Danish couple did travel across - Thank you to the Amtrak Forum

[Jeppe_guest]

Hi there!

I asked for information last year before going from coast to coast by train here:

http://discuss.amtraktrains.com/index.php?/topic/59510-two-danes-on-a-us-15-day-pass-where-should-we-go/

I can't comment in that thread anymore, I have no idea why, but I just wanted to say thanks to all of you guys answering!

I wrote a story on the trip in the Danish magazine Ud & Se and you can see it (and Evan's great images from his trips) on page 50 here:

http://ipaper.ipapercms.dk/DSB/udogse/2015/6/

It's a free magazine put into all trains all over Denmark and printed in 140,000 copies and it's actually a respected publication among journalists - especially photo journalists.

We ended up going from New York to Chicago (BBQ on 4th of July!) and a stopover in Glenwood Springs in the great Colorado Hotel (Roosevelt, bears, amazing steaks and Germany beating Brazil in the World Cup) and ending up in Emeryville, SF. GREAT TRIP FOLKS! THANKS!

 

[Ryan]

That's awesome, glad we could help!

I can't read a single word of it, but the pictures are great! .

There were many issues here with unregistered posters (guests) causing problems, so guest posts are limited to this smaller forum for Q&A. If you were to sign up for an account (it's free, despite the site owner making it look like you have to buy a membership), you would be able to post in your old thread.

It sounds like a great trip, I'd love to hear more about it!

 

[Bob Dylan]

Sounds like a wonderful trip, as Ryan said most of us can't read the article but nice pics! Please do consider joining as member, wed love to read your trip report and hear about your other travel as well as Denmark!

Some friends from Denmark are currently touring the US, they were in Austin for the week we had Noah's flood,

They are now on the way to visit Mt. Rushmore, Yellowstone, Grand Teton and other Western National Parks via Motorhome, then will take the California Zephyr to Emeryville ( they've seen Colorado and the Grand Canyon) and fly home to Copenhagen from there.

 

[Guest]

I know you can't read the thing - sorry for not stating that. It's just a few captions about these people's life situation and a brief text about the experience of travelling with Amtrak trains and a bit about the general reputation of train driving in the US. I'll try to get another and longer piece published in a newspaper soon.

I had many epiphanies in those trains and I recorded a lot of ambience and soundtracks from the trip on my sound recorder. I loved to sit alone in the Café Car drinking a Sierra Nevada IPA and talking to the Café Car worker or other passengers. In general you guys are really good in the discipline of small talk - I totally agree with my fellow Scandinavian Knausgaard about this: http://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/01/magazine/karl-ove-knausgaard-travels-through-america.html

I met so many interesting people and I saw some of the most breathtaking landscapes and weather phenomena in my life.

 

[caravanman]

This link seems to work better : http://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/01/magazine/karl-ove-knausgaard-travels-through-america.html

 

[Bus Nut]

Your photos are fabulous. What does the title mean, "American Track"? Or is that "Trek"? I guess the US is still the land of the West, harsh landscapes, and urban decay, huh. I agree that you can have the best chats on trains, especially the long distance ones.

I was having a great (if weird) chat on a Greyhound once and the bus driver cut it to tell us to knock it off because we were distracting him!

 

[Guest_Jeppe]

It is not my images, but McNair Evans: http://mcnairevans.com/projects/in-search-of-great-men/

American tracks or trails, would be the right translation. It's my editor's title, not mine. As far as I know Amtrak is an abbreviation of American tracks or trails, right?

 

[trainman74]

As far as I know Amtrak is an abbreviation of American tracks or trails, right?

Sort of -- it's a "fake" trademark name that doesn't really mean anything, but it's supposed to evoke "America" and "track."

 

[me_little_me]

Here in the states, we sometimes see hotels that offer a "cheese danish" for breakfast. In Denmark, do you have hotels that offer a bite of an "cheesy american"?

