Vocabulary in categories

Exercise 20. Which form of transport – train, car, boat or plane – do you associate with each of the words and phrases below?

1. set sail 6. fast lane 11. quayside 16. charter flight

2. a cruise 7. to indicate 12. mid-air collision 17. to disembark

3. traffic jam 8. sundeck 13. departure lounge 18. express

4. compartment 9. commuter 14. buffet car 19. bypass

5. bonnet 10. take off 15. pull in 20. guard’s van

Vocabulary check

Exercise 21. Insert a proper word or a word combination; choose from the words given below.

bypasses sailing a yacht traffic jam to see remote areas of the world

buffet car connecting bus frustrating compartments

1. After the plane had landed the passengers got into the ___________ which took them to the guesthouse.

2. I’m fond of traveling and wish ________________ .

3. __________ is demanding, tiring, __________ and wet.

4. There are always a lot of people in the _________ where you may have a hearty meal.

5. All the ____________ are crowded with people.

6. We have got stuck in a ___________ , a queue of cars as the eye can see.

7. During the rush-hour there is always a great number of cars on _________ and ringroads.

GRAMMAR IN USE

Exercise 22. Fill in the gaps, using the words given. You may use some words more than once.

ago since already before still until while for from yet during in

Flying Home

A couple of months ago Charles was in Athens on his way back to the States from a business trip. It had been ages ………… (1) he had felt so angry. He had been at the airport ………….. (2) seven o’clock in the morning ………..(3) now waiting for a flight to New York. An announcement had ……….. (4) been made to say that the plane was delayed due to technical problems. Half an hour …………… (5) that, another announcement had said that there was to be a delay caused by air traffic congestion. Now the plane had been sitting on the runway ……….. (6) at least an hour but it was ………… (7) not ready to board ………….. (8) this delay. Charles tried to complete his report, which he hadn’t finished ………… (9), though his boss was expecting it on his return. There was a lot of noise going on around him …………… (10) he was trying to put the finishing touches to his final paragraph so …………… (11) the end he gave up. It had been years ……….. (12) Charles had traveled by plane. He avoided flying if he could ever ………… (13) a particularly unpleasant flight years ………. (14) when he was …………….. (15) convinced flying was the worst way to get around.

POINTS FOR DISCUSSION

1. What, for you, are the pleasures and horrors of modern driving?

2. Look at the aspects of travel listed below. What are they like in your country? How are they different in any other country you have been to?

2. roads and car-drivers

3. airports

4. train services

5. hitch-hiking possibilities

1. What’s the furthest you have traveled in one 24-hour period? Describe the journey.

2. Think of films of film sequences – disaster movies, car chases, train adventures, sinking ships – that involve travelling. Describe in detail the ones that impressed you most.

3. Write or act out a conversation in a car. A driving instructor is taking a learner driver out for their first lesson. The learner knows absolutely nothing about cars.

4. Write, in dialogue form, a conversation in which three friends argue about how they should travel to a distant city for a long weekend. One thinks it would be best to go by car, the second is for going by train, and the third would prefer to go by coach.

5. Write a dramatic paragraph from your latest novel, as the character tries desperately to get to the airport in time to catch his plane to Prague. It begins: Jackson jumped into his waiting Porsche and…

READING FOR ENRICHMENT

Read the texts and use the information in the conversations of your own.

Holidays: Cottages, Caravans and Packages

Until recently, the British enjoyed less holiday time than most European nations. Nowadays, virtually every full-time employee is entitled to four weeks or more of paid holiday (excluding Sundays and any half or full free days included in the contract). Much of this time will be spent at home or visiting relatives, especially at Christmas. “Taking a holiday” means going away from home for at least a few days.

How do the British spend their holidays? Let’s look at the Taylor family. Carol and Bill assume that they will spend their main holiday together. Maybe one or the other will go away for a few days to visit friends, to follow a special interest, to “escape from home”, but the summer holiday is the time to spend as a couple or a family. While Sarah, Peter and Kate were growing up, they used to spend two weeks each summer, usually in Wales. Once they hired a caravan on the sea-shore when the children were very young. It was cheap and convenient, but neither Bill nor Carol enjoyed being so close to their neighbours. The children, however, loved playing on the beach with lots of other small children. They bought a tent, and used to spend one week with Carol’s parents, with the children camping in the garden, and a week in various campsites around Wales. Many of these are in very beautiful places, and they allow more privacy than caravan sites. Showers, toilets and a shop are normally available. The family walked, explored mountains and streams, took picnics on boating expeditions on lake, and visited castles, caves and historic sites. This is a kind of holiday which assumes that you have a car – to reach the campsite. The caravan sites are less dependent on individual transport and tastes.

