34 hours of train is a lot of train by anyone's standards. Not to say it was boring - far from it. In fact, I only managed to read about 100 pages of books because there was so much to see, and so many people to talk to. So, there is too much to write to really be able to tell you what it was like. Instead, I will write about the people... and a little about the food.
The photo is of the one meal I took in the "dining car" (always makes me think of the chattanooga choo choo). Unfortunately you can't see quite what a disappointment it was. They were sold out of the only vegetarian option (veggie burger), so I had to take the macaroni cheese from the children's menu. It came in... 3 minutes! As did my dining companion's steak burger. It was a small bowl of overcooked pasta, with a very small amount of cream sauce. Where was the crispy cheesy topping?! Maybe kids aren't supposed to care about that.
The rest of my food I brought with me - the on board meals are expensive and (as you might have guessed) not that great. However, on my seriously long haul from Seattle to Chicago I have a sleeping car, which is fiendishly expensive, but includes all my meals in the dining car. So, watch this space for a detailed (and if I remember, illustrated) discussion of Amtrak cuisine.
No Amish this time, but a good and varied collection of people nonetheless. 2 English gap year students doing NYC to SF in one go, a computer game idea generator from Barcelona via Montreal, a train nut who spent hours (literally) telling me about California's historic inter-urban railways, a bossy mum with her recalcitrant son - she drove him mad making him do things like give up his seat so I could sit next to her and talk, a crowd of Serbian students, a black doctor with a white wife, a Glaswegian son-in-law and a Chinese daughter-in-law (and a passion for Obama) and a woman who had lost the sight in each of her eyes but in two different ways...
I am struck by the easy sociability of Americans, and ashamed when I find myself ill at ease or worrying about being rude.
De Tocqueville wrote about the pleasure two American strangers have on meeting one another, and how this contrasts with the English, who exchange only the most necessary pleasantries before making their excuses and going their own way. This was (incredibly, 170 years later!) illustrated on the train. The lounge car attendant asked me, and the man in the queue behind me, where we were from. London. And Manchester. We smiled nervously at one another and asked politely what the other was doing in America. Then the conversation stalled. Yet I imagine he was as swept away by the openness and friendliness of Americans and found himself in long conversations with them, as I did.
PS update on 10th October - I forgot to write that we journeyed along a river for quite a long time, passing a couple of camp sites, and lots of people out in boats or on the shore enjoying the great outdoors. As the train went past, literally half of those along the river pulled their trousers down and mooned us. Is this some kind of great American tradition?
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