 

[VentureForth]

Here are my best re-translations from Google translate (OP could probably do a better job, but hey, I'm bored):

The rail network in a car's country has a reputation for being both slow and outdated. But on long stretches,

classic coaches hide many good stories. Out & See has gone across the continent conquering this time honored means of transport.

Don travels with Amtrak to see the countryside change, eat good food and meet new people. He boarded the passenger train California Zephyr in Reno, Nevada and travels for free this time with earned points from previous trips with Amtrak. He is a veteran from the US Army. In 1960, he reported for duty under President Eisenhower, and was posted on the Greenland ice sheet as part of the secret US involvement in the region during the Cold War.

>Amtrak administers the longest stretch of passenger trains in the world with 33,000 kilometers of railways

Felix travels from Sacramento in California to Iowa in the American Midwest to work in the construction industry. On trains, he tries to meet new people. He left Mexico 20 years ago, and has since worked in the United States. In Iowa, he puts silos up in an area where agriculture is the dominant industry. Previously, Felix worked in the grain industry, but today he prefers to build silos.

Gabe regularly ride the rail line Sunset Limited, which runs between Los Angeles and New Orleans, Louisiana. He remembers one experience on the train where there was an uproar between two men who fought to be first into the dining car. Immediately after the turmoil, the train slowed down in the middle of the desert near Phoenix, Arizona and the Mexican border. The men were arrested and thrown in the notorious Tent City Jail, where inmates live in discarded tents from the Korean War, even though summer temperatures reach over 60 degrees [Celsius, 140 degrees F].

The US trains are spacious. Both physically and metaphorically. On Amtrak's blue polyester seats Americans and tourists travel with a speed that makes high-speed trains in Japan look like something from a future film.

Trains are known to be notoriously delayed, and talking with its passengers about Amtrak's reputation, they call it a forgotten mode of transport.

A passenger on the train between Denver and Sacramento explains that in the old days you dressed nicely when you got on a train. Today, people ride with flip-flops on. He says, annoyed: "I have seen all means of transportation decay. All of them except motorways'.

The falling fares do mean that you meet people from all walks of life on the trains.

A steel worker who commutes between his home in Chicago, Illinois, and his workplace in Lincoln, Nebraska, speaks passionately about the prospects of the flat landscape with cornfields and to the opportunity to meet new people on the train. For him, Amtrak trains are in contrast to the class-divided American society: "Daily life is often in an environment where you do not get the chance to meet different people. Trains like this are different. When riding with Amtrak, one can never say that you have not met someone from a strange place."

>In the wake of the American Civil [War, railroads] hired former slave laborers to serve the white passengers. There is still a tradition that one third of staff are African Americans.

Carla comes from Coeur D'Alene, Idaho, near the Canadian border in the northwest corner of the United States, where her seven year old son stills lives. Today, she commutes between North Dakota and Idaho to take care of him. In North Dakota, she struggles to complete her cosmetician training in the daytime, make money as housekeeper in the afternoon and later mix cocktails at the strip club Heartbreakers, a stone's throw from the railway station in the city of Williston. She dreams of a modeling career and about starting her own beauty salon.

On the train Southwest Chief on the way to California sits Keri. She is 20 years old and is on her way to meet her biological family in Bakersfield for the first time. Nervousness shimmers throughout the body, while the train moves through the countryside. Keri is traveling from North Carolina across the US with Amtrak to meet her aunt, cousin and uncle. In North Carolina, she leaves behind her family from her street. Year round, it has primarily been them who have taken care of her. Now she hopes to find the same care in people that she is related to genetically.

Virginia had planned to fly to a skiing holiday in Salt Lake City, but when she was fired from her job, she found out that she had some extra time. And, with the safety checks at airports which frustrate her, it has been a great experience for her to travel with Amtrak. Virginia loves the atmosphere in the dining car, where she thinks the staff serves good food and, in general, is hugely helpful.

 

[Slasharoo]

Amtrak is an acronym for American Travel and Track

 

[VentureForth]

Technically a portmanteau, not an acronym.