business card and asked her to call me if she was interested in having lunch with me. She called me the next week and we had lunch a couple of times and then started dating. Long story short we ended up getting married. <BR> <BR>

Met a really gorgeous medical student from Harvard on the overnight train between Paris (where I was attending college) and Madrid (where I am from). We sat up all night talking and watching the sun come up in the morning as we were arriving. I always hated that train ride. Boy did I really love it that time. I never wanted it to end. Hmmmm... maybe this should go under the Love in Europe thread... heehee.

Interlaken to Kleine Scheidegg and on to the Jungfraujoch. Simply gorgeous views and thrills everytime the three giants of the Berner Oberland came into view. <BR> <BR>Interlaken to Luzern - lots of mountains, valleys, lakes, etc. <BR> <BR>Vienna to Munich - nice views of Salzburg and other locations; unfortunately it was raining. <BR> <BR>Guangzhou to Hong Kong with classmates -I will long remember the "quaint" villages we passed and the many factories just oozing with pollution, and of course the excitement of entering Hong Kong <BR> <BR>Freiburg to Prague - We spent much of the trip listening (we couldn't help it) to a group of recent college grads talking about where they had been and debating where to go next. They were covering basically every major destination from Britain to Greece. Annoying after a while, but I was also somewhat envious of their freedom to travel. <BR> <BR>Last, but not least, every train ride I have taken with my 2 year old at the mall, science museum, and amusement parks. She absolutely could ride and ride forever. Precious memories to last a lifetime.

Oh oh oh... <BR> <BR>I forgot the train ride to Machu Picchu about 15 to 20 years ago... <BR> <BR>The train kept slowing down or stopping because of various problems and when it did we would be ablt to wave to the local children running along side, dressed in their riotously colourful fabrics, and the old women, with weaqt her lines faces, selling tapestries of local scenes and hand carved gourds... <BR> <BR>sigh... <BR> <BR>(My parents never went for the beach holidays in Spain approach like my class mates' families)

My excitement got in the way of my accuracy... <BR> <BR>old women with weather lined faces... <BR> <BR>