NOVEMBER 5, FRIDAY

NOVEMBER 5, FRIDAY

TRAINS

This was the day I came by train from Aschaffenburg to Celle. German trains, and maybe lightning trains everywhere, are so sleek and low and shiny, so quiet, tapered at both ends, almost snakelike as they slide in and out of stations or whisk through, blip, blip if they aren’t stopping. And once you are inside they are so silky smooth and hushed with comfortable seats and large windows with a hostess somewhere softly telling you which town you are about to come to, with the stops, even at big stations only for a minute or two, before gliding out of the station, reaching full speed almost instantly.

I thought German trains were always on time to the minute, but three of the trains I have been on have been late. But each time that they were late it was with profuse apologies and explanations and almost consternation that they could be late. On this trip from Aschaffenburg to Celle, half way through Germany in 3 hours, the first train was 28 minutes late with 30 minutes allotted for the change to the next train. But the second train was 15 minutes late with only 13 minutes at the next stop to change. I was sure that I would miss it and didn’t know what I would do then. But when we pulled in on track 3 and I got out, my next train pulled in 3 minutes later on the same track and by the time I got to Celle I was right on time. Susie arrived on the same track from Asheville five minutes before me without our trying to coordinate our arrivals.

I didn’t go to the dining car or the snack car or sit high in the upper deck so I didn’t get the whole German train experience. But my experience was so pleasant. It was one of the experiences I was looking forward to on this trip.

We passed village after self contained village, tightly packed together with cows grazing in pastures and forests beginning right at the village boundary. Even the big cities seemed close packed, not extending in all directions as our cities do.

The other thing I marveled at was how much rail traffic there was and again so closely spaced and so well organized that both freight trains and passenger trains would whizz through stations or follow each other within minutes on the same track. It is either the magic of computers or the hand of God or fabled German organization that allows this to happen without a sudden mistake and crackup with train cars piled in heaps. Once in a long while I read of an accident. But that there aren’t daily accidents seems a miracle.

In India the trains are slow and usually packed with people with many of the trains being overnight trains on which you can reserve a berth with a pillow and blanket and towel, warm in the winter and cool in the summer. The train clicks and clacks and shudders over rail crossings. People are talking and eating meals from home or order hot meals served on the train: oily curry, a vegetable, some folded puries and an ice cream dessert. And Indian trains stop often, for seemingly no reason at all, out in the country and at station after station where hawkers sell garam chai, hot tea, sometimes in clay cups, usually stopping long enough at station for you to get out and buy something from a platform snack bar or cart or simply stretch your legs. And then the train starts up slowly enough to easily get on if you are still at a chai stand.

And when you get off at your stop there are red shirted porters with brass number plates on their arms and red turbans on which they cushion the bags that they carry on their heads and rickshaw or taxi drivers trying to persuade you to ride with them.

Both forms of train rides, German and Indian, are great fun, fun that Americans mostly miss out on.

But I won’t, because I have 50,000 Amtrak points, a gift from my Amtrak credit card for charging $2500 (paid off immediately) within two months which will take me, I hope, this summer all around the United States. Sign up if you want me to stop by.