Epiphany &GNOME reinout | 16 Dec 2009 07:04 pm
Arrived at WebKitGtk hackfest
This morning I took a flight to La Coruña, Spain (also known as A Coruña in local Galician language) to join in the WebKitGtk hackfest. Why would I join such a hackfest when I don’t have any C/C++ skills worth mentioning? Well— it’s my task to clean out bugzilla a bit (both Webkit and Gnome) and I’m also planning to get up to speed with Seed/Javascript Epiphany extensions in order to make some improvements there!
The food here is excellent, as a vegetarian I feel very well treated! Looking forward to getting to know the town.
P.S. It’s saddening that booking a flight from Amsterdam to La Coruña is so easy and booking the same trip by train is all but impossible. There is no international train planner that will calculate this trip for you. It’s possible to travel to Madrid and then book a trip from Madrid to La Coruña, but even then you’re unable to get any price information on the Web. Not even considering the traveling timeof at least 24 hours, most likely the trip would be even more expensive than the modest €290 I had to pay for a return flight with Iberia. I couldn’t explain that to the Gnome Foundation who paid a big part of my trip.
Note to our EU negotiators: if we want some tangible results from Copenhagen instead of volatile emission targets, why not start with making train travel more attractive?
Edit: Hi Planet Gnome! Would somebody with the right superpowers be so kind to update my hackergotchi please?
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on 16 Dec 2009 at 21:08 1.Ronald said …
“P.S. It’s saddening that booking a flight from Amsterdam to La Coruña is so easy and booking the same trip by train is all but impossible. [..] Not even considering the traveling timeof at least 24 hours, most likely the trip would be even more expensive than the modest €290 I had to pay for a return flight [..].”
If it’s more expensive and it takes longer, isn’t it logical that it’s not being offered? Nobody would be interested! (Hoi Reinout!)
on 16 Dec 2009 at 22:10 2.reinout said …
@Ronald Hi!
Well *I* would be interested and when there is a demand in the market and noone offering, and moreover the slow transportation method (which therefore should be cheaper) is actually more expensive, I think there’s a malfunction in the market somewhere. Don’t you?
on 17 Dec 2009 at 0:25 3.Frederic Peters said …
Count me in for the train!
I did Brussels->Paris->Roma->Reggio Calabria by train last week (and I enjoyed it), but a friend joined me today and “of course” she paid less to get here by plane (and she got here faster).
on 17 Dec 2009 at 12:40 4.sebas said …
Ha Reinout!
Check treinreiswinkel.nl, they’re able to book pretty much anything at rates you only get with insider train knowledge. For anything that’s more complicated than “get ticket at ticket machine”, I’ve been using treinreiswinkel, and am pretty happy with their service.
I’m not affiliated with them, just a happy customer.
on 17 Dec 2009 at 16:32 5.Berto said …
I don’t know about the rest of the trip, but the Madrid-Coruña line is too slow for my taste (the high-speed train is currently being deployed) so I wouldn’t recommend it if you come from Amsterdam.
Galicia is a mountainous place, and while the main lines _inside_ Galicia are generally OK, going to/coming from Madrid or Portugal by train takes quite some time.
on 17 Dec 2009 at 18:22 6.Lucas Rocha said …
Hi Reinout, I have the super-powers on Planet but I think the new hackergotchi needs some improvements. It’s a bit too dark and lacks enough contrast. Just send me the improved one and I’ll update it for you.
on 22 Dec 2009 at 7:19 7.JanC said …
I remember that when I was in Lisbon, there were at least 3 train stations and at least one of them wasn’t connected to the other ones by train rails, so to get a “connection” there you had to travel between train stations by bus and/or metro. I also remember from looking at a railways map that the same was true for other cities in Portugal (some railways even used a different width of rails IIRC!).
So I can imagine why it’s somewhat complicated to offer train tickets for long-distance traveling, especially in mountainous regions…
BTW: as you probably know, airlines can lower their pollution a lot by flying a bit slower. I wonder if there exists a list of “greener” airlines?
on 22 Dec 2009 at 7:24 8.JanC said …
@sebas: treinreiswinkel.nl (which seems to be related to the German national railways) gives me exactly the same answer (“nothing found”) as the site of the Belgian national railways, so I guess they use the same database…