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What’s The Best Way To Travel
By Artur Ciesielski | Essay
What a wonderful question. I’ve been thinking about this a while now. There is a post on the backend of this blog that’s being worked on, titled, Why I Walk. Then the current, print issue of Intelligent Life hits my P.O. Box with that exact question, What’s the best way to travel?
I didn’t have an immediate answer. There are three ways I like to travel, the combination of which is really an ideal which is hard to achieve here, where I live now in Phoenix, a city built around the car. At least one of my top three is possible 8 months of the year: the bike, but… I’ll get to it in bit.
Let me start with my top 3.
Some of my favorite memories are from walking. It is certainly my favorite way to explore cities: I’ve walked Paris, Warsaw, Krakow, Berlin, Salzburg, Vienna, Milan, London, Edinburgh amongst others.
My approach to walking is that of a rational flaneur, meaning, that I just go and adjust my direction and destination based on the information I gather along the way.
In Paris, that is how, I found the great places locals visit, where the homeless gather, where the diversity really is and most of it was not where the tourists are. That’s what make me love that city.
How better to soak in the crevices, the niches, the life of a city than to walk it.
But, walking is so much more. It’s contemplative, slow, and so natural.
On a recent trip to Krakow I avoided even the tram which I also enjoy. I woke up in the morning and headed out 2 miles from my room to the center of Krakow along the Wisla river over the crumbling sidewalk, the joggers, the people rushing to work on a bike, the guy on the bench nursing his hangover, the tourists and the fresh air, the rolling water on the river, the ships, the warm light of the sun. It felt good and so did my mind and body after days of walking mile after mile. I always seem to return to what I feel is normal during these trips.
The bike has been an integral part of my life from early on. The first bike meant immense freedom and responsibility. In Poland during the communist rule, it was an exception to get a new bike. I remember well riding around the block for hours on that thing.
In Austria, a bike found in the woods with no tires, all rusted and beaten with use, was a highlight of one of the best places a kid could live.
Even my first job as a paper-boy involved a bike. It allowed me faster delivery, get to customers more efficiently. With a white bag around my shoulders and papers on the front and the back it was rarely a nuisance to get up at 5am to get a hundreds papers out up hills and all the nooks on my route.
Through the confusing teenage years the bicycle was central to my existence in sport, discovery, friends: think BMX, competitions, girls, trophies, and adrenaline.
Even now it’s not only a joy, but a way living. Since moving back to Central Phoenix the bike has taken over much of what the car had to provide. The weekly trips to the farmers market to going to the post office, the bank, a ride to the restaurant or for coffee.
On vacations aside from walking I pick up a bike to go a bit further, especially in Europe.
The freedom and self-reliance it afford is extraordinary, not the mention the benefits of movement, which brings me to the train.
Sometimes it’s necessary to go farther where a bike will not do it, though it can tag along. The technology of break down bikes with S and S couplers had made the train even more attractive. A high-end bike can be broken down into a neat case that not only get on an airline with no excess fees, but it can go into a nifty backpack.
Trains have a romance behind them and freedom as well. A car is an immense responsibility, a train provides freedom. This is not so in the U.S.A, but in Europe you can pack up a backpack and just go from city to city, almost on a whim.
A good example of this is when in 2012 the place, Croatia, I meant to stay in was too hot. I went to the station, picked the next best city that came to mind and went there, to Salzburg, Austria where it was much cooler: but, it could have been anywhere; Munich, Paris, Berlin, Vienna were just a few of the hundred of options and no car to worry about.
Travel by rail has a special mystery to it.
Combine the train, the bike and walking and one can travel for fun or work with immense freedom. I’m feeling lighter just thinking about it and excited to do it.
So what is the best way? If I had to pick one it would be the bike, but I don’t have to so it’s walking, on a bike and by train.
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