General questions

[lonadar]

So I feel stupid for asking these, but...
1) I can't seem to pick my route. The map shows I could go to three different places, but when I actually get to click "Depart", there's only ever one route I can take. Clicking on other cities or routes either does nothing or just brings up info about the city. I watched a whole slew of people take off down the Trans-Siberian railway and couldn't get it to let me go that way out of Moscow. It forced me back to St. Petersburg and into a Russian Trap. Which leads me to...
2) Is there any way to save the game and pick up later? I didn't see any sort of interface for this but after an hour and a half, I needed to move on to other things.
3) Are the train/boat/etc. departure tables readable? Is there any way to see a schedule of upcoming methods? In leu of a more direct method of changing destination (see #1) it seems my only recourse is to "hotel" night after night until I see a Depart that appeals.

I want to enjoy this game. I really do, but...at the moment it isn't very interactive.

[kebzero]

The game forces you eastward, so if you're clicking on a route going west, odds are you can't travel that way. Sometimes you can't go to the 'first' stop on a route, but have to pick a destination further down the line (don't recall if this is the case on the Trans-Siberian, but it is for parts of the Orient Express). Not entirely sure if that's appliccable to your situation.

The game automatically saves when you exit. You only ever have one save, so you cannot reload or play multiple games at the same time. You can restart, but I think you'll be stuck on the same 'seed' (I believe the game has eight different ones) until you complete the journey.

If you have a train/boat/airship table in your inventory, you automatically know all the routes featured in them (they'll be painted on the map when you put the table in your inventory). If you sell the table, the routes go away again, even if you've learned of them through other means in the meantime. They're safe to discard once the continent they're attached to is west of you (say, you can safely ditch the European ones once you're in India or Siberia).

Conversing with other travellers can give you important route information ahead of time, but often you'll arrive in a city and your only option will be to 'Explore', to find routes leaving that city. As far as I know, exploring will reveal all available options, save a very few 'secret' ones, like the Yokohama-Honolulu boat ride which you learn through the newspaper in select games (#2 onwards, I think).