(I'm not complaining, j'habite à Londres ;))

You don't need to go that much North - I used to live in Oxfordshire, trying to get to Cambridge for work was a joke (I don't drive). It would take 3.5h+ for a 140km journey from Oxford to Cambridge because train journeys were only through London (+ a railway station change), and there was only one coach that stopped in every town along the way (and which has been axed into two separate legs since the pandemic, making it 4h+ now).

In the end I moved to London, so that's manageable now...

Oxford/Cambridge is a classic example, yes. (For those unfamiliar, they're like two spokes right next to each other on quite a small rim where London is the hub. But large enough (or close enough spokes) that 'in and back out' seems silly.)

In fact, since Oxfordshire isn't very far north of London it's kind of a bad example. Of course it goes through London.

Cross country routes are local trains masquerading as long distance, thus with ridiculous prices and the requirement to do split tickets. There’s nowhere near enough capacity on the line.

Penzance to Exeter takes 3 hours - half the speed of a drive. From Exeter to Birmingham it’s another 2h30 at just 60mph average.

A good line would be an hour faster on both legs.

We also don't really have any of the major cities I meant in that context, Bristol I suppose. How do you get from Bournemouth to Bristol for example - via Dorchester with a station change? How about Southampton to Exeter - via Bristol? It's by no means the worst region, and I claimed the opposite, but it still suffers in the same way (albeit on a smaller scale) really, NW-SE rather than W-E in the North, in both cases its opposing the 'spokes' into London.

How can metropolitan France be larger than the entirety of Germany?

Actually, now that I think about it, the sense of "Metropolitan France" is very similar to the term "the continental United States"

But if you're a US citizen living over there and you made money from sources other than from that territory, you would have to pay US taxes.

So I wouldn't really consider citizens of US territories full US citizens.

So maybe it's more appropriate to say they aren't Americans, but they are US citizens.

But that is all semantics. My main point was the reason they don't have US representation is they don't have US taxation.

A Puerto Rican in California is entitled to all the benefits of US Citizenship whereas a Californian in Puerto Rico is not. Mostly these are related to welfare and elections. This would be the case for the Californian or Puerto Rican living anywhere in the world outside the US.

So a Californian that moves to, say, Germany can still vote by mail as though they were in California.

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You're mostly correct about the loss of welfare benefits, though. The only exception being that you do remain eligible for Social Security retirement, although some people may not consider that "welfare".

The District of Columbia has to pay US taxes without being allowed any US representation.

I'm not sure that's true - it appears to involve a legal distinction. I see many references to Algeria having been an "integral part of France" where other French territory wasn't. But I don't actually know what the terminology means. Anyway, I'd begin by looking to the legal status France tended to give to overseas territories, rather than the attitudes of the French, to explain this.

> Meanwhile I think a lot of Americans kinda-unconsiously barely even consider Hawaii and Alaska really parts of America, let alone the numerous non-state territories.

And this is a perfect case in point; Americans do consider Hawaii and Alaska to be really parts of America, because they have the legal status.

What there is, is a blindspot about territories. Just look at the flag: that there are parts of the United States which aren't States kinda doesn't compute.

or

https://www.thetruesize.com/#?borders=1~!MTU1OTU3NTE.MTE5NDg...

helps with convincing yourself.

> Since the beginning of the 1990s new high-speed passenger lines in Spain have been built to the international standard gauge of 1,435 mm (4 ft 8+1⁄2 in), to allow these lines to link to the European high-speed network.

(...)

> In general the interface between the two gauges in Spain is dealt with by means of gauge-changing installations, which can adjust the gauge of appropriately designed wheelsets on the move.

I didn't know that!

However the huge investment in HSR (longest network after China, but low utilization), has also come at the cost of the local and regional train network (which still use broad gauge, yes there are gauge changing trains, but the broad gauge network is languishing).