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Culture

Train songs

Larry has posted a whole compilation of train-themed soul music over at Funky16Corners, which seemed like as good a reason as any to post this video:

Trains are a big presence in American music, of course: blues, jazz, rock and roll all have their great train songs. I don’t think they’ve ever had quite the same associations in Europe, perhaps because our countries are just physically too small. There’s never been a great British road movie, either.

Still, there’s a different kind of romance to European train travel; the idea of buying a ticket in Paris and waking up the next morning in Vienna, or Milan, or Barcelona. Between school and university I went travelling around Europe by train with friends. That was before the Channel Tunnel, so it was a long first day: London-Dover, then the ferry, then a train to Paris, then walking across Paris from the Gare du Nord to the Gare de Lyon to get a train heading south. But the next morning, I took one look out of the window and could see we were in Italy; the buildings, the whole look of the landscape, had changed.

Going by easyJet just isn’t the same.