Tampere IAS Fellow Onerva Korhonen
A network scientist that develops models to study diverse real-world phenomena, including human brain function, tree xylem hydraulics, and spreading of ideas in social networks. Considers the central European rail network as a beautiful example for teaching basic concepts of network science.
Bavaria is beautiful today and other thoughts while travelling by land
I really like this route to Hamburg via München since there are less delays here than on the route over Frankfurt. I simply sit enjoying the views, it’s a bit frosty and sunny, Bavaria is beautiful today.
– on the München-Hamburg train, 22.11.25
This November, I had the pleasure to visit colleagues at the Institute of Botany in Ulm, Germany. Instead of flying, I travelled there by land and sea. During the hours on the ferries and trains, I pondered on why travelling by land is still rare in academic contexts and what could we gain by doing it more.
For me, travelling by land is associated with the feeling of being capable: I’ve done this before and can handle it. However, I need to admit that the arrival to Travemünde would probably be the hardest bit for somebody with less experience. I suppose there are few airports with so scarce public transport connections.
– Lübeck, 15.11.25
Based on my experience, many academic travellers choose flying over travelling by land because of saving of time, on one hand, and the assumed complexity of travelling by land, on the other hand. This complexity, in my opinion, is merely a systemic bug than an inherent feature. It is true that information about train connections is often scattered across the internet, while flights can be searched from a single web page. However, one can expect this to change, when the demand for train travel increases. Online travel agencies like Trainline and Rail Europe already combine schedules and ticket sales from several European railway companies. Similarly, the booking system of the German railway operator, Deutsche Bahn, covers schedules across Europe and supports booking of international tickets for trips starting or ending in Germany.
While waiting these services to become widely available online, universities could support academic travel by land by requesting from their partner travel agencies travel systems that enable booking not only flights and hotels but also train, ferry, and bus tickets. Smaller complications that one faces on the road are typically easy to overcome and not unique to travelling by land. From the Travemünde harbour, there is indeed a badly lighted one-kilometer walk to the nearest bus stop – but not all smaller airports are public transportation hubs either.
The additional time taken by travelling by land is, on the other hand, a fact. In the case of my trip with five full days in Ulm, taking the ferry and train meant around two and half additional days on the move compared to flying, which, for me, was not insurmountable. Most of this time I spent on the ferry between Helsinki and Travemünde, either sleeping or working. Especially on my way to Ulm, the hours on the ferry were an important possibility to prepare for the visit.
From the viewpoint of universities, the additional travel time is associated with increased travel costs. In case of my trip, travelling by land costed the university around 350 euros more than flying, and a significant part of this sum consisted of the daily allowances for the additional travel days. From this perspective, it is understandable that universities often require special reasoning for taking the train instead of flying. Of course, the valuable university funding should not be spent on extravaganza!
However, similar reasoning is rarely required for, for example, flying over to the U.S. instead of choosing a shorter conference in Europe or travelling to participate in an event physically instead of cheaper online participation. This demonstrates that despite the carbon-neutrality pledges made by many academic institutions, including Tampere University, their policies still consider travelling by land as something weird that can be allowed only in special cases.
Luckily, these attitudes are slowly changing. For example, in the travel policy of the Belgium university KU Leuven, train is the default option for trips lasting less than 8 hours, while flying requires a special permission and is associated with an additional compensation fee invoiced from the traveller’s funding. These compensation fees are used both for external and internal sustainability projects and to compensate the price of train tickets.
The Lübeck-Hamburg train has the best views, so I’ll only start working after Hamburg. While admiring the views, I think back to my past long train trips with a warm, nostalgic feeling. I wonder if anybody thinks back to their past flights with anything but horror.
– on the Lübeck-Hamburg train, 16.11.25
While I have not abandoned flying for good, I have made numerous long train trips in Europe since 2008. Even before that, in my early childhood, train was my family’s default means of transport for longer trips and got thus associated with positive memories. Therefore, it is no surprise that my trip to Ulm was a relaxed experience.
However, while my prior knowledge on long-term train travel helped with booking tickets and navigating stations, the biggest encouragement for travelling by land came from my research community. From earlier discussions, I knew that also my colleagues in Ulm prefer travelling by train. Therefore, when planning the trip, taking the train and ferry appeared as natural and desirable, while flying was a secondary option to be tolerated if unavoidable. Similar effect of the community opinion was visible on the ferry, when I chatted with fellow researchers heading for a carbon balance conference in Helsinki: for them, their plan to fly back instead of travelling by land was rather an unfortunate necessity than a clever time-saving hack.
While emphasizing the role of the community in academic travel by land, I definitely do not want to bring shame on those academics who decide to fly, for one reason or another. Indeed, I have done my share of conference flying and probably will do in the future. Instead, I want to encourage those of us who have been able to select travelling by land instead to share experiences, to normalize taking the train even for longer trips, and possibly make travelling by land to look less weird and more attractive, both for colleagues and for institutions.
I’m going to the sauna soon. This sauna on the ferry is sort of a symbol for the fact that, within Europe, not flying doesn’t mean giving up anything but gaining better life quality.
– on the Helsinki-Travemünde ferry, 14.11.25
The obvious gain from not flying is the decrease in carbon emissions. In my case, the carbon footprint of my trip by ferry and train was approximately 161 kg, while flying would have caused a footprint of around 235 kg. For me, however, taking the train has another, equally important gain: it makes travelling unavoidably slow. The slower pace of trains and ferries, together with the compulsory breaks to wait for the next connection, gives the traveller time to comprehend their moves in space and time, adapt to new surroundings, and reflect on the purpose of their travel – in my case, the research project.
University policies often state, alongside financial costs, safety and comfort of the traveller as a reason to choose flying over travelling by land. These policies seem to define comfort as speed, efficiency, and arriving early. This makes me think of a colleague who out of the two bus lines available for their commute tended to choose the one with longer duration – because it passed through a country landscape with lots of animals. Re-thinking of comfort from this perspective is needed to solve the contradictory between universities climate pledges and their practical travel policies.
The texts in italics are extracts from my travel diary during the Ulm trip. More information about the KU Leuven travel policy on the university’s web page. For the carbon footprint calculations, I have used information from the Matkailijamittari by Visit Finland and from the Finnlines ferry company. The carbon footprint of the ferry has been calculated considering the freight transported alongside passengers.