Conference: 3 days. Traveling: 8 days. Here’s what I learned
An airplane is a lousy teleport: you enter a plane at your origin, and seemingly indifferent to what’s in between — ocean, mountains, desert — you exit at your destination. But it takes much longer than a teleport would, and at times shakes you vehemently. When you get out, you find yourself walking into warm and humid air, with vegetation and smells changed, or you realize you should’ve dressed warmer for those freezing temperatures.
The Global Shapers community held a conference in Istanbul I wanted to attend. I could’ve afforded flying there, but it’s crystal clear that we are facing a climate crisis. Paraphrasing Albert Einstein, employing the same behavior that created our problems won’t help in solving them. Flying is a fairly big contributor, and should be made more efficient or we need to reduce the number of flights we take.
It’s easy to talk about changing systems, or to say that ‘we’, as if we’re a homogenous but unanimous group, need to change. Both decimate our own role. Yet how can I expect others to change their behavior, if I wouldn’t want to change my own?
Juggling with those thoughts, I found myself facing two options: not going, or traveling by different means. Having witnessed the months it took a friend of mine to cycle there, I quickly discarded that. The most environmentally friendly alternative was going by train. Estimated travel time: 3.5 days. Distance: 2700km.
Together with a group of Shapers from Paris, Stockholm, Salzburg, Bern, Düsseldorf, and Cambridge, we went for this option. We traveled together from Vienna, had one person join in Budapest and another one at the Turkish border, who traveled there from Sofia. Then three days of conference in Istanbul.
“Have you gone crazy?” was the one response I most received when I shared this plan. The second most popular remark was “That’s on my bucket list!” But nobody had done this yet. Having never traveled this far by train before myself either, it indeed felt crazy at first. When we had started, I realized it wasn’t crazy. It was surprisingly refreshing and liberating and felt natural instead.
The train allowed me to witness the landscapes changing around us. From cities through farmland, up to the mountains, crossing the Danube east into the Hungarian and Romanian heartland, and eventually allowing us to exit next to the Bosporus. The changes were gradual, and along with the altering landscape I witnessed the difference in foods people brought on, as well as the other languages that were spoken around me. Smells changed. I could even notice a change in air quality as my nose became runny and my snot contained tiny black particles. This never happens in The Netherlands.
We took a group photo when we arrived. “If the conference is cancelled now, I would still consider it a huge success,” one of us said. And I agreed. People sometimes say that the journey is more important than the destination. This journey was worth it.
When we shared how we had traveled to the conference — people were able to see how enthusiastic our group was — many more expressed their interest. And rightly so. We had had great conversations together and true bonding had taken place. We had laughed, played games, shared silence, danced and relaxed. Not everything was fantastic. I personally wasn’t a big fan of a passport and luggage check on the Turkish border at 2am, that took close to an hour while being outside with our bags in our hands. The temperature was nice and it didn’t rain, so our experience was nicer than it could’ve been.
The conference, SHAPE Europe & Eurasia, was insightful and allowed me to make valuable new connections. After the conference, I set off to travel back to The Netherlands on my own. I planned to do it in 2.5 days this time. More than on our way there, as we were in a group, I now interacted with other people. My rusty German skills came in handy, and combined with English I managed to communicate, sometimes via a third person. I missed one connection due to a lengthy delay, which led me to accumulate one extra day of traveling. It allowed me to explore the beautiful city of Timisoara and to roam around Vienna.
Taking the seemingly crazy course turned out to be fantastic. Yes, it took more time — but time well spent. It was a test to see if I could change my own behavior. It turned out I could easily. It made me appreciate the distance much more, and it gave me a sense of how far Istanbul actually is, what lies in between, and I gained a new appreciation for traveling.
We had an interesting meeting with Istanbulite school climate strikers. Whereas I sometimes looked up to the leadership of multinationals and governments, they look up to us. “It’s your role to do something about all this.” They hit us all hard, because they were right. “A better environment starts with yourself,” one Dutch commercial stated, many years ago. I committed to no flights within Europe. I think that’s a start.
