2026-07 | Holidays by Rail
This month I went on holiday and took a train ride from Chisinau to Bucharest and back —
13 hours (600-odd km) each way, overnight. In the middle, the track changes gauges from
152 cm (Soviet) to 143.5 cm (European). The carriages are lifted by a crane, passengers still
in them, and it’s the job of some guy at the edge of Europe to push the new set of wheels under them.
Unsurprisingly, the journey attracts a number of men who like trains a lot (and me, I also like trains).
Between train rides I rented a bike in Bucharest and biked around aimlessly: still the best way to
see a new city. Taking superfluous trains is of course somewhat extravagant, even if they cost
less than the average London-Norwich roundtrip. But the biggest luxury was 36 hours of completely
unstructured time alone. Between trying to be a decent carer to a very small person and decent at
looking at the ocean, this experience of time, once common, felt like a window into another modality.
A nice reminder that things can be many ways!
You would think 1200 km of rail travel would be conducive to reading, but I ended up spending a good amount
of it staring out the window at wheat or drinking Chișinău Blondă with various Erasmus bois and, apparently,
the guy who helped make this film. (After being unsuccessful at finding someone to go smoke a
cigarette between the carriages with him, he informed us he would go alone, lesbian-style — unintentionally
hilarious and also high praise.) My inner edgelord had to ask the giant Tiraspol truckers who kept insisting
on beers if Transnistria was Russian or Moldovan in broken Russian. This worked out better than it could have,
as the eventual result was a (highly theoretical) invite to someone’s dacha and a warning to not cross the
owner of Sheriff. They think Transnistria is Russian but note that it’s a very diverse society, they have
Ukranians, Moldovans, Azeris… anyway, why bother with politics when the nature is so nice? Why do I live in Britain?
In between these exchanges, I have been reading the Pope’s latest encyclical about artificial intelligence,
which I recommend -- precise, compassionate, and clear, somehow both universal and timely*.
So-called artificial intelligences do not undergo experiences, do not possess a body,
do not feel joy or pain, do not mature through relationships and do not know from within what love, work, friendship or responsibility mean. Nor do they have a moral conscience, since they do not judge good and evil, grasp the ultimate meaning of situations, or bear responsibility for consequences. They may imitate language, behavior and analytical skills, or even simulate empathy and understanding, but they do not understand what they produce, for they lack the affective, relational and spiritual perspective through which human beings grow in wisdom. Even when these tools are described as capable of “learning,” their way of doing so is different from that of a human person. It is not the experience of those who allow themselves to be shaped by life and grow over time through choices, mistakes, forgiveness and fidelity.
*(A note on my perspective: I am not a practicing Christian, though I was baptized
into the Catholic faith in a Prague basilica established in 993, along with a number of friends,
acquaintances, and whoever else was around after the fall of Godless Communism. I am of course by
default infinitely more Christian than the tech bros and politicians larping Catholicism this week, but like, aren’t we all.)
Other things I read recently:
• Dirty, dangerous, violent and young: excellent, an excerpt
here. Curious: the US public school system was responsible for a good amount of my compulsory education , and we touched on the civil rights movement every year, and they somehow never mentioned Fred Hampton.
• Famesick: a fun thing to read in a train carriage at 2 in the morning in Uzgheni. It is probably good to find self-narratives that are a) self-compassionate and b) true.
We went to Romania and our child met a bunch of Moscow Watchdogs and now thinks all dogs are his friend,
which could become a problem at some point. The Romanian forests were full of chanterelles.
The sun, high in the sky. Wild dogs, domestic sheep. Fireweed. Etc. Into the mystic.
🚂•••🚂 •••🚂 •••🚂 •••🚂