One year it poured with rain, it was impossible even to read in the tent, and everyone was very bad-tempered; so the following year Bill and Carol rented a cottage – in Scotland. Throughout the depopulated parts of our country small houses, cottages, barns and even old mansions used to stand empty, falling into ruin. Many of them have now been bought by a private owner who has adapted them for holidays. Since they are normally only let for a few weeks a year, the rents are high; but an old stone cottage with an open fire, beauty and privacy is the dream of many people, especially among the professional classes. These are outdoor, hill-walking holidays, interspersed with huddling round the fire, trying to keep warm, and cooking whatever vegetables can be found in the local distant shop.

Sarah and Kate began to dream of something more glamorous, Carol was tired of doing the housework on holiday too. Eventually they decided they could afford to go to France, for a camping holiday. For the British travelling “abroad” is both easy and something of an adventure. They have to get off their island and land in a foreign country where language, culture, climate and daily habits are different. The nearest holiday area of France is only three or four hundred kilometers away from the Taylor’s home, but travel, especially on the ferry boat, is never cheap. The family drove to the warm south, camped in comfortable French campsites, explored France and occasionally ate in cheap French restaurants.

Sarah and Martin, when they were married with one baby, wanted sun above all. So they bought a “package holiday” in Spain. By paying a single payment to the travel agent they received a “package” of an air fare, hotel reservations, and (sometimes) excursions and a group guide. They knew before they started exactly how much their holiday would cost. Most of the time they spent on the beach, playing with the baby. Spain is popular, like the Crimea, because it offers a wonderful climate. Package holidays are cheap and very convenient, but since they are organized for groups (hence the cheapness), you have to have similar tastes to those of the people on holiday with you.

As a student, Peter brought a European “Railcard” for a month, and traveled wherever he wished on the European railways. He met hundreds of other young people, wandered round half a dozen famous European cities, got extremely dirty (not many showers) and lived on buns and pies bought on station platforms. He slept out on Greek beaches, and spent a week-end with a drunken Dutchman mending bicycles in a small Dutch town. He was proud of the distance he had travelled.

Free of their children, Bill and Carol decided to be extravagant and fly to Italy. They booked a hotel in Florence, spent a week in the art galleries and churches there, and then spent another week visiting nearby smaller but beautiful Italian towns. Since they had to spend money on airfares, hotels, meals out and travel, the holiday was very expensive. But it was wonderful – “like a second honeymoon”, said Carol.

These are typical “middle-class” holidays. Holidays at the seaside, in boarding houses (much cheaper than hotels), caravans, and holiday camps were traditional holidays of working class people. Now many of them fly on package holidays to Spain. Group holidays, whether in holiday camps in Britain or in hotels in Spain, are much cheaper, and therefore offer the possibility of a proper holiday to people with less money.

Travelling by Air

For me there is nothing like travel by air: it is more comfortable, more convenient and, of course, far quicker than any other method. There is none of the dust and dirt of a railway or car journey; none of the trouble of changing from train to steamer, pushing your way through crowds to get from the boat to the Customs (if you travel abroad) and then to another train. A taxi or bus of the Airline Service takes you to the airport. There on the runway you see a sleek and beautiful jet-propelled passenger liner ready to carry you to your place of destination. When the formalities of registering yourself and weighing your baggage are over, you get up the gangway and board the plane. If you are travelling for the first time, you may apply to the stewardess and she will see you to your seat and give you all the information you need as, how to strap your belt, how to adjust your seat and so on. If you feel hungry, you will be provided with an excellent lunch. Strange though it may seem, it actually comes out cheaper, considering what you save in hotel charges or sleeping accommodation on the train, meals and so on.

But it is not only on account of the convenience, comfort and speed that I like air travel. The whole experience is a spiritually thrilling thing for me. I enjoy greatly the feeling of flying. As you leave the earth behind you, you seem to belong to another world, a bigger, wider, freer world than the one you left. What loveliness there is on earth when you see it from above; the rapid changing scenes below are of indescribable beauty.

