Between this year and last...

The distance from Dusseldorf, Germany to London is just about the same as going from Berlin to Michalovce, Slovakia. The major difference would be mountains and hills, the more significant difference would be if traveling by bike, the Dusseldorf to London route would be 75 percent bike friendly--i.e. bike paths. Neither Czech or Slovakia has bike paths and they're hilly and mountainous. 

Last summer i rode my bike 891 km thru Germany, the Netherlands, Belgium, France and England on a whirl-wind discgolf/beer-tasting/camping adventure that left me broke metaphorically and financially. 

This year, i took a train from berlin to prague (108 eu, first class), and from Prague to Kosice (69 eu, in a sleeping cabin), and then caught a ride with Jason Mashak and his entourage from Kosice to Michalovce where we stayed on a small mountain lake near a currently-being-refurbished castle. 

As I looked out the window of the train as the landscape rushed by, I was certain, had I rode this by bike it would have taken me twice as long as last summer's trip, simply because of the hills. Last spring I biked into Poland and the landscape in the area of Poland I was traveling was very similar to the terrain I was watching fly by on the train. On the poland trip, i was lucky to get 30 km in a day, and traveling in poland with only a roaming connection with spotty gps map on my phone is a bit like standing on the edge of a high cliff overlooking a rough sea. I think Longinus used this same image to help describe, "sublime," to the casual reader. Longinus describing, "sublime," is a bit like Freud describing, "uncanny." Somewhere in between all these images is the lost feeling from which you never escape while biking thru Poland. And the landscape from Prague to Kosice is much the same...let's say that I'm glad I didn't bike this trip. 

The guy I shared the cabin with was from Kosice, Jan I think, and he was here for his grandma's 80th birthday with his wife who was flying into meet them. He lives in San Francisco now and is a commercial real estate agent. He was a hipster better than any NW Portlander could ever be. We had a couple of beers with the guy down two cabins and he was Italian, living in Prague working for Exxon and going to meet his wife at her family's place in Kosice. I'm from Ohio--lived in Chicago, Nebraska, South Dakota, Kent, Ohio, Anaheim, Long Beach, Portland, Punta Gorda, Fl, and now Berlin. 

The train out of Prague was Russian Railways. The old east-block countries had different gauged tracks or width between the rails, whatever the case is, the tracks were different and that's been a big reason for the slow progress in this part of Europe. the tracks or the trains themselves need to be retrofitted so that one universal system could be installed and hence utilized in a united Europe. I am not an historian or even claiming this to be true. these are things I've heard mostly from older German people I've met. I've done no research to confirm any of this. 

Either way, it's clear the Russian Railways train was from the old east-block era and riding on a train, in the dark thru old communist country is like stepping back into my first grade class and getting into position under our desks in the event that Russia decided to drop the bomb on us. An exhilarating buzz hums thru my spine as i search the night wizzing by.