Thread: What is Travel??

I was talking to a guy from Germany over the weekend and we had a hard time understanding each other. Specifically we were talking about traveling, you know covering distance. He just couldn't understand that when I meant travel I was talking about distances in excess of 750km. It didn't seem that to occur to him that you could even consider a trip that far by car for something as simple as a dog show. he seemed to think about 2 hours was a maximum travel time. Is this just a hang up of mine? Is it a standard attitude in Europe or elsewhere that 2 hours by car is a long way? I mean to me that just a trip to work.

That ain't traveling --- that's a joy ride. ---


Justin

That's definitely a European/US thing for sure. You can pass through several countries in a few hours driving over there. As a consequence Europeans tend to view car travel differently to we Aussies and you USsies, at least that's been my experience anyway.

Air travel, on the other hand, doesn't seem to be the same type of issue at all.

James.

James hit it on the head. I've got some friends here from Sheffield who ask things like, "is it far?" and are amazed to get the response, "No, it's only about 300k".

X

yeah...but that's because (like said before) everything is soo much closer. Europe is just tighter packed( built full) than the states/Aus. For instance most people here would consider me living far from amsterdam. It's about an hour and a half drive. For some of you guys that's peanuts. But to me that's (quite literally) halfway acrosse the country. I pass about 4 big cities within 10km in getting there. (Eindhoven, 's-Hertogenbosch, Utrecht, Tiel...ok Tiel isn't that big and Eindhoven is about 15 km (10 miles) but you get the picture)

Distance is different coz the countries are different. I can be in both Belgium and Germany in an hour and Luxembourg in 1,5. Paris is only about 5-6 hours down the road. Frankfurt about 4 and Poland around 10.

Travelling 750 miles means leaving the country for SURE in almost every EU country.

Yeah, I consider anything less than 3 hours just to be daytrip. Anything more than 5 hours one way is an overnighter, and anything more than 7 hours is a weekend trip. Me and wife regularly travel to her parents house, which is 9 1/2 hours away, and that is for an extended stay normally 5 days or more.

What LX said.
Another thing to add is that ~200 km over here (or say from brussels into amsterdam) can easily take you 6 hours, depending on traffic because there are no large 4 way each way lanes between big cities.

When my wife and I were traveling through the US, we could easily calculate driving times in advance by lookng at the map and dividing by the applicable speed limit. In Belgium, the only way to know it in advance is to have done it before.

And then there are gas prices. Gas costs atm 1.4 euros / liter or 7.2 dollar per gallon. Driving long distances seriously hurts our wallets.
And of course there is time spent in the car.

We cannot comprehend why anyone would drive more than 500 km to go to a shopping mall, restaurant or whatever. Paris is only 500 km from where I live, but no sane man thinks about driving to paris for a day and then coming back the same day unles he absolutely has to.

As for commuting: I have the luxury to have a high end tech job only 15 minutes from where I live. My wife works there as well (in fact we literally sit back to back but during the working day we don't talk to each other).
Before that I did consulting for 9 years, but 1 hour was the max time I wanted to spend driving to my customers 1 way.
Only for short gigs (couple of days) I accepted to do more than that.

In Hawaii, we are like 50 mi across or something like that. People here think traveling more than 20 minutes is far.

Last time I went home to Michigan it took me 22 hours of straight driving.
I Mapquested it and it looks like roughly (cause mapquest sucks a big one)

1330 miles now in Euro speak I guess that would be 2140 Km

Is that a lot?

Originally Posted by LX_Emergency

Hertogenbosch, Utrecht, Tiel...ok

Gueshendiet !!

Originally Posted by Bruno

What LX said.
And then there are gas prices. Gas costs atm 1.4 euros / liter or 7.2 dollar per gallon. Driving long distances seriously hurts our wallets.
And of course there is time spent in the car.

My god man.........












you'd think you guys would really be into the whole "Blood for Oil" Bush strategy. Especially since it isn't your blood.

Ok, just kidding, this isn't about politics, it was just a joke !! SHEESH

Thats what I mean the fact that we drove over an hour to be where we were, arrived on time and ready to go at six in the morning was just incomprehensible to him. It got me thinking about some of the differences we run into here too.