The slow train
For the last couple of weeks I've been on a family holiday in Italy. My mum decided to book the first family holiday we've had in probably 20 plus years in the Umbrian mountains to celebrate a bunch of family birthdays and occasions at once, and frankly after a stressful final PhD push I felt like we deserved it.
The problem was, A. and I have decided to minimise the amount of flying we do for environmental reasons. (The issue of individual onus vs. corporate, governmental and systemic responsibility is a regular topic of conversation in our house, but we generally come down on the side that even if the problems are way way bigger than us, if everyone makes little changes, perhaps bigger change will come). So, instead we decided to get the train - or, to be more precise, 14 trains, all the way from Edinburgh to Chiusi via London, Paris, Zurich and Milan. Instead of seeing the roughly 42 hours of travel as an inconvenience, we wanted to challenge ourselves to make it part of the adventure, not just a means of getting to the end point, where the fun would begin.
I think this mental reframing was partly the reason that, on the outward leg at least, we never felt bored. I was fully expecting it to feel like a slog, but it didn't. We played card games, napped, read our books, and spent long periods - literally hours - just staring out of the window. Granted, this was facilitated by some rather lovely alpine scenery, but still - knowing my general reliance on distraction, I was pleasantly surprised. I had an iPad full of films and TV in my bag - it didn't come out until we were in the Channel Tunnel on the return leg. (It's dark and boring and I've done that trip before).
As I've written about before, I wholeheartedly subscribe to Sicart, De Koven and other's view that playfulness involves our ability to change how we see the world around us, and reframe moments in life as opportunities for play. By acknowledging in advance that what we were doing was travelling slow, we reframed the travel as more than perfunctory - it became fun. I genuinely looked forward to getting back on a train at the end of the week.
This doesn’t mean, of course, that every element of travelling this way was smooth or fun. Planning all the connections, hotels and stopovers was a logistical nightmare; my inbox is still overflowing with emails from four different train companies and hotels in five different countries, all of whom apparently ignore the “unsubscribe” box I definitely, definitely ticked. And my anxiety spiked as we waited for a rail replacement bus that looked very much like it was going to require pointy elbows to get aboard.
But by consciously choosing and acknowledging the value in doing things differently—even playfully—by being curious, open, and reframing the travel as part of the adventure, we enjoyed the experience in ways we wouldn’t have otherwise. We saw things we wouldn’t have seen, and learned things we wouldn’t have learned.
That’s why it’s worth practicing playfulness: not just to come up with new routes from A to B, but to nurture the ability to reframe them as opportunities for joy and adventure. To put in the graft, knowing it might just make life feel newer, stranger, more exciting.