Archived:NightOnTheGalacticRailroad

This is Lmm's crazy plan, that attempts to combine trains, lots of trains, with getting to Japan.

Conclusions, based on departing on a Saturday:

• Fly there, train back means:
  • Can spend most of a week (sunday morning -> friday midday) in japan
    • But notably doesn't fit a weekend, unless we extend it even further
• Get two and a half days (sunday midday -> wednesday 8am) in china - time enough to look around shanghai + beijing a bit
  • Finishes on Monday in Moscow, at which point there's no elegant next thing to do.
    • Can fly to hurry back - cheating, but means only 11 days-off-work consumed
      • Might be able to do some return flight shennanigans, given that aeroflot changing in moscow is actually a perfectly sensible way to fly to Japan
        • Assuming you don't mind bits of your plane falling off, etc.
          • In Soviet Russia, 'plane crashes YOU!
  • Can take the efficient sleeper trains, getting back wednesday, thursday or friday - inelegant
    • Could make it into a 3-week thing, meandering a little through europe - let's say Monday afternoon and Tuesday in Moscow, then overnight to St Petersburg for Wed, then overnight to Minsk for Thur, overnight to Kiev for Fri, overnight to Warsaw for Sat, overnight to Cologne for Sun. Or something like that.
    • Mickey will doubtless end up in jail in Belarus
      • I (Smith) move that the eventual spreadsheet of our itinerary incorporate, as is now traditional, a column detailing the respective ages of consent in the regions to be visited
• Train there, fly back means:
  • Elegant first section through Europe - we can spend one day each in Cologne/Warsaw/Kiev/Moscow, or we could get to Moscow quickly and have pretty much two full days there.
  • Not much time in China - we'd get a full day in Beijing, but like 3 hours in Shanghai
  • Naturally arrives in Japan on a Thursday, at which point we either have a long weekend or get a (admittedly cost-effective) midweek flight back after a week or so
  • I (Smith) like this plan. Although I have no strong preference as to which end is train and which 'plane, going on the first version of the itinerary below it is likely that I will disengage from the group in Osaka and do my own thing (game) there, making my own way home.
    • Actually, thinking about it, I do have a preference; somehow using the TSR to come back to civilisation seems a lot lamer than using it as a route outward to explore strange new worlds; to seek out new life and new perversions; to boldly go where no sensible man has gone before

Stream of reasoning

• Day 0, Friday: Dudes gather in and around London.
• Day 1, Saturday: Train to Paris/Brussels/Cologne and a day there. Overnight train to, let's say Warsaw. We could get to Moscow by Monday morning on a direct train, but the trans-siberian doesn't leave until Tuesday evening.
• Day 2, Sunday: Warsaw, explore it, overnight train to Kiev
• Day 3, Monday: Kiev, explore it, overnight train to Moscow
• Day 4, Tuesday: Moscow, explore it, get on the big train in evening
• Day 10, Monday: Beijing, explore it, overnight train to Shanghai
• Day 11, Tuesday: Shanghai, explore it very briefly, ferry at 2pm
• Day 13, Thursday: Arrive in Osaka at 9am, uh, day in osaka
• Day 14, Friday: Kyoto, maybe?
• Day 15, Saturday: One glorious day in Tokyo, or something
• Day 16, Sunday: Morning in Toyko, and fly home.

Let's see if there are any efficiency savings to be had from doing it in reverse:

• Day 16, Sunday: Train to Cologne, then Brussels and Eurostar home; we have about 6 hours to spend in one or other on the way.
• Day 15, Saturday: Get the 8AM train from Moscow, overnight to Berlin.
• Day 14, Friday: Arrive in Moscow at ~6PM, spend the night there
• Day 8, Saturday: Day in Beijing, train in the evening
• Day 7, Friday: Bah. Ferry only arrives on a Thursday, leaving on Tuesday midday, so again we only get like 4 days in Japan this way.

Is there any mileage in using a sleeper train in place of a night in a city (eg Moscow)?

Let's look at it another way: suppose we wanted to go to Japan and other places, how much holiday time would we need?

• Japan, 5 weeks; China, 8 weeks; Russias, 10 weeks. Spare, 2 weeks. Total: Six months.
• Day n, Sunday: Morning in Tokyo, fly home
• Day n-1, Saturday: Let's say we're doing this at Comiket. Comiket!
• Day n-2, Friday: Mickey Comikets early. Other people go do something cultural.
• Day n-3, Thursday: Tokyo, and all its joys.
• Day n-4, Wednesday: Kyoto! History!
• Day n-5, Tuesday: Osaka! Accents!
• Day n-6, Monday: Arrive Osaka, 09:30, rest weary selves, go to a hot springs or something.
• Day n-8, Saturday: A little Shanghai in the morning, ferry at 13:00.
• Day n-9, Friday: I'm going to say spend this in Shanghai, and stay night in Shanghai.
• Day n-10, Thursday: Day in Beijing, sleeper to Shanghai.

Eek, the only good train runs tuesday to monday.

So, best option would be to extend the original plan above by a bit at the end. Constraints: if going out, train is tuesday -> monday, and ferry is tuesday from shanghai - so not much time in shanghai. If coming back, train goes wed -> mon (at 2:28pm, plausible flying time), ferry could arrive sunday (leaving japan on Friday). So a plausible itinerary would look something like:

• Friday evening: Gather
• Saturday hideously early morning: Planes to Japan
• Sunday morning: Arrive in Tokyo, spend some time there and in Osaka.
• Friday midday: Get ferry from Osaka
• Sunday midday: Arrive in Shanghai, spend a day and a half or so there
• Monday night (say): overnight train to Beijing, spend a day and a half there
• Wednesday morning, 8AM: get the big train
• Monday afternoon: Arrive Moscow. Lamers could at this point fly home, meaning they'd only need 2 weeks + 1 day off work; otherwise we could take the rest of the week slowly crossing Europe.