TRAIN RIDE ACROSS GERMANY
We got to the Geneva train station at 9 and the train left at 9:30. We got on the train at the right time on the right track, but at first we were not sure that Craig had put on the right train and had no idea where our car or seats were or even if we had a complete ticket. We didn’t panic and reverted to the clueless tourist mode. But when Susie located a woman conductor everything was fine. We were on the right train and were unexpectedly in first class when we expected to be in second class. Craig, who bought the tickets, texted us that when first class was not much more than second class he bought us first class tickets. First class meant that seats were wider and the legroom more and the service from the dining car was free, delivered right to your seat.
But we wanted to eat in the dining car with its wide windows where I had Linsensuppe and a small Bitburger beer and watched Germany flash by. I took a number of photographs, but it is hard to photograph when you are going 120 miles per hour. You have only an instant in which to decide what is noteworthy and have to escape the reflections in the window and the electricity poles as they fly past.
We changed trains twice, each change across the same platform and easy to do. But the second train to Gottingen was twenty minutes late and we missed our connection to Hanover and then Celle. But luckily there were two trains arriving witnin 15 minutes on the way to Hannover and we took the designated one and got to Celle only an hour late and were picked up by Cordula Klein from whom we are renting a vacation apartment, Wildblume (Wildflower) which was lucky because we had also missed the last bus to the village of Winsen where we will spend the next five days.
But today the special experience was the train, or rather the three trains we were on. All were super fast, all had comfortable seats and huge windows, all had dining cars with delicious hot offerings at not too great a price. We could walk around and eat when we wanted to. Our train ride was about the same time as it takes to fly across the Atlantic from Newark to Hannover. But the difference in comfort and what you see out the window is enormous. Certainly train is the way to travel if you possibly can. Flying is sometimes cheaper and quicker, but if getting there is part of the reason for traveling then slower and seeing the places you are passing is preferable to rapidly flying overhead and missing the experience of the journey.
BILLYBABA’S WANDERING 