The last time I stepped on a plane was 2018. Since then, I advocate for flight free travels, for the sake of the environment but also because it’s a matter of environmental justice (I explain thoroughly why aviation is extremely detrimental not only for the planet but also for people who have never stepped on a plane, in my essay that was published last year in a Critical Animal Studies book). But I couldn’t do them myself because when you live in Greece you are quite isolated. Also, the deadly train accident that took place on 28 February 2023 left us all numb and so I could no longer encourage people to use the train instead…
Luckily enough, I managed to move to Sweden five months ago, and since we settled with my partner and my pets, I started traveling again, something that I have missed so much as my upbringing has been linked with traveling by plane throughout Europe. My first trip was with a Flixbus from Malmö to Stockholm. I preferred the bus than the train because it was quite cheaper. It was around 6 hours trip and I enjoyed that I could see the world around me from the windows, something that we can’t do while we are on an airplane. Since this trip went well (it was a “test drive” to see if my reactive dog would be OK without me as I was away, at last, after years of not trusting anyone but me, so this was one more reason for me not being able to travel without my car, as I was going everywhere with him, and he is a big dog who weights 30 kg) I then went to Belgium, again with the flixbus. That time, I traveled during the night as I wanted to sleep during the trip, because it was a long trip. It lasted around 13 hours and it was a bit exhausting but still, O.K. I had no idea that we would stop and go in a boat, along the way, to cross from Denmark to Germany, but this proved to be the best for my body which wanted to stretch and move. Also, to go to the toilet as I wouldn’t like to go to the toilet in the bus.
My way back from Belgium to Sweden was a bit of a bad experience because of what other passengers were eating and drinking and how they were behaving, next to me and another passenger. This made me think that I will travel by car next time, if the train is still so expensive.
However, to my surprise, when it was time to travel again, to go to Germany this time, I was lucky enough to find a cheap train ticket to go from Lubeck to Bonn with fast trains, and I used the Flixbus again to go from Copenhagen to Lubeck (just 4 hours trip, again with that “stop” in the boat). The bus ticket from Copenhagen to Lubeck costed 30 euros and the train tickets from Lubeck to Bonn costed 74 euros. I spent the night in Lubeck, to break down my trip so it would be less tiring, and I enjoyed my stay in a small family hotel that I found on the map, while looking for vegan restaurants (there is a great Vietnamese vegan restaurant in Lubeck, however mind that you need to have cash with you because for some strange reason, they don’t accept non German cards. Coming from a cashless country like Sweden, this was hard for me, but we found the solution by paying via PayPal!).
**I always try to avoid using Airbnb and Booking since they are supporting Israel, so I was really happy to achieve that during that trip because it’s not always possible, especially when we travel with my dog.
From where I live, Copenhagen is just 1,5 hour by train. The Swedish train is excellent, clean, safe, warm and fast. It also has this cabin where people don’t talk, so for HSP like me, this is idea. And the trains in Sweden are on time, more often than not. Lastly, with Skånetraffiken, the app of the trains in the region where we live, I can use my partner’s monthly ticket 15 times each month, so that’s also good.
Regional German trains are for people with lots of patience
The adventures with the German trains started when I arrived to Hamburg from Lubeck: I lost the next train, because it left earlier than what the Omio app was saying. On that moment, I learned that these times are just forecasts and I should always be earlier in the train. Lesson learned! Gladly, I could use my ticket to take the next train so I took the next one 45 minutes later. A great time to enjoy a coffee while waiting, as to my surprise I found specialty coffee of great quality in Hamburg central station! When it was the moment to take the next train though, everyone disappeared from the platform and only because I had a friend waiting for me in Bonn, I got to learn that the platform changed last moment. Unbelievable that they change platforms and they don’t announce it in English too, nor on time. I caught my train last minute!!!
While I was traveling from Hamburg to Dusseldorf, I realized an hour later and only when they checked my ticket that I was sitting on the first class, without knowing. The ticket controller was kind enough to help me carry my stuff to the other wagon (!).
