The far-from-home environmentalist [London to Gothenburg]
In the first of a series of blogs from brighter future members, Amanda Larsson takes us through the ups and downs of getting from London to Gothenburg overland. And its quite some experience.
In short…
| Start | London, UK |
| Destination | Gothenburg, Sweden |
| Transport mode(s) | Train x 4 |
| Journey duration | 27 hours |
| Cost | £100 one way |
| Carbon saved | The carbon calculator used a funny route but I probably saved over half the carbon emitted by a flight |
| Destination highlights | Family, friends, Christmas |
| Journey highlights e.g. people | Cologne Christmas MarketCopenhagen during COP-15 |
| How you did it | With the burning passion of a keen climate nut |
| Challenges | Creepy (but harmless) sleeper train compartment “buddy”Heavy luggage |
| Tips | Bring a friend or twoBook about a month in advancePack as lightly as possible |
To the seasoned environmentalists out there, this’ll be no big deal. An overland trip to Sweden – who gives? But when I decided to book myself onto four trains to make my regular Christmas trip back home, it was something I had never even considered in any of the preceding years, let alone actually done. Having lived away from my “home” country of Sweden all my life, I sheepishly admit to a nauseating number of long haul flights in my lifetime. I started my high carbon crusade at the petty age of just two weeks, on a transcontinental flight from Gothenburg to Tokyo, where my notoriously well-developed baby screams will have pushed every angsty teenager and tensed up businessman to breaking point.
The colossal carbon weight of my past is something that I struggled to cope with when I first became involved in climate change issues. But how can we attack ignorance for allowing us to act irresponsibly? It’s when we are informed and still fail to make the right decision that we should start feeling guilty. And that’s why I started feeling pretty freaking guilty when everyone around me was talking about overland trips to Copenhagen in December… Copenhagen is a three and a half hour journey from Gothenburg. “Peanuts” I thought as I tugged at my 10:10 tag.
Though negotiating the websites of four different European train providers was no quick task, it was actually a bit of an adventure in itself. So after a couple of well-spent hours I’d booked myself onto that 27 hour, one-way journey to Sweden.
My planned route took me from London to Brussels on the (over-priced but reasonable if booked in advance) Eurostar. After an hour spent purchasing chocolate and waffles (how embarrassingly cliché) at Brussels Midi, I hopped (or rather heaved my walrus-sized suitcase) onto the (very well-priced) Thalys, which carried me smoothly to Cologne alongside an alarmingly bejewelled middle-aged woman, who I tried not to compare with Cruella de Vil.
Luckily I’d factored in three hours to check out Cologne’s Christmas market, which was seething with jolly Germans and European tourists. With holiday tunes emanating from the bandstand, snowflakes falling from the skies and plenty of interesting trinkets to sneak a peek at, it was a truly heart-warming experience. At the time, I wished I could’ve shared it with someone in person rather than by text message over my lonely bratwurst.
After a minor panic attack involving Cologne station’s supremely intelligent baggage lockers, I rushed to catch the overnight Deutsche Bahn City Night Line train to Copenhagen. Now I’ll be completely frank – for the money you pay, you can expect better. And sharing a 6-berth cabin with a middle-aged man who spoke no language I could understand other than the rather remarkable sounds of his snoring (which could only be described as “flappy”) was no delight. But, cheesy as it sounds, my frustration was all but flushed out when I woke up to see the peach-coloured sun rising on the sea as we crossed between the islands of Denmark. It was indescribably stunning.
Like any good environmentalist I made sure to give myself some time in Copenhagen to check out the proceedings around COP-15. Perhaps luckily for me, my complete lack of any sense of direction whatsoever prevented me from finding where the real action was and, instead, I spent a calm and quiet three hours checking out some excellent public photo exhibitions on climate change. After nearly 24 hours of train travel, only a few winks of sleep and smelling like an orang-utan’s armpit, those exhibitions re-lighted a fire inside me, reminding me why we do things when everyone around us thinks they’re absurd. Those photos made me feel pretty proud that I’d made it that far.
So the final leg of my journey was spent in deep contemplation, clocking up miles on the snow-covered track through southern Sweden (on a surprisingly cheap SJ ticket). Though I tried to watch one of those romanticized anarchist DVDs that I’d packed especially, I just couldn’t get my eyes off the passing scenery. For nearly three hours I sat captivated by every mile of that glitteringly beautiful winter landscape. And in those moments I realized, like so many times before, how heart-breaking it is to think that people could someday be robbed of the opportunity to see something like that again. And that’s why I do this.
The doldrums is a real place. It’s an area of equatorial ocean where freak atmospheric conditions mean that sailors can be frequently becalmed. Perhaps the climate there is changing. Maybe that would be a good thing for passing ships. But metaphorically, the image of global climate change is going through a bad patch internationally with potentially serious consequences for how the public at large responds to the issue and the wider ramifications of sustainability. First, there was “climate gate”, the email scandal about climate science data manipulation that blew up just before Copenhagen. At the time it seemed insignificant and an almost comical twist to the media circus surrounding the negotiations. Two months on and it seems that its real damage is only now being felt, as climate sceptics feel increasingly confident to jump on any scientific irregularity and point the finger at corrupt scientists and conniving governments. And then there was Copenhagen itself, teetering on the pedestal on which so many well-meaning campaigners had placed it. The wisdom of telling the world that this was “the most important meeting in the history of the world” when realistically it could never deliver in the face of stagnating US legislation, now seems naïve at best. That the European media and their governments had whipped each other up into a frenzy over it, each encouraging the other to place more and more weight on the meeting, resulting in significant political capital being wagered on the “Obama effect” has not helped the current situation. The Copenhagen Comedown has been steeper and sharper than most expected. Had you noticed that climate change is no longer on the British Tories’ “top ten list of reasons to vote for us”? Neither had I nor millions of others. It quietly slipped away, taking the rest of David Cameron’s green credibility with it. Looking west, the failure of the US democrats to maintain their super-majority in the senate with the Massachusetts seat sees climate change effectively kicked off the US agenda and into the elephant grass.