And your comment brought back memories for me, too. For various reasons when I was young I had to fly internationally a lot, and I have memories of endless hour

And your comment brought back memories for me, too. For various reasons when I was young I had to fly internationally a lot, and I have memories of endless hours sitting in dark cabins listening to the CDs I'd bought in the previous country, checking my precious supply of AAs and drinking every coke in the plane. Or the hours spent waiting for connecting flights in dim airports, again with nothing but my trusty discman for company. Damn I loved that discman! I think it was the nostalgia for endless travel that led me to book a 7-day rail pass in Japan a few years ago, and spend the entire week just catching trains to nowhere, staying a few hours, and catching them back - spending the entire trip just staring out the window as the countryside flew past at 300kph. In many ways I can't remember ever feeling more relaxed.