Whether we live away from our home country by choice or out of need, many of us migrants feel the need to go back often to our place of origin in order to keep in touch with our loved ones and our roots.
Is that compatible with giving up flying?
Like everything, it depends on your circumstances, but I want to argue it’s not impossible.
I’m originally from a village close to Barcelona, but I have been living in the UK for nearly nine years, first in Leeds and now in Sheffield. At first, unaware of the huge environmental impact of flying, I was flying home for long weekends every two months or so. Then I met my current partner, who is committed to not flying for environmental reasons. I learned about the huge carbon footprint of the aviation industry and realised that flying every other month was in total contradiction with any climate activism I engaged in.
Over the past 8 years, my partner and I have tried nearly all the main land and sea routes between Barcelona and the north of England. My usual outward route is leaving Sheffield in the afternoon, bound towards London. There, you can catch one of the cheaper evening Eurostars. Ideally, you get to Gare du Nord in Paris in time to grab a delicious vegan Vietnamese takeaway dinner near Gare d’Austerlitz and then board the Intercités de Nuit night train.
The second-class couchettes are comfortable enough, and when you wake up you are in the middle of the beautiful Pyrenees. The train snakes between and through the mountains until it arrives at La Tor de Querol, a border station that makes you feel as if you were in a Western.
French and Spanish trains run on different gauges, so you leave the French train and the European tracks behind and change platforms to get on a local train with the wider gauge of the Iberian tracks. This train goes all the way to Barcelona, stopping at La Molina ski resort and towns and villages like Puigcerdà, Ribes de Freser and Vic along the way. Not the fastest option, but a scenic and laid-back route – and more time-efficient than you might think because you get a night’s sleep.
For the way back, I like the fast route (but it also tends to be lots pricier). It involves taking the TGV double-decker high-speed train at a civilised 9:30 am in Barcelona, which stops at Girona and Figueres-Vilafant stations before crossing into France. Six hours of Catalan and French countryside later (including flamingo spotting as you pass through the wetlands near Narbonne), you find yourself at Gare de Lyon in Paris. There you change stations to get the Eurostar from Gare du Nord. This combination means getting to Sheffield from London around 11 pm, so the whole journey takes about 14 hours (accounting for the time difference between the UK and mainland Europe).
I’m a freelancer, so I can be flexible about my working days and I can also get some work done from the train (as long as it doesn’t rely on good internet!). My partner, who works standard office hours, doesn’t have the same flexibility. For this reason, we usually travel on the weekends so that he doesn’t have to take days off. When we go back to my home country, we do a mix of working remotely and taking some holidays, which allows us to spend longer at our destination.
Since becoming a freelancer, I’ve settled into a pattern of going back four times a year for more than two weeks each time. As a linguist who translates into Catalan and Spanish, those visits are not only about nurturing my relationships with my friends and my family, but also with my language and my culture.
Of course, me living 1,360 km away from my home country is not the same as living 10,000 km away or more. The distance, the transport options, and geopolitics can be a barrier to going back without flying. In my case, the train has become my main means of transport when going back to my home country, but I’m not totally flight free due to the steep price of train tickets.
Deciding to spend more money on train tickets, visit less often or simply not go to a destination can be really hard, particularly when many people around us take flights like they were buses.
