If you don’t prepare yourself properly, a long train ride can be a rather uneventful or downright boring experience. When you still have three or four hours left until your final destination, use these creative ideas to avoid staring blankly out of the window and instead actually have some fun along the way.
How about traditional games?
From time to time, it’s well worth your while to unplug and go for a more traditional form of entertainment that also involves other people. Card games and board games offer a fantastic way to pleasantly spend time in the company of others.
Of course, this idea works best if you’re traveling with someone, but if you feel bold enough, you might actually offer a gaming session to another person on the train and get to know someone new in the process. In this case, games like Scrabble or Monopoly work best as they have easy enough rules for anyone to follow, and they’ll make sure the hours pass by quickly.
Make the best out of your mobile device
As well as traditional games, you might try a bit of mobile entertainment. For example, if you don’t have a travel buddy that would play a round of cards with you, there’s a whole gamut of online poker sites where you can find worthy opponents at the virtual tables. Just make sure you have enough mobile data coverage to avoid lags and protect your battery life by dimming your screen a little and using earphones.
If you begin to run out of juice, you can always switch to airplane mode and still have a great time by playing fantastic single-player offline games like Alto’s Odyssey or Tank Hero: Laser Wars.
Delve deep into a fictional world
A great novel can keep you mentally involved for hours, helping you imagine foreign worlds and adventurous characters. Most people spend so much time staring at screens that a small paperback that easily fits into a backpack can serve as a pleasant counterpoint to a heavily digitized life.
You might also experiment with audiobooks as they’ll help you avoid eyestrain and can present a story in a more engaging way. Just watch out because you might get so absorbed in a new story, that you’ll accidentally miss your train stop.
Learn something new in a fun and engaging way
I’m sure you have some goals related to learning. Perhaps you’re a student at university or want to learn something new in order to get a promotion at your job, or even start a new career altogether.
Hours spent on a long train ride give you the perfect opportunity to master new skills and improve your brainpower. You can create a special YouTube playlist dedicated to learning how to code, build a website, or understand big data analysis.
There are also mobile learning platforms like Udemy or Skillshare that are perfect for learning soft skills, including leadership, sales, or managing a team. Or perhaps, you can avoid work-related stuff altogether and try to master a new language, learn how to draw, or understand musical notation.
These are all things you can get involved with and, if you gather the right materials, you will want your train ride to last for a few more hours just so that you can get deeper into all of this fascinating material.