ICE High Speed Trains
My good time in Winsen ended today. Last night I played my last game of Rummikub and this morning I had my last delicious German breakfast of Muesli with nuts and fruit, cut up fruit, a variety of breads and spreads and coffee.
Then Elke drove me to Celle, almost all the way through garden forests in straight lines of straight trunked pines rising 100 feet with tufted branches only at the top. I was to the train station half an hour early and boarded the ICE 75 high speed train for the 7 hour ride to Basel where I would have 8 minutes to change trains. As it turned out, because of a track assignment delay in Frankfurt, we arrived in Basel 7 minutes late but I was able race (in my lumbering way) to barely catch the train in the direction of Biel and then another rapid change of trains to the train to Geneva airport.
But I wasn’t going to let worry about changing trains spoil my ride and knew I had all night to get to the airport. Riding the train may be an uncomfortable way to reach a destination on Amtrak, but in Europe, at least for a foreigner, the train ride, itself, is the destination. The huge windows are clean, the ride silky smooth, the seats are comfortable, everyone speaks in hushed voices, you often have a little table, free wifi, and best of all, most trains have a dining car, often with white tablecloths, beside a huge window where you are served at your table and can sit for as long as you want. And outside is the unspoiled German countryside with beautiful houses and orchards and fields of yellow flowers and miles of forest. Seven hours on the train in Germany is pure heaven.
And that is what it was for me. I had two meals on two trains in the dining hall, in Germany quite reasonable, in Switzerland quite expensive. Most Germans eat before or after their train trip or bring their own food and eat at their seat. So the dining cars are uncrowded. But I had come over 4000 miles for the chance to sit in a marvelous dining car gliding through Germany and cost was for the experience, not the food, which was worth what I paid in any case and so much more fun that eating cramped on a plane.
BILLYBABA’S WANDERING 