What can compare in beauty with the view one beholds when flying. Just as the early tinges of dawn flush the eastern sky you take off leaving behind the huge city in deep slumber; the sun has not risen, but the bird-like machine is flying to greet it. Looking down you gain a magnificent view of a charming landscape – to the right are fields carefully cultivated, to the left – pasture-lands, ahead – a cheerful river winding its way through the lowland. On you fly past villages and cities, hills and valleys, each following the other in quick succession. There in the far distance you perceive the outlines of a mountain range.

You scarcely have time to realize that the mountains ribbed with sharp steep ridges and clothed with vegetation on both sides are the Urals when you find them below you and in another minute or two far behind.

On and on you fly with the ever-changing scenes below till you safely land at the airport.

No, you will never make me believe that there is a better way of travelling than by air.

Travelling by Train

Should you ask me what kind of transport I like best I’d speak in support of the train. With a train you have speed, comfort and pleasure combined.

What place is more interesting than a big station? There is the movement, the excitement of the people going away and sorrow of those who are seeing others off. There are shouts of the porters as they pull luggage along the platforms to the waiting trains, the crowd at the booking-office getting tickets, the children tightly holding on to the skirts of their mothers, and passengers hurrying to board the train.

At last you manage to make your way through the crowd, closely following the porter, who has taken care of your luggage, and get out on to the platform. There are many tracks and trains there. No need for you to look round and read the signs that tell which train you must take. You follow your porter, and here you are – Car number 2, Train - .

You show your ticket to the guard and in you go into a most wonderful carriage. All is bustle and confusion, with people filing in, bumping into each other, and what not. At last you manage to stow away your luggage and get out on to the platform for fresh air and bid farewell to the well-wishers who have come to see you off.

But you have scarcely time to kiss and hug your friends when the station-master on duty, in a red cap, signals the train. You hear no shrill whistle of the engine – the train pulls out of the station noiselessly and without a jerk.

You are on your way. You start a conversation with your fellow-passenger (people take to each other quickly when travelling) and soon you get to know who is who and what. Now that the excitement of the day is over you begin to feel hungry.

The dining-car steward happens to come along and you take bookings for dinner⁷ or supper, whichever it might be. As you go for the second sitting you have time to wash. By that time the guard has made your bed. You take your towel and go to the toilet to wash yourself.

You feel tired now, after a hearty meal, so you decide to turn in⁸. You get into your upper berth and begin to absorb the beauty of the changing scenes that fly past you – the cheerful fields of wheat and corn, the meadows under a mantle of flowers, grass and green moss, the rivers that run through woodland countries, the forests with their delicious sense of peace, and the mountains ribbed with sharp steep ridges.

But drowsiness creeps over you. You close your eyes and soon drift away into that vast mysterious void which men call sleep.

Travelling by Sea

For me there is no travel so fine as by sea. There are many things that make travel by sea a fascinating thing for me. Though I am not much of a sailor, I love the sight of a ship with its many decks, cabins and state-rooms. It looks like a huge white floating city. It is delightful to be out at sea, too, and promenade the deck or sit in a deck-chair and take the sun.

But what can be compared with the excitement you experience when you sight land! The narrow strip of land on the horizon seems slowly coming towards you. Gradually the outlines of the shore become more distinct, and on coming nearer you get a full view of the city, the harbour, and of the big ships coming in from and leaving for distant lands.

I shall never forget my first trip on board the “Pobeda” from Odessa to Sochi. The season was at its height then and the passenger traffic on the Odessa-Batumi line was heavy, so we, that is, Ann and I had to reserve berths at the agency beforehand. After some three or four days of feverish preparations and expectations we were ready to start.

The ship was to sail at 1.40 p.m. on a certain Saturday early in July. On the morning of that distinguished day I felt very excited at the thought that in a few hours I shall go away. A little after noon we reached the pier and there, for the first time in my life, I beheld a real ship. What a beauty she was!

The pier was crowded with cars, trucks loaded with luggage, passenger arriving and hurrying on board, and well-wishers seeing them off. It was really thrilling going up the gangway. Up and up we went until we reached the main deck. And there from high above we looked at the people that seemed so tiny down below, crowding on the pier.

