Airports are one thing, train stations quite another. Airports tend to be amorphous, look-alike, impersonal mega aircraft hangars full of dispirited people looking tired, grumpy and harassed.
There are a few decent airports - Changi in Singapore, the small ski-village feel of Bergen's friendly little one and Heathrow's Terminal Five - but on the whole they're horrid.
Train stations, however, have a life and personality all of their own. Not only that, they're filled with real people clutching baguettes or ham rolls, toting useful luggage or backpacks, running to catch trains, crying, laughing, feeding babies, kissing passionately under the station clock, or just sitting watching the world go by.
I was in Paris recently to catch an early train to Brussels from the Gare du Nord. Smells of freshly roasting coffee filled the air and smartly dressed business people were waiting to board and get out their laptops.
Outside the station was a row of beggars. Trés comfortable beggars because they were tucked up snugly in bedrolls either asleep or reading Le Figaro. Most of them had well-groomed and well-fed dogs beside them - in France, if you arrest a beggar, his dog has to go with him. The gendarmes find it easier to leave Man and his Best Friend alone. The Bastille was not known for its kennels.
The station in Brussels was like the huge lobby of a smart hotel. You could eat there, freshen up, or go shopping, before being whisked through immigration to board Eurostar for London - destination St Pancras.
This grand old lady - the glory of mid-Victorian England - has now undergone a magnificent facelift and has become a destination in her own right. I mean, can you imagine spending a day out at Johannesburg Station?
Although our own stasies are not without a certain primitive charm. Once on the way to Beaufort West for a weekend birding trip, our train stopped at one o'clock in the morning at De Aar. I kid you not, a rave was going on. There was heavy metal music (most appropriate for a railway station), strange kinds of dancing, lots of drunks, a body or two, and a pervasive smell of boerewors. Olive Schreiner (who once lived here) would have been turning in her grave.
I know that De Aar (meaning "artery", after the underground water supply) is the second most important railway junction in South Africa, but I'd never thought of it as a party animal.
We'd had a pretty rough night ourselves by the time we got to De Aar, because our trainee engine driver was finding his way around the brakes. Instead of gently slowing to a steady halt, he would stomp his foot down hard (or whatever you do to work brakes in trains) and we'd all fall out of our bunks.
But everything was made alright by the wonderful hospitality of the Karoo farmers in Beaufort West. We'd had aspirations to see the cinammon-breasted warbler. After a jug of local moonshine or three, we couldn't tell our aasvoëls from our elbows.
Such is modern life in South Africa that many children today have never been on a train. When I was with a 12-year-old grandson at EuroDisney a few years ago, he thought the Paris Metro was as good as the Pirates of the Caribbean ride.
I wonder if trainspotting (in its original sense) still happens? When he was in the British Army, my husband Alan had the most wonderfully nerdy friend who knew the famous Bradshaw's United Kingdom Railway Guide off by heart.
The two of them would be sitting high on a mountain in the then British Cameroons and Alan would say: "If I wanted to go to Little Chipping in the Marsh, via West Wittering and Bath on a Sunday afternoon, what would be my best route?" Norman would pause only a nano-second before: "You'd take the 2.20 to Chichester, and then have a half hour's wait before the 3.10 to Greater Havering, and then " and so on.
He was a walking encyclopedia of useless information - unless, of course, you wanted to go to Little Chipping on the Marsh on a Sunday afternoon.
Me? I'm saving up for the Blue Train.