The best part of interailling for me was turning up to a major train station, looking at the giant departure board, choosing an enigmatic destination and just getting on the train. No booking or reservations or even planning at any point.
Quite a few countries (France, Spain, Italy for starters) require seat reservations in advance for any long-distance/high-speed trains now. And worse, they have a quota for passes, so even if the train has space, you might not be able to reserve a seat and therefore get on the train. A real shame as it makes it far less flexible than before.
For Switzerland, that's only true for the special tourist train panoramic carriages on the route, there are normal trains running on the same routes, too, that don't require reservations.
> But, as you get older, there's a certain joy in making plans in advance.
Am I the only one who feels the opposite? I used to take great care in making plans, knowing what's up ahead, knowing what I should know and so on. Spontaneous moments like "Lets go to X" were very infrequent. Nowadays, as a Proper Adult, I much more like going places without knowing anything about them, with as little plans as possible, figuring out what the place is from the people I meet there, and only start reading about the place once I'm there.
I fall somewhere in the middle these days- I really like knowing in advance that I have a place to sleep each night and that I have a way to get there, but then just do whatever I feel like in the moment for everything else.
We’re just finishing a two month Norway-focused motorhome jaunt. We planned the ferry from UK to Rotterdam (both directions) and two campsites in the Netherlands and Germany. After that it was two campsites ahead at most. Ended up visiting 21 campsites with no wild camping needed.
We’re both somewhere on some spectrum (and in our fifties) and it has been occasionally stressful for my partner. But we more often want to stretch a visit somewhere than curtail it, so flexibility has been pivotal to getting the most out of the trip.
We’ve identified five or so camps that we’ll definitely revisit next year or 2028, but they’ll be part of another freewheeling trip, I hope.
In general I’m a planner, a contingency-identifier and a worrier, but when we’re on the open road most of that goes out the window.
I never really planned in my youth, however as I'm older I have more responsibilities and planning in advance. We've just booked part of our summer family holiday for example
> however as I'm older I have more responsibilities
Yeah, same here, I guess that's why I'm opting for less planning, not more. I guess some people are just wired differently, that's what makes the world so interesting probably :)
Thanks, great to know. I hear you on at least knowing where you might sleep. Age 18-23 even this isn't that critical, when 'beach' or 'park' are viable answers.
For faster/intercity trains, it is still like that in Switzerland, Austria, Germany, The Netherlands, UK, Ireland, Denmark, Norway and most of central and eastern Europe [0]
France, Italy, Spain, Portugal & Sweden require seat reservations, as do most international services
Making reservations varies from easy to a complete pain
Note that doing that in Ireland for intercity will result in you being _severely_ overcharged. Dublin to Cork is like 20 euro if you book in advance; I think if you buy the ticket in the station it’s over 60!
It’s fine for commuter stuff, of course, but I assume that’s the case everywhere.
Then you get situations like a last minute (ie: knew 30 days in advance) trip from Munich to Berlin where we found it cheaper to rent a newish mid-range Mercedes and it for two.
Sure we had to actually do the driving, but hard to turn down a journey on the autobahn as a tourist.
The Interrail reservations/supplements are fixed price (or for some SNCF trains there are two price levels as the train fills up). But their number is limited, so in a way the advice is the same.
I've taken Amsterdam-London with Interrail many times, usually €35, sometimes €57, often sold out. So yeah, two price levels; Eurostar is basically SNCF.
Those were normal reservations, not Interrail ones, which I explicitly was talking about, trying to get the conversation back on track to Interrail which is the subject of TFA. Those high prices are what I meant with "sold out" above; in that case you get the prices for normal reservations listed instead of the Interrail ones. They are usually marked as such, though, e.g. on RailEurope it'll say "Rail Pass doesn't apply for this trip". Pretty big difference.
This is absolutely needed for media companies in London, some of whom may pay freelancers many months after invoicing and only if the freelancer repeatedly reminds them and escalates towards legal threats. When I ran such a company we made a point of paying people the same day they invoiced in order to stand out as being great to work with, it was the easiest win ever.
