Ever wonder what it’s like to experience travel on the great high-speed passenger trains of Europe and Asia? If you blink, you may miss it.

TGV train in Gare de Lyon station, Paris

American travelers who experience high-speed passenger trains elsewhere in the world almost always come home with wide-eyed, rapturous tales of wonderful trips…and an even lower opinion of Amtrak than they had before they left home. I’m not here to dump on Amtrak, but to give you an idea of just how high the rest of the world has set the bar for high-speed rail travel.

Cheap to build, maintain, run? Not a chance. So what do you get for all those billion of euros, yen and so on? You get the best passenger trains in regular service in the world. They’re fast, safe, comfortable. They run on time.

And people use them — close to 100 million a year on France’s TGV and more than 150 million a year on Japan’s Shinkansen alone. In both countries, rail operators have had to resort to double-decker cars to keep up with demand.

Having used them in Britain, France and Italy, I can see why.

My first experience on a high-speed train came courtesy of Eurostar, aka “the Chunnel Train.” London to Paris via the English Channel Tunnel in 2003.

Back then, you boarded the train in Waterloo station in the heart of London. The security screening via metal detectors was somewhat reminiscent of airport security, but still not nearly as onerous. Once through the detectors, you simply walked out onto the platform, boarded your coach and found your seat.

A little under three hours later, you left the train at the Gare du Nord in Paris, a brief taxi or Metro ride away from your hotel.

In between was a ride so smooth and quiet that if you closed your eyes, you weren’t quite sure you were moving.

Oh, you were moving, all right, at speeds up to 186 miles per hour. But you didn’t really start moving until you hit the tunnel and came up on the French side. Back then, the British tracks weren’t really ready for high-speed operations. The French, on the other hand, were good to go.

I actually found myself wishing at times that the train would slow down a bit so I could see more of the French countryside that was flying by on either side.

The following year, it was back to France, this time for a run from Paris to Lyon on the TGV. The letters stand for “Train a Grande Vitesse, which is French for “high-speed train.”

To someone grown accustomed (make that resigned) to California traffic, there’s something uplifting to the soul to lean back in your comfortable, high-backed seat and gaze languidly at the passing scenery — while blowing past all the cars and trucks on the nearby highway.

Smug, moi? Guilty as charged, Your Honor — and I loved every minute and mile! Also, totally unstressed.

But what about the luggage-laden mobs in the airports at either end of my trip? Didn’t I feel just a hint of remorse, just a twinge of sympathy on their behalf?

HELL to the no!

These trains have no real dining cars. When you’re zipping across country at speeds up to 186 miles per hour, who has time for a sit-down meal? Then again, when you can get sinfully good croque-monsieur sandwiches and quiches to die for in the train stations or from nearby shops, who needs a dining car?

(Speaking of food and trains, the Gare de Lyon station in Paris has a restaurant called “Le Train Bleu,” The Blue Train. When it first opened, the Wright Brothers hadn’t flown yet. Click on the link — and prepare to be blown away. Just peeking through the doors makes my wallet hyperventilate.)

But the best experience of all was the December visit to Strasbourg in the Alsace region of eastern France.

Naturally, you first have to fly in to Paris at their Roissy CDG airport, then make the grinding hour-long trek via shuttle or taxi to the Gare de l’Est train station to catch the TGV for Strasbourg. Or so I thought — until my friend Walt informed me of a design feature at CDG I hadn’t heard about.

“There’s a train station right in the middle of the airport,” he said. “You can get your train right there.”

Incredible. Walk down a couple of terminals, take the elevators down three floors and you’re there on the train platform. The French national rail company, SNCF, has an office one level up sell you a ticket or take care of any questions about your Railpass.

A few comfortable hours after hitting the airport, you’re were in Strasbourg. No budget-busting cab ride. No getting crammed into a shuttle van. It’s almost surreal.

Eurostar Italia in Italy — not to be confused with the Eurostar train that runs the Chunnel — is almost as fast and just as good. It almost feels as if you’re riding some city’s rapid transit system, except that your darting all over the country in a matter of a very few hours. You can get up and down the Italian boot in less time than it takes some folks to commute between Santa Barbara and San Diego.

Measuring Amtrak against systems like these is like comparing a Model T to a Maserati. It’s just not fair. Nor is it Amtrak’s fault, not when they’re running on technology roughly a half-century behind the rest of the world and are at the mercy of freight companies for the very tracks they run on.

You have believe that America can do better.

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