A long way to get somewhere

A few days ago I was thinking about this journey that I am doing; Moscow via Lisbon via Maldova and then through China, and I now sort of wish that I had chosen to go to Russia from Portugal by land. It would have been pretty cool to do a journey like that just with the use of train. I could then be one of those people that can say that they have travelled most of the globe just by land. I could possibly get my own TV show and book series. Michael Palin did. He was already famous, so he had a head start, but he's just an example. Phileas Fog is another person, albeit a fictional character. He went "around the world in 80 days". He's even got his own line of crisps now.

Yeah. Circumnavigating the world does definitely have benefits. It would be something quite special to tell people about. That I have gone from the farthest westerly point to the farthest easterly point of one land mass just using ground-based public transport.

Living on the outskirts of London and working an hour away by train in central London, I had a lot of time to think about ideas for travelling. Mainly about trains, as that was the method of transport imposed on me at that time. During the inception of this travelling idea, I did look into how feasible it would be to get a train from Portugal to Russia. It was possible...not easy...but possible. I focused on the "not easy " part too much I think.

I remember my parents telling me once about this German guy that lives near to them in Portugal and about how he once hitch-hiked from Portugal to Germany. I gave this idea less entertainment than a stripshow in morse code, but it shows that these sort of travel things can and are done.

There are websites dedicated to this sort of thing, of transport around Europe. I had read about this guy that did it, but went from Portugal to Thailand. He wrote that it took 3 months! I had already sorted out a massive leg of the journey - the Russian bit. This part of the journey would be quite long and cover a lot of distance (5 time zones - the entire journey from Portugal to China would be something like 10 time zones) but only take in 2 countries - Russia and China. This was great and cut out a lot of the hassle. But then I was faced with trying to arrange transport (train tickets) for the European leg. This made up the "possible" part.

There were different train companies that I had to deal with and no actual way of booking all of the trains prior to my travels. I read a few warnings about not doing this as my entire travel plans may be totally screwed by unforeseen circumstances. This could be due to train delays from lack of train drivers in Portugal as they are all sleeping, to a train in Germany being too efficient and and missing out a few stops. So, I had no choice but to buy the tickets to each destination along the way. I was
willing to do this, but I needed to do a lot of preparation. Having a full-time job meant that I was working for 1/3 of the day. During the other 1/3 I was sleeping or travelling to work and then the remaining 1/3 was spent eating and maintaining my social life. What I needed was someone to put some sort of portfolio together of how to undertake a journey from Portugal to Russia just using trains. I could have probably advertised it on the Interwebz and got some web-based travel agent to sort it out for me - all I have to do is turn up to a train-station and buy a ticket, but I didn't.
In the end I chose the easy option. To fly to Moscow. But even that had a little detour - Maldova. Which isn't too bad, as I've never been there.
But it still would have been so awesome to say that I had travelled across the biggest land mass in the world - from Lisbon in Portugal to Hong Kong in China - from coast to coast - all by train. The width of the Eurasian continent. Pretty damn cool. I have a feeling Vasco Da Gama would be proud for putting Portugal in the limelight once again for innovative world travel and discovery. And maybe turning in his grave that I didn't do the journey by boat.
Oh well...maybe next time.