When we got on deck, we were attended by a sailor who took us down below deck. Inside the ship there was a vast labyrinth of aisle that ran into each other and out again and seemed to lead nowhere. But we tripped along following the sailor, and soon he brought us to our cabin. It was a small room with two berths in it, and against the wall, just below the round window, called a porthole, stood a little trifle of a table.

But we had no time to look around because we were eager to go back on deck. There, all was bustle and confusion as before. A noisy excitement was kept up from one end of the ship to the other. Shortly we heard the ship’s siren warning the passengers and their well-wishers to say their last good-bye to each other. After some 10-15 minutes the ship weighed anchor and slowly slipped out of the harbour, leaving Odessa behind wrapped in a blue noonday haze.

As soon as the land faded from sight, we went exploring the ship. The “Pobeda” had all modern conveniences and a wide choice of entertainment facilities. There was a good library that could afford a fair amount of reading matter. Then there were restaurants that took care of the passengers’ appetites, a cinema-hall, billiard rooms and what not.

We soon felt remarkably tired with walking up and down from one deck to another and were very glad to occupy two deck-chairs that happened to be vacant. Though the sea was moderately calm, the ship rolled somewhat. Some passengers took to their berths – they felt seasick. By some happy fortune my friend and I were not sick. The fresh sea wind blew in our faces and it was lovely to look at the gulls and hear the cries as they gracefully swept over the waves almost touching the water with their wings.

In the evening we enjoyed the sunset, the beautiful sunset at sea. The sun, red as a glowing coal, gradually went down behind the horizon flooding the sky and the flakes of clouds with crimson light. It was simply marvellous!

Our voyage lasted several days. On our way we called at several ports. The stays were quite sufficient to give us the opportunity of visiting some points of interest there.

But I shall never forget the day when I first saw Sochi. It was evening when we came in sight of the town. From afar the snow-white palaces seemed like tiny cottages nestling cosily in a sea of fresh green vegetation. It was a picture of wonderful beauty.

In front was the smooth sea and in the background the high mountains, the slopes of which were clothed with green foliage. Even now when I recall it to my mind I experience a thrill of pleasure.

I honestly say that I love best to travel by ship.

Going on a Cruise Ship Holiday

George: I’m the ideal person to go on a cruise. It means I don’t feel guilty about the fact that I should be walking instead of taking the bus or sitting behind the steering wheel of my comfortable car. There’s a limit to what you can do on deck! OK, I know there are fitness freaks who are out there each morning jumping up and down and trying to impress the rest of us. But I think if you choose to cruise, you do so knowing that it provides the perfect opportunity to lie back in the sun and not worry about climbing the nearest hill or running a marathon.

Mary: Cruises have something special. Something you can’t get on a train and certainly not on a plane. It’s that point at the end of the day when the sun is sinking and the sky is a wonderful mix of gold and red and purple. I stand on the deck and imagine what it must have been like for those early explorers sailing into the unknown. They must have been incredibly brave. Or I think about those battles that were fought on the sea or the ships that have sunk without trace, full of treasure. So romantic.

Terry: Cruises are great fun. You go on board knowing that everything you want is going to be there. You don’t have to leave the ship if you don’t want to. You don’t even have to think about what to do. There is something organized if you want it from the moment you wake up to the moment you go to bed. Deck games, competitions, discoes, cabarets, never a dull moment. And I join in everything, so that I sleep wonderfully well because I’m always so exhausted!

Sarah: What I like most are the different ports we stop at and all the things that are on offer. The shops on board are nothing special. But all those foreign markets full of all kinds of exotic goods. One port we stopped at I deliberately left my credit cards on the ship. I was determined just to look and not to spend. So who was I kidding? One look at the piles of the most gorgeous silk scarves and I was running around seeing who would lend me some money. I could’ ve bought the lot!

Kate: To my mind the ship is like a floating hotel, but even better because you wake up each morning somewhere different and you haven’t had to drag your luggage with you. I can’t understand people who say they’d find a cruise boring and you’re surrounded by water all the time. It’s magical. You go to your cabin last thing at night having taken one final look at the palm trees on the beach and next morning you peer out of your porthole window and see towering mountains and a deserted coastline. The food is the best, because the ship takes on fresh supplies each time it docks. I couldn’t wish for a more relaxing holiday.