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Time is a luxury. Even on a small scale - I bike or walk to work most days, because I have the luxury of waking up when I wake up, having a morning and a slow human powered commute. That is privilege, yes? So many have to drive an hour or even more.
If I had the time to walk to somewhere far, I would take it.
I guess on the upside, a faster life means more stuff done in each life?
Leisurely travel vs rush travel? Hmm, I wonder what is better and more enjoyable?!
Everyone here saying they want the medieval travel version because modern air travel is sooooo terrible should really be joking.
To start, safety. Going on a 6 month journey in the middle ages came with a significant increase in your chance of a gruesome death relative to staying home. Of course, mortality was higher at home than it is today as well, but travel increased mortality even more, since you could very well run into thieves/pirates/slavers, new and exciting diseases your immune system wasn’t adapted to, end up stranded and/or lost in the wilderness, or just get kicked by a horse. In contrast, modern air travel is one of the safest ways to travel today - which makes it one of the safest ways to travel in all of human history.
Next, comfort. As an average traveller in the middle ages (not a noble person), you will be walking. Maybe you have a horse or donkey in your group to help carry food and supplies, but the supplies will take priority, and the only way you get to ride that animal is if you break your leg. To any fans of camping/backpacking, remember that you will not be using modern tents, backpacks, or shoes. Your shelter for a night out will be, at best, a good wool blanket or cloak - mosquitos or gnats buzzing in your ears, rain falling on your face, the cold ground sucking away your warmth. Your backpack, at best, is a sack with shoulder straps, or perhaps a few sticks lashed together with a few ropes to hang over your shoulders - and it may just be a sack that you sling over your shoulder and carry from the front with both hands, your body bruised, aching, and chaffed after just one day of handling such a load. Your shoes are floppy bits of leather - no support or padding to be heard of. If you get sick? Keep walking, or the group is leaving you behind. Get to a villiage? Maybe you’ll get a respite by sleeping under the eves of someones roof or on the hard wood floor of the local church. Food? Heard of hard tack? Shit your pants? Well, you’ll just have to walk in your shit pants for 6 months. But yes, yes, tell me how this is so much better than being mildly uncomfortable sitting in a climate controlled airplane for a few hours while you look down on the earth like a LITERAL FUCKING GOD.
And finally, time. People here seem to think like medieval people travelled for 6 months just for funsies. But no, this is not like taking a year long vacation. For one thing, the other two reasons above - your life is going to be very shitty for basically the whole time, and you might just die due to an ill-tempered musselman or an evil jew witch cursing you to shit blood. But also, you are giving up the opportunity to do anything else to improve your life or the life of your family for a whole year. Your mom could get sick and die. That sexy somebody you keep making eye contact with could marry someone else. The part of the community crop land you’ve been angling to get assigned to your family will get snaked by Bill - of course. Fucking Bill. What a dick. And really, until you show up again, no one is going to do anything to help you out because, again, there is a good chance you die on your trip.
Now, of course, everyone on Lemmy will hate to hear this, because of course, sitting next to a baby on a plane because of THE CAPITALISTS is literally the worst thing that ever happened to anyone, ever, and it was definitely better to die of plague while living under the rule of a literal feudal lord.
But what they’ll hate to hear even more is that if you really want to go on a year long pilgrimage, you can fucking do that. You could start today. And it would still be better than your medival counterparts’, almost no matter what. You can quit your job, break your lease, and start travelling with a few dollars in your pocket - and when you want to return to normal life, just say “oh, I was travelling”, and all the hiring managers will think you are super cool. You can hitchhike across countries where you don’t speak the language, and use your smartphone to translate. You can eat for free out of dumpsters because we throw out tons and tons of perfectly edible food every day. If you are reading this now, you can make money easily simply by travelling to a particular place and speaking a language you already know. If you decide to walk through the wilderness for days, weeks, or months, you can find free maps, mapping software, and information not just about the safest routes, but the most beautiful. You can pick up extraordinarily light, comfortable, and functional equipment from a thrift store. YOU CAN SEE AT NIGHT WITH THE CLICK OF A BUTTON. And if, during your travels, you find out your mom has fallen ill, or Bill is about to swindle the family farm, you can beg, borrow, or steal enough money to catch an oh-so-uncomfortable plane ride home and deal with the situation.
