Just over a year ago I decided to go ‘no-fly’. Or rather, I decided that I would only take flights when it was physically impossible to do anything else. This meant lots of day long journeys across France and Germany – down to Aix-en-Provence, over to London, up to Berlin – collecting BahnBonus points and delay repayments in equal measure as I went.
I first broke my fast at the end of August 2021. On this occasion, I was required to be in two places at once: at the wedding of two good friends from school, but also at an abbey near Paris workshopping with young composers. I couldn’t afford to miss the workshops, but it was also very important to me to support my friends, not least as I was singing in the church service. My employer generously allowed me to miss the first day of workshops, however to additionally opt for ‘slow travel’ would have meant missing a second day, as the first Eurostar the next morning didn’t get into Paris until 3pm. So I partied half the night away, caught a couple of hours’ sleep and then caught the first flight to Paris in the morning, arriving just in time for our 10am rehearsal.
That was a long day.
One of the things I’ve learned in a year of attempting slow travel is that the modern world – and especially the modern world for a freelance musician – demands these acts of time travel almost constantly. I have a colleague who did a recital in Madrid one day and Oslo the next, something that was physically impossible until a few decades ago. Another friend confided that she’d had problems with vocal fatigue after a concert in Paris one night and a 10am rehearsal in Berlin the next morning.
In an age of frequent burnout, I think aeroplanes have a lot to answer for. Of course, their burning of fossil fuels is the greatest crime and the true reason to stop flying, but our energy is also a finite resource.
I got about six months into my pact with myself without issue. Work was planned far enough in advance that I could book trains whilst they were affordable, and I was generally spending long enough in each place that it was worth taking my time to get there.
Then audition season started and things got a lot more complicated.
In November – in a startling act of efficiency – I managed to line up three auditions in London over 36 hours, neatly fitting them in between concerts in Berlin and an audition at home in Stuttgart. However, when I began to look at my travel options, two issues quickly became apparent. The first was that I would paying these travel expenses out of my own pocket (whereas up to this point employers had paid), and the second was that the aforementioned auditions had been organised far too late in the day to book affordable train travel. So I flew. And thus begun an embarrassment of flights over four months. The full confession:
· Two return flights for auditions arranged so last minute I couldn’t afford the train.
· One single flight to avoid travel regulations, as entry into France from the UK was illegal (but entry into France from Germany was fine, even if you’d recently visited the UK).
· Four single flights for work that was booked so last minute nobody was willing to pay the astronomical train fare.
Including the flights in August and November, that’s 12 flights in the space of a year – more than a lot of people will take in a life-time and certainly more than justify smugly preaching about not flying. We all know why we shouldn’t fly; I suppose what this post explores is why so many of us continue to do so.
The truth is that the train doesn’t only cost more time, it also costs more money. This is either money I don’t have as a young musician, or money that I feel compelled to spend elsewhere (eg. my heating bill). If you book sufficiently in advance the cost of a train ticket Stuttgart-London isn’t eye-watering, and I’ve also discovered a sweet spot where the booking is so last minute that both flight and train work out at about 200EUR.
After a prolonged period of chaos in my life, I’ve arrived in a situation of knowing what I’m doing until late October. Trains are getting booked, I’m doing a decent job of persuading organisations to cover my fares, and I’m determined to avoid airports for the next six months if at all possible. If the last year has taught me anything, it is admiration for those musicians who successfully live a true no-fly lifestyle. But the responsibility can’t rest solely on our shoulders. Organisations need to set aside budget for increased travel costs, agents need to make room for slow travel in artists’ schedules, and things need to be planned further ahead (I refuse to accept that an audition cannot be scheduled until the week before). On a larger scale, governments need to subsidise train travel so it really is the cheaper option – and on that note it will be interesting to see the impact of Germany’s 9 EUR ticket this summer.
Judging by my Deutsche Bahn debacle last night, many will still be opting to take flight.