The railway is now using scan design. In the new wooden class, the wooden benches were planed into wafer-thin veneer and pasted onto the partitions and seats. Including “covers with 85 percent wool content in nuanced colors,” the light, partly rounded wood decor is not necessarily innovative. In first class it at least meets the basic requirements of a modern (Scandinavian) business lounge. It could have been worse, much worse.
The fact that the train is always a little behind can also be an advantage – at least when it comes to pop culture issues. The latest craze in leisure and travel trends is called “immersive experiences”: diving into worlds that you know from series and films. This would mean that hordes of screaming and munching fries-munching children would possibly rage through the “rolling living room” that the train promises its passengers in the garb of “Pirates of the Caribbean”.
The ghosts in cinema and comics style have long been with us. You don’t need virtual worlds or digital visual aids to see this. A pair of ordinary eyes on the steamboat pier in Piombino is enough. You stand in front of a floating steel wall and wonder which graffiti artist sprayed the house-high area virtually overnight. Until you step back a few meters and recognize the first patterns in the psychedelic, wild color squiggles.
Modern fairytale interiors: the Disney company is a master at this
The shock subsides: under the masked gaze of Batman in the format of a cinema screen, the car rolls into the open mouth of the Elba ferry. That’s not all: the walls of the passenger deck, even the tables and chairs, bear the same comic emblem; The spider arms of the cartoon characters extend into the pinball machines and video games in the open lounge area.
Such modern fairytale interiors can definitely be improved. The Disney company loves to cover the eyes of its guests in Art Nouveau confectionery style. In the theme parks and on board the brand’s own cruise ships, you can buy the right spaceman, pirate or Mickey Mouse costumes. This allows visitors to delve even deeper into the respective children’s room setting. The train now offers at least one socket per seat – including a tablet holder for watching videos or gaming at 300 km/h.
Whether on land, at sea or in the air: What remains the same with public transport containers even after the redesign is the occupancy density. Even if the railway advertises its newly developed seats as a “personal retreat”, mass seating on wings or wheels is only efficient and climate-friendly when it is compacted. The trick is to immobilize as many people as possible in a small space. Thanks to the new radiolucent draft glazing, hypnosis via video streaming should now work even better.
If you don’t allow yourself to be sedated in this way, you can choose the classic canned beer. The only question is whether the new wool-containing covers are less sensitive to stains than their predecessors.
The author prefers to travel by boat rather than train, which is not always practical in everyday life.
(Photo: Bernd Schifferdecker (illustration))