Pop quiz: How many of the world’s 10 fastest trains are in the United States? I hope you didn’t answer anything other than 0. Our most impressive feat of transportation engineering of course has been to build a highway system so massive it sucks up all the money, attention, and imagination we could otherwise devote to any other type of transportation.

Anyway, this link has a Youtube video of each of the world’s 10 fastest trains, which is cool. And yes, there is something slightly pornographic about these videos – basically nature has a plan for long skinny things slipping through fluids with minimal friction, and we’ll leave it at that. Of the 10, 4 are in Europe (Italy, Spain, France, Germany), 5 are in Asia (Korea, Japan, China x3) and 1 is in Africa (Morocco). One of the ones in China is a mag-lev train, which would be fun to ride. But if I had to pick just one, I would take the ride from Paris to Milan through the Alps. I would see two famous cities and countries I haven’t seen before, one of the world’s fastest train, a tunnel which literally took a generation to build, and hopefully a bit of the Alps themselves.