Holy shit, YES, flying economy on an airplane is so much better.
They let bots on lemmy now? No human would bother to write all that out over a silly meme like that.
And even if it were written by a human, I won’t ever read that just cause it might be AI.I write stupid long ass comments like that all the time, I just have ADHD. If you’re incapable of reading such comments, perhaps you also have a disorder of some sort.
I’m sure people in the middle ages where adapted to most of the situations. For example If you don’t wash for a few days or sit near a fire mosquitoes are less of a problem. Most towns, inns or taverns where less than 1 days march from the next in medieval Europe, so you would not have to sleep in the woods. There where also seasonal workers who would not live in one place, but move depending on the season to help sow or harvest fields, or work at different cities in their trade to learn new skills from different masters to see different countries.
Eh if you’re a peasant and stay at home you might be conscripted to fight for your lord against the people lord the next county over just because they have a disagreement or maybe because they’re bored or whatever. Probably gonna die a gruesome death either way. Going on a pilgrimage you at least see some of the world before you meet your gruesome death.
This reeks of dark ages pop history talking points
The monks are not expected to increase shareholder profits in stale air and incessant fluorescent lighting.
5 hours out of a 3 day vacation w/ another 5 hours at the end. Also you’re gonna have to do some shit when you get back home to be ready for work on Monday.
Vs.
Hey we’re going to be traveling for 6 months, this is just your life now.
I could be wrong but I feel like the death rates for those trips were also very high
Yes but to be fair, the death rate of staying home was also high
5 hours trapped in a small, uncomfortable metal box with not much to do vs months on a camp-hike.
We went from “the canterbury tales” to “travel vlogging couples”
An alternate version from the 1960s would show taking 3-5 days on a bus to take that 5 hour flight.
Plus, some of y’all ain’t never taken a 16 hour flight with a refuel stop at hour 12 and it shows.
When I was in the US Air Force, I returned to the US on a flight they call the Milk Run. There were layovers in Aviano, Madrid, and th Azores Islands (that I can remember, at least). This was over 30 years ago, but if the Milk Run still exists, I would not recommend it.
“Milk run” is a generic term for routes with many stops, we have one here too :)
I think the furthest I’ve flown direct is 14 hrs and they didn’t refuel. But normally I’m doing a layover/transfer somewhere so the 14 hrs is usually closer to 20 for total travel time
Yeeah, the 16er was to Joburg from the States. There’s nowhere to refuel between Ghana and SA, so if was a standard stop both ways.
Trains over planes all day
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Plus, you’d get to carry a sword and no one would bat an eye. I mean how cool is that?
As someone that doesn’t have a car and uses coaches, public transit, or bicycles to get around, I’ve always found it ironic that people are willing to be stacked and piled into planes for hours but refuse to take a public bus ride for an hour. Planes are the only place where people can’t just take their car to go somewhere and really have to put up with all the BS of traveling with other people.
When I go visit my family and friends using public transit and it takes multiple hours, I sometimes fantasize that I could have gone to the airport and use the same amount of time to fly to a Caribbean island. People complain about planes but I’ve used public transit all my life so to me they’re just a tad worse than a packed public bus. At least planes have power and bathrooms, even if you have to climb over other people to use them.
I also love bike touring so sometimes instead of taking 2.5 hours to go visit my family using public transit, I use the greenways to cycle there, spend the night camping in a small provincial park, and finish the rest of the ride the next day. It usually takes about 7 hours of continuous cycling, without the pauses for rest/food and the overnight. I could rent a car and drive there in about 1.5 hour but then I wouldn’t spend a night there. It’s not always easy, but it’s usually much more rewarding.
