Firstly, there was an unbelievable centrefold picture of a railway station in China where the transport network is being severely disrupted by extreme weather, and I’ve subsequently found a video here. It’s crazy to think that some of these people only see their families in the countryside once a year because of the vast scale of industrial urbanisation. It’s understandable that tensions are running high.

My advice to Emily and Verity in Beijing is to stay put until it all calms down a bit. At least they’ll have time to explore the city properly and not feel guilty about staying in to read their books once in a while!

The second thing I came across was an article about new train routes in Spain. Apart from the fact that it’s great to see competition with domestic flights, it’s interesting to note the differences between the way UK rail has been privatised, and the contrast in Spain (I’m currently researching a more substantial blog on the subject of European transport in general). Note that despite having swivelling chairs and videos, the Spanish trains don’t have WiFi. My first reaction was that they should, but then I thought that actually it’s quite nice to get on a train and do some work without having access to emails or the internet.

Photo & post thumbnail: Kusaker