They should give the data to people who ask, which will be a snapshot in time presented in a spreadsheet. Then what you are paying for is the interface that shows you who clicked yesterday with a thumbnail and a link to their profile, and who will click tomorrow, as long as you keep paying. But refusing the download option is not on.
There are plenty of other products that literally ruin people's lives: alcohol, tobacco, sugar, pharmaceuticals, credit cards, firearms, timeshares, junk food. Society has them all on very different parts of a stigma spectrum.
Honest question: why is this line so clear for you?
There is a stigma with all of those things except maybe pharmaceuticals (unless you are selling opioids), sugar and junk food (because of their ubiquity).
The line is clear for some people right away. Other people have to see the effects first hand. When I was younger, I worked in a gas station, and the never-ending line of obviously poor people dropping nearly their entire paychecks on scratchoffs, then buying a case of beer was a formative memory for me. It most states, the lottery is just subsidizing the cost of education on the backs of the poor and uneducated and gambling-addicted so that they don't have to raise property taxes. And that's if the money actually gets spent on education. Sometimes they just turn into slushfunds for pet projects. It's gross.
"Built to make people's lives worse" is an opinion. There are people who gamble without getting addicted and treat it as good fun. Why shouldn't I be able to bet a small amount on a team I like in Fantasy Football? I've never gambled more than I could afford to lose nor have I felt the need to do it habitually. I get that there are some people who are not like me, but you seem to think that there are only people who are not like me that use these types of services.
There's a difference between betting between your friends on FF versus creating a system of gambling that takes advantage of the least fortunate among us.
This is the same thinking that governments are justify the age verification and ID tracking: the system makes an opportunity for old people to get scammed, so everyone needs to give up their privacy.
Okay sounds like we agree that sugar and junk food should be on the wrong side of the line, but turns out those industries have very little stigma. Who is standing outside the school gates protesting against big cola? My point is it's complicated, ambiguous, sometimes hypocritical, differs by jurisdiction and so on. None of it is clear.
There have been pushes to remove soda from school vending machines, limit the size / add extra taxes on bigger soda containers, etc. But it's often "crazy California" doing it, so a whole chunk of the country writes it off as political or something, or it doesn't get passed due to lobbying, etc. But it's not true that no one is trying to stop it.
As much as I like a cold Coke (Coke >>> Pepsi :-) on a hot day, I also realize it's bad for me, and I'm drinking a lot more Spindrift these days. And despite the fact that I rarely drink more than say, 2 cans a day (i.e. I can generally control it), I would still vote to limit the amount of sugar in any beverage to like 1/10 that of Coke, just for general health reasons. Of course, then stores will probably see an uptick in sugar cube sales or something.. Gotta feed the addiction.
This is not the first time I’ve seen this, and it’s misleading. Your brain needs glucose, as does the rest of your body. You do not need to eat glucose, your body can synthesize it from non-glucose sources. You can absolutely survive on a diet with 0 glucose.
I don’t have an issue with people eating sugar, but it is not a necessary nutrient.
Does your brain necessarily *need* HFCS/sucrose, or will it work with wholegrain diet, fruits, vegetables, legumes?
It just seems that you're arguing that without added, pure sugar in drinks/foods your body and brain would break down, but that would be factually incorrect*
*unless you're also suffering from some exceedingly rare genetic conditions affecting certain metabolic paths but it's unlikely you'd live to tell the story.
when people talk about sugar in the unhealthy context, they are referring to things like how a single can of dr. pepper has 40-50 grams of sugar in it.
I know plenty of folks who enjoy a little gambling without letting it get them into trouble, so the product couldn't be "built to make people's lives worse". Why should they have something taken away just because some other people can't control themselves?
You're trying to make ad absurdum but this been in effect decriminalised in many countries.
In the UK for example the police got so defunded, damaged and wrecked, that they will straight out do their best to refuse investigating most crimes, eg robbery, burglary, assault, theft, even if you literally hand them evidence ("I saw my neighbour Tim doing that and I have CCTV", "my stolen bike is literally in that garage, I have tracker and I made it make a sound").
Police is so defunded and demoralised that they focus on arresting disabled and pensioners for opposing genocide and throw people into the jail for having a peaceful protest planning zoom call - for longer they would serve for rape.
So you tried to joke but in fact many crimes have been decriminalised.