So yeah, it’s relative.
I think that depends a lot on how available public transit is where you are.
I’d happily ride a bus for an hour except the bus lines near me would require 15 to 30 mins of driving, pay for parking, then wait for the line I want which only runs 2 or 3 times a day. OR I could drive direct.
Planes are the only time a lot of us can reasonably interface with public transit.
My FIL wanted to go eco for our last trip to visit my BIL and to get from Wilmington to Chicago there was literally ONE train per day that takes over 24 hours to arrive and it left at like 545am? It’s totally obnoxious.
they had nothing going on so who cares what you do
Pretty much. I’m watching Frieren and they spend a lot of time waiting around for the weather to die down, or for specific events. Often times, they do menial tasks for the townsfolk, train, or read a book.
The last JRPG I played, I was teleporting to grind monsters, play at the casino, trying to woo a NPC, and explore random dungeons, while ignoring all the optional fetch quests.
I think I’d be bored as hell (or connected digitally) if I had to do a 6 month walk.
Are we assuming a 6 month journey didnt come with exhaustion and certain death from starvation, pneumonias, dysentery, disease, infections, freezing and trauma from attacks on the way ? In cooler moist climates a mere cut could be life or death back then. There was not any penicillin.
Have you not heard the horror stories even of today’s boat slaves who die packed in?
I think video games filled with light quests of picking moss might be deluding a few people with how the medieval times actually were.
Open a book.
Certain death? Of course not, that’s absurd. I think you’ve got a very warped “pop-history” view of what the world was like long ago. Of course it depends entirely on when and where we’re talking about (some periods in some places common folk practically never traveled, other times and places people were traveling all the time) but if we assume a time and place where traveling was common, a traveler could expect:
- Paved roads
- Plenty of places to stop and rest (even if there are no inns available, plenty of people are willing to take in travelers for a night, especially holy men on a pilgrimage)
- Few animals left who are willing to try preying on humans (they learned their lesson looooong ago)
- Infrequent disease (you’re spending most of your time out in the open air with a small group of the same people, the only place for disease to come from is unclean water, which you know better than to drink outside of emergencies)
What part of these conditions reminds you of the tightly-packed, underfed, sedentary life of a slave being transported as cargo on a boat?
You’re being absurd. Cleanliness was not what it is today. Even in war marches more died from water born disease as recent as 1800s just trudging rather than war itself. This is our history and how some of our lineages may have been entirely terminated.
Bring oblivious to this is actually really insulting for some who know very well what it took for our own lineage just to travel to safety.
It absolutely was not a walk in the park like you’re selling it. Some people were hunted for years before getting safe.
Cleanliness was not what it is today.
People like to be clean—that’s part of our nature and wasn’t invented in the year 1900. Ash can be used as soap and is extremely abundant.
Even in war marches
You say that like war matches are less likely to be deadly. Medieval military logistics were extremely difficult to manage. The needs of an entire army are massively different to the needs of a small band of pilgrims or other travelers. It is more difficult to maintain food supplies, clean drinks, and safe lodging when you’re traveling in an enormous group of (sometimes unwelcome) armed men.
It absolutely was not a walk in the park like you’re selling it
For a lot of people in a lot of places in a lot of time periods, it really was. Towns were close together, people were generous with travelers, and the roads were safe.
at least they had full leg space without class difference.
A half-year pilgrim sounds fantastic! Get a break from my job and explore the world, probably share the expenses and burden with other fellow pilgrims.
Sign me the fuck up now.
We need everything to be available instantly, because we need our time to be bored and watch TikTok.
