As tempting as it might be to complain here about the travel, our journey was the very easiest and simplest thing compared to, say, taking sailing ships and steam trains. It's easy to forget, sometimes, that complicated, comparatively slow, and often dangerous ways of getting to far-off places were once (and in some parts of the world still are) the norm.
In gaining relative safety, speed, and ease, however, we have also lost some of the charm attendant on old modes of travel. Planes are too fast, so we resent delays intensely out of habit.
Meanwhile, in Stoker's novel, Jonathan Harker is mostly amused and amazed by the thought that the trains he is riding to Dracula's home seem to get later and later the further east he goes. Lateness itself becomes exotic, another element of the alien world into which he journeys. There is a romance about failures of schedule in Harker's voyage that I think no contemporary air traveler would feel.
We have been forced to slow down. Now let's see what we can make of it all.
P.S. We pampered contemporary sorts also get cozy little rooms to sleep in. Mine reminds me a bit of a rail berth, actually.
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