Travelling Among Friends by Train
By Annie Janssen
The EMES Sustainability Policy is a beautiful wish list – a series of statements about how we want to act to mitigate climate change, even if we often have difficulty putting it into practice. For me, the travel section is relatively unproblematic, in that I always prefer train travel to air travel. But this past summer I was faced with a big challenge in implementing our Sustainability Policy, when I set myself the task of travelling entirely by train to the EMES Executive Committee Meeting in Sintra, outside Lisbon. The planning was an immense undertaking, further complicated by the fact that I was to attend a family wedding in Norway on the weekend prior to the meeting.
It turned out to be even more complex than I had imagined.
One big difficulty is the lack of a coordinated rail system in Europe. You have to thoroughly research all the options of the various rail lines, choose the most convenient but still affordable connections – remembering to factor in the cost of any overnight stops you need to make along
the way – and then hope that as you book them, one by one, some of the later legs of your journey will not have sold out or become too expensive in the meantime. Another hindrance is the current lack of overnight train options. Many night trains were discontinued during the height of the pandemic, and have sadly not been reactivated. I was only able to incorporate one into my journey, plus an overnight coach trip (not nearly as
comfortable!).
Luckily for me, I was helped in my planning by Friends as well as a very special friend. Quakers in Sweden, France and Spain very kindly offered to host me as I made my way to Lisbon and back. And the special friend was the Man in Seat 61, without whose excellent website my journey planning would have been a genuine nightmare instead of just an intensely nail-biting exercise.
After departing Hamar on the morning of Monday, September 19th, I arrived in Sintra on Friday afternoon, September 23rd, where I met other members of the Executive Committee. We were greeted by our wonderful host Denise Luxton, and escorted to her home and the beautiful
setting of our meeting, Quinta Ecosophia.
One aspect of this trip was the joy that we members of the EMES Executive experienced in being together in work and in worship in such lovely and peaceful surroundings, rather than our more common experience of seeing each other on a screen. I have no doubt that it led to greater productivity and effectiveness throughout the weekend. How to square that with the need to minimize travel is an ongoing discussion point that all of us face everyday. The need to connect and the enrichment that personal connection brings vs the need to drastically reduce our carbon footprint – can we find a sustainable balance?
I felt truly privileged to be able to connect with Friends not just in Portugal, where we were able to meet up with members of the Lisbon meeting, but also along my journey. There were common threads in my late night and early morning discussions with my Quaker hosts – how to forge connections between EMES and our Local and/or Yearly Meetings, how to harness the enthusiasm of those who have come to us online during the pandemic but who have no experience of Quaker practices, Quaker offices and traditional Quaker worship, and how to foster Quaker values and testimonies within groups that may exist almost entirely in a virtual space. It seemed to me that many of us were struggling with the same sorts of challenges in far-flung corners of the Section.
The train travel itself was almost always a joy, though I admit that after two weeks of travel, I was definitely happy to be sleeping in my own bed once again. One thing that puzzled me was the presence of screens in some trains, showing subtitled films. Why would anyone want to watch a movie, I thought, when the moving picture outside the train window is always so much better? I look forward to planning my rail travel for the next in-person EMES Executive Committee meeting, wherever it may be – perhaps in your part of the Section…?