Reminds me of Yuval Noah Harari who spoke in a talk of his about how even kings back in the day, generally speaking people who get a lot of information handed to them all the time, when they needed to travel the country, they would have a week off and be detached from all the news whilst sitting in a carriage. Here we are having all the world news available to us every second of the day. No excuse not to be up to date on anything. What a comfort…
When I travel across Europe I do so by train, and I find it to be part of the experience that the journey takes time. Last year I visited Italy, from the Netherlands, and through the train window I see the landscape floating by, the flat Netherlands, the hills in Germany, the mountains in Switzerland and then the beautiful landscapes of Italy. Due to the time it takes you get a sense for traveling, for the distance you travel. I don’t mind the time, cause I’m reading a book, which is often the most enjoyable thing of my vacations anyway: I find time to read, without any distractions.
More broadly speaking I’ve noticed that I’ve become suspicious of comfort and convenience. Nothing may take time anymore, nothing may take effort. Everything good needs to be quick and easy, available instantly all the time. But is that really better, or did we actually like having to work for something, not minding that it takes time, and weren’t we more satisfied with the relief when we finished something, feeling like we spent our time well and brought something good unto ourselves. Isn’t that experience more meaningful?
You could say this is some sort of false romanticism, but i don’t think it is. Obviously we got a lot of good things, and I am not saying we should get rid of every comfort or convenience in our lifes. I’m just saying the opposite isn’t true either, some discomforts and disconveniences are blessings in disguise.
I agree with everything you’re saying. I just want to point out some caveats to trains (although I absolutely love them and prefer them to cars or planes as well). The obvious one is that few people have enough vacation days to spend multiple days traveling by train. Even if we aren’t talking about paid vacation, not every job/position lets you take unpaid time off. Some jobs don’t let you take more than one or two weeks in a row.
For families this can be additionally challenging since a lot of vacation days need to be taken when school or daycare is out, or the kid is sick, or the kid needs to go to some dentist appointment, leaving you with a total of a week of vacation.
Yeah, and kids in general. It is difficult to keep little children, who want to move and be loud, on a train for days. It’s not impossible, but most likely everyone will be a nerve wreck by the time of arrival. The other people on the train will hate you because you cannot “tame” your kid, or they will judge you because after one and a half days you decide to allow your kid to watch a movie on a tablet to have a break. The relaxing aspect of a train ride tends to vanish.
And last but not least, health conditions. Some people cannot sit for long periods of time and have to wear compression socks or even get heparin shots to prevent thrombosis. This is already the case for a 6 hour flight, but 6 days of minimal movement is difficult and not recommended. You can do it - there are ways to do it - but it is something that you need to keep in mind when travelling.
But nevertheless, I agree that long train rides and a break from the fast paced, information immersed world is great. Maybe this: as long as you can do so, do it! There might be a time in your life when this will be more difficult and you will have to pause and find a better suited alternative. But that doesn’t mean you can’t unpause when the time is right. Enjoy!
You’re right. It’s easy for me to hold this position, given that I’m without kids, without specific health problems, and live in the Netherlands where I have more than enough vacation days to spend.
Got one thing to add, that’s not contradictorary to what you’re saying but I just would like to share: I think we overvalue long distance holidays. People fly to the other side of the planet, but never visit beautiful places at 100km distance from home. We mistake the possibility of going very far away, for that being more desireable than going places relatively close by, which is not necesarilly the case. In saying this I don’t want to begrudge anyone and I don’t mean to say it’s not a legitimate thing for someone to want to see certain parts of the world some day.
I agree so much with that! I love long distance travelling, but due to financial and, more importantly, environmental costs I hardly ever do it. During my early 20s I found a fondness for holidays close by. I am not a big fan of nature (I mean, I am, but I don’t need to be immersed in it if you know what I mean), but there are so many cities and towns to explore nearby. To be fair, we are kind of privileged in Europe, me in Germany even more so. Due to the history and Germany basically being a plethora of kingdoms sewn together in the mid 1800s, you really have so many different cultures within a single country and don’t need to cross borders to experience a different world. (However, growing up in Munich, it was faster to drive to Italy’s coast than to Germany’s.)
