Deutsche Bahn - Have I mentioned how much I love trains?

I love trains.

I love traveling via public transportation.

There is something about successfully negotiating public transportation that still feeds my confidence.* Unfortunately, DH does not share my affection for trains, buses and trams (although he does enjoy a good cable car).

But our last trip (Christmas 2012) was a driving disaster - we missed exits on the autobahn, had difficulty with directions and signage. We got confused in the dark of night. We debated traveling by train on our next trip and thus talked ourselves into taking the two hour train ride from the Frankfurt Airport to Nuremberg, where MC would pick us up.

It was a great way to see the countryside and a very different train experience than my trip on the Texas Eagle in June. DH read most of the way - interrupted by an occasional comment on the scenes outside our window.

I. The Stations:

DH purchases our tickets - first class!

DH in the Deutsche Bahn ticket office.

Frankfurt Airport train station is pretty fancy.

Schedule - not what we expect here, where there is a 4 or 5 line list of trains each day - if that.

More of the fancy station.

Another train chart - something like which platforms the different trains will be on.

German trains run on time!

Hope this poster is not an omen.

DH with our luggage. Thank heavens for those "rolly suitcases."

Rail yard.

First stop. Until we got here we were moving backwards. NOT a good thing for this traveler.

Hanau Hbh

Aschaffenburg Hbh

Wurzburg Hbh

Nuremberg Hbh

II. The Trains:

Engine on a regional train (regional trains are red - long distance trains are white with a red stripe).

Freight train (Looks like ours except for all the electrical wires overhead).

Local train

Long distance train we moved past.

Not much room for our luggage. DH tried to read (REALLY - DH on a train!)

They serve you in First Class. I love German coffee.

III. Rivers:

The rivers are amazing - no drought here.

Another impressive river.

IV. Fields:

Beautiful fields throughout the countryside.

More fields - patchwork quilts.

This hill was like a sleeping giant covered in a crazy quilt of fields. I expected him to turn over at any minute.

Vineyards

Fields of windmills

Farmers took advantage of the weather

Fields of solar panels

V. Other sights:

Garden plots along the tracks - each with a shed.

Small towns with onion-domed churches

 

Another town with an onion-domed church, towering above the rooftops.

We traveled through some fog.

 

We went through numbers of tunnels, perhaps 12 or 15 of them. The longer tunnels had lights inside.

*I spent two months in England, Scotland and Ireland traveling exclusively by train, bus, ferry and thumb in the late 1970s (Don't tell my children or my mother about the hitchhiking), but that's another story.