Uma Europa sem aviões
Nada como um vulcão islandês para nos fazer sonhar com outros mundos.
Na BBC, o filósofo Alain de Botton imagina um futuro sem aviões:
Everything would, of course, go very slowly. It would take two days to reach Rome, a month before one finally sailed exultantly into Sydney harbour. And yet there would be benefits tied up in this languor.
Those who had known the age of planes would recall the confusion they had felt upon arriving in Mumbai or Rio, Auckland or Montego Bay, only hours after leaving home, their slight sickness and bewilderment lending credence to the old Arabic saying that the soul invariably travels at the speed of a camel.
Por coincidência, na semana passada, antes da crise aérea começar, a Slate publicou alguns excertos de um livro escrito por um dos seus colaboradores, "Grounded: A Down to Earth Journey Around the World", que relata a sua viagem à volta do mundo recorrendo apenas a meios de transporte terrestres: atravessar o Atlântico a bordo de um cargueiro, explorar a Europa de comboio, percorrer o deserto australiano de automóvel, etc. O avião foi o único meio de transporte proibido. Pelo que li, parece ser um livro de viagens divertido, cheio de episódios curiosos que nunca aconteceriam a 10km de altitude na cabina de um avião:
As a result, when people think about travel these days they think purely of destinations. They barely give a nod to the actual ... traveling. The problem with this isn't just that we lose out on the pleasures of trains, ships, bicycles, and all those other terrific modes of rationally paced, ground-level transport. I think we also dim our experience of the destinations themselves. We've forgotten the benefit of surface travel: It forces you to feel, deep in your bones, the distance you've covered; and it gradually eases you into a new context that exists not just outside your body, but also inside your head.