Angličtina - Travelling and tourism 2003

Autor: Tomáš Vostrý

     I think, that many people like traveling and I belong to them. But there is one more group of people, who hate traveling and things connecting with it such as packing, booking a ticket and waiting of platform or airport. But I think, that traveling has many advantages. We can find out a plenty of beautiful places and meet many people or friends and we obtain experiences for our life.

     People in the Czech Republic had been kept down about traveling. Our boards had been closed for forty years and we had lived behind the iron curtain. In year 1989 after the Velvet revolution people in our country obtain a freedom in all aspects of life including traveling. Before that we could travel to only several communistic countries such as Bulgaria, Romania, Hungary, Yugoslavia or Soviet Union. Nowadays we can travel around the world but we must have enough money. We have several ways of transport.

     At the first: An everyday form of traveling may be commuting to school, job and shopping. There are two ways of traveling: one is using own means of transport (car, motorbike) – it is not recommended for big cities, where are traffic jams - or we can rely on the public transportation services. We can travel by bus. Bus is a good and reliable transportational vehicle. Every bigger town in the Czech Republic has own network of public bus transport. Every bus has own ordinary link and stations and they work according to time table. When we want travel by bus, we must have ticket and its value is various in each town. Regular traveler can use special travel card for one week, one month or for quarter a year. It is favourable and cheaper. But buses connects town too. There are similar rules as for buses in town only tickets are more expensive. Long distance buses are called Greyhounds.

     Second way of the public transport is travel by tram. Only eight towns in our country have trams links. Tram needs rail and electric contact wire. And the third way is travel by trolleybus. It is special thing in twelve Czech towns. Trolleybus is something as a combination of bus and tram.

     The most interesting way of public transport is travel by underground or tube. Unfortunately is underground only in our capital city Prague. It was built at the beginning of the seventies and it was opened for public in year 1975. Prague underground has three links marked by letters A, B, C – the oldest of them. Around one million people per day use underground. Underground has long tradition and the oldest underground is in London in year 1863.

     When we travel from to town, we can travel by bus or by train. Traveling by train is quite cheap and comfortable way of transport, but it is less quick, because trains have more stations. The most of our trains are twenty and more years old, so they are out of date and they didn’t look well, they are dirty inside. The fastest trains can travel more than 300 kilometers per hour and in Europe there are in France, they are called TGV and they connect France with The Great Britain.

     Progressive way of traveling is travel by air. It is the fastest and most comfortable way of all means of transport. It is great for long distances. But is the most expensive way of transport. Ticket costs several thousands crowns, it is according to airlines and when we want travel by Concorde, the fastest public plane of the world, we must pay two or three hundreds thousands crowns. Ticket would be booked some days before our journey. When we travel to some states, we will need visa – it is special travel card and entry permission. We should be prepared for system of control, when we show our passport and our luggage is scanning by special machines. We must pass through specials detectors and fill up travel items. We denote our family name, given name, birth day, country of citizenship and residence, contact address (address of hotel, family) and so on. Our luggage must have tag with name and address. The system of control became increase after terrorist attacks on the 11^th September 2001.     

     The last way of transport is transport by river, sea and ocean. Ship transport was the first way of transport in human history and it is used today. Nowadays are ship used for transport of the big cargo such as petrol in ferryboat or cars, engines. People can use ship as a remarkable and interesting mean of transport, but if you have a seasick, you will chose the other ways of transport.

Slovní zásoba: packing – balení, booked – zamluvit, iron curtain – železná opona, rely – spoléhat se, reliable – spolehlivý, favourable – výhodný, contact wire – troleje, permission – povolení, tag – visačka, cargo – náklad, ferryboat – trajekt, seasick – mořská nemoc.