I think it's like this in most countries - the police will only care about protecting the elite class. Sometimes the elite class feel threatened by high crime levels so the police will crack down on petty crime, but it's always in a way that makes the numbers look good, not a way that keeps people safe. They'll investigate the crimes that are easiest to prosecute.
Half of the list by GP shares these same characteristics, unfortunately. The only one that is slowly - but not even steadily - going towards the same stigma is tobacco.
> We're talking about a product built to make people's lives worse while extracting wealth from them that get them addicted as well.
That's most of the products being sold today, you think the most for-profit companies sell things and services in order to improve the world? They're selling stuff because they want to make money, if they can make someone addicted + extract wealth from them, then in their world that's a no-brainer.
That's just not true at all. The fruit I buy is designed to make my life worse? The vacuum cleaner? The lawn mower? The workout equipment? The standing desk for my office? The clothing I buy?
Yes, literally all those things are decreasing in quality because the companies producing and selling these want higher margins. Have you not noticed the sharp drop in quality and durability in made stuff compared to 20-30 years ago? Almost all those things are worse and lasts less today than they used to.
If you claim you can get "any fruit anytime in the year and it seems fine", it's probably because you'd inky ever had supermarket fruit-like products which are about as similar to the proper ones as McDonald's Big Mac is similar to the proper burger.
Go to the actual farm in strawberries season next time, get yourself some, and you'll get that. And it's like this with almost every single fruit.
Electronics are more likely to be obsolete for technical reasons, but - for example - modern dishwashers and dryers are far more likely to have cheap plastic parts that fail more quickly. Even for brands with premium price tags.
With clothes, fast fashion is designed down to a budget and up to a price. For consumer brands, the more expensive something is the more disposable it is and the shorter its working life.
Not the original person you replied to, but as far as I'm concerned there are a few questions that could very easily indicate which side of the line is something.
E.g.
- Is it addictive?
- Does it have the potential to destroy lives?
- Does it have the potential to destroy lives in seconds?
- Does it have a strong lobbying mechanism behind it? (n.b. things that are good and nice rarely need someone to bribe people to accept them)
or simply:
- Would you be worried if your child did it?
I think the number of "yes" that you get draws a very clear line.
He's obviously talking about alcohol (it takes seconds to consume an amount of alcohol that can result in death, yours or someone else's from a fight or car crash) and firearms (should be obvious).
Sounds like you're implying some sort of mischaracterization of sugar here which minimizes the former in a weird way.
I wanted to draw the distinction between something that destroys lives over a longer period of time (smoking) VS something like gambling where you could lose your life's savings in seconds.
The alcohol mentioned in a sibling comment also ticks the box.
For the sugar, I'd say yes, no, no, yes and "not too much, but I'm keeping an eye out".
Maybe I haven't seen enough of his videos. They seem generally informative? Perhaps a bit depressing but I wouldn't say that watching a Tim Snyder video can ruin your life like gambling can.
Ok, so add "is it easy / quick / cheap to acquire?". Performance cars (I take measured risks at the race track) and track days / race tires aren't cheap. Not in any sense of the word.
Unsafe driving in ANY car? Yes - but that's already illegal.
Performance cars are very cheap to acquire temporarily.
I can literally book right now, for 4 long laps, for £99 any of the following (and that's a a very small subset of 30 similar cars): Lotus Evora / GTR 1200bhp / Lamborghini Gallardo / Dodge Viper SRT VX / Huracan... Unless you'd say these are not performance cars?
Not sure if the history lessons are a joke, but sugar is rightfully taxed or otherwise disincentivized in many countries, because it is highly harmful to society as a whole. Sports cars definitely get some yes answers, and are also rightfully taxed in several countries.
Military technology may be an exception as "necessary evil", but also is a bad example because it id not consumer-oriented.
Just because there's a spectrum doesn't mean that everything on it is indistinguishable. Everybody draws their own lines, some people count more or fewer things as stigmata, some people's lines are fuzzier than others.
No single person can draw that line, that's what Courts and Laws are for. And some of the industries play more dirty and try to manipulate that due process, others failed.
But that's what we have, it's never black & white. Always a process and always evolving.