I felt quite intimidated when I found myself in Dusseldorf station, after spending eight years in isolation, but I overcame it once I went in the last train. In Bonn, my friend was waiting for me and then we took the tram. While I stayed there, we used the tram several times, we also took buses, and too many regional trains. All these regional trains, the tram and the local bus, one can use them with a monthly ticket that costs just 58 euros and it covers the whole country of Germany. However, there is a downside. They are almost always late, or if they come on time, they have delays along the way. With these trains, we went with my friend to the borders between Germany and Holland, and there I took a train to Arnhem where I was supposed to meet a friend. When I took this train, I had taken the wrong ticket but the controller was kind enough to let me be, as he understood that it really happened by accident. He told me which app to use on my way back (the one I already mentioned, omio) just to be safe because the ones in German or Dutch are complicated if you are not permanently living there. This Dutch train was like the ones in Sweden, fast, safe and clean. In Arnhem, I stayed again in a small old hotel, that was so beautiful. I found it through the big platforms but I called the hotel and made the booking directly with them, in a better price. On my way back, my ticket from omio couldn’t open the bars to enter the train station so that’s something I wonder how one overcomes, as there was no one to ask around, and I was in a hurry, so I just rushed after a lady who passed in front of me. The ticket I had was valid, from Arnhem to a city in the border of Germany/the Netherlands. Who knows?
And then, the nightmare began! I met my friend somewhere along the way, and we took together two regional trains. The second was so late. Like more than an hour late, as we were just stuck in it, and waiting for it to restart. My friend had to dog walk and he was so late for that…Poor doggy, waited so long due to the unorganized German regional trains. During these days, I thought of my Swedish chiropractor when I told her that I was thinking to go to Germany by train. She shared with me her experience with trains in Germany, but I wanted to think that I would be luckier. And as my friend said during my trip there, I was really lucky, except for that one trip.
On the next day, I had to go back to Lubeck, and my friend came with me. I booked again a room in a hotel by directly contacting the hotel. To our surprise, it even had vegan soap:
This hotel was right where the Flixbus that I had to take next day early in the morning to go back home was leaving from. I knew that, from when I arrived in Lubeck, so I didn’t book it accidentally.
That night, it started snowing!
This saved the tempeh that I bought in Bonn and wanted to bring back home *as for some strange reason we can’t find organic tempeh in Skåne…). And what I mean by this is that since the hotel doesn’t provide a fridge in the room, my friend hung the tempeh in a bag, from the window and then closed it. It worked!!!
The trip back to Sweden was so nice, I had no one next to me so I was comfortable and the sceneries along the way were all white and the snow is something that I have really missed during the last years in Greece. The last time I had seen snow, was during our road trip from Greece to Bulgaria, with my partner and my dog, in January 2024.
That’s mainly the reason we moved to Sweden, because we have missed the seasons changing, we missed the autumn and the winter and here so far, we experienced and enjoyed both seasons. Greece sadly only has two seasons nowadays, a hellish summer and a very mild winter. The plants and the trees are confused, animals rarely hibernate, plants flourish during the winter…So we are climate migrants. And even the winter in Sweden is milder as people who have been living here for years tell us As I am writing this, it’s past mid December and it’s not really cold outside. The temperature was between 6 and 9 Celsius degrees today. But the darkness has been hard. I read that in Stockholm there was only half an hour of sunlight the first half of December, and I must say that here in Southern Sweden it must have been the same. We rarely see the sun… so we got a sunlamp as we have been advised to do, and it is helpful indeed. But what is warming our hearts here is the people that we ‘ve met. In Greece, it was hard to find likeminded people who share our values. In Greece to be an antispeciesist who decides to live flight free and child free is considered radical. Especially in rural Greece where I was living since 2018.
Flygskam – Flight shame in Swedish
Another important reason that made us attracted by Sweden is that here in Sweden they even have created a word for flight shame: flygskam.
Although the word ‘flygskam’ or flight shame existed in Swedish previously, it was in the spring of 2018 that some Swedish journalists began writing about feelings of shame associated with flying due to its climate impact. This interest grew rapidly into a national debate spurred on by the ongoing discussion on climate change and mitigation. There were those who disliked framing flying as a moral issue. However, it seems that for those people who actually stopped flying for climate reasons, ethical considerations were crucial.
Source (the article is very interesting, I encourage you to read it )
So, here I have met several people who have stopped flying, like me, and I feel less alone in this value of mine. Besides, the first interview that I took for Ethos & Empathy, in 2020, was Maja Rosen’s interview, the Swedish lady who started the campaign “flight free world”!
For the end of this post, I invite you to watch a relevant mini documentary from the Guardian:
I am looking forward to my next train trips, and I really can’t say that I miss traveling by plane, as I never enjoyed this type of traveling. I always felt uncomfortable in the airplane.
Read next: George HIbbert’s story(from an Easyjet’s pilot to a climate activist)
Elisabeth Dimitras