More or less. The chairs are hostile to stop you from getting too comfortable. I've had 6 hour layovers before and had to sleep in those terrible chairs under fluorescent lights. On the last flight I took there was barely any good near my gate, there were like 4 bars instead. You can't leave your luggage anywhere, so you're dragging it all over the place. You get jammed like sardines into the plane, and you can't stretch your legs. You can't really relax because you have to stay abreast of announcements, in case they change your gate or cancel your flight or what have you. Everyone is on edge. Et cetera.
On the train there's more room, you can move around, and the atmosphere is more relaxed.
Some people like planes. I saw an HN comment where someone said they took lots of "flights to nowhere" over COVID and used the plane as their office. I don't understand that at all. But to each their own.
It's hard to agree with that. There are some amazing train routes through Austria, Norway, Switzerland, Germany that keep me looking out of the window the whole way.
I love the views from the train too, but I feel like the view flying is something magical everyone should experience at least once in their life.
The ground fading away, the tiny cars, glittering rivers, seeing it in reverse for landing. That is something I'll wax poetic about. But if I could take the train the rest of my life I would.
Clearly the middle ground here is to bring back zeppelins. /s
No sarcasm needed for zeppelins: the idea of gliding over the landscape low enough to hear through the openable window what's happening below fast enough to be useful for a domestic voyage, and in reasonable comfort: What's not to like?
I was waiting for a Ryanair flight from Friedrichshafen when one of the Zeppelin NT craft flew past, heading over the Bodensee towards Switzerland. It looked simultaneously classic and futuristic, the sort of shiny utopia future of 1950s sci-fi book covers. I envied HARD.
