Tübingen – Donau

Day 21

Photo by MH

Photo by MH

Photo by MH

We got on an express bus to connect with the train that went to our final ‘away’ destination, but it stopped just outside of town because of a malfunction? It was pretty weird, especially with how the bus driver chose to deal with it – by pulling into a gas station and yelling at other bus drivers, trying to get their attention so they would… stop and help him? somehow? Anyway, eventually he got back on with someone else who just made him drive the rest of the way, idk. Then we took a tiny little train (almost a glorified tram rather than a train) that ended in the village of Neuffen. You look up, and you see the castle. Continue reading →

Tübingen – Schloss Lichtenstein

Day 20

We had to get up early this day, as we were going quite a long way. You see, the Rhine and the Danube actually begin in sort of the same area, an area that has some really amazing limestone formations. It was pretty cold that morning, especially while we were waiting on the platform at Sigmaringen to take the final train on to the tiny train stop at Fridingen. (I know there was a heat-wave on in southern Europe, but it most definitely was not anywhere we were; temperatures rarely got over 25 Celcius, and I wouldn’t have been surprised if the temperature that morning was closer to 15-18 where we were.) We glimpsed Sigmaringen Castle on our way by, but it hadn’t quite made our list of “top castles to see” so we didn’t mind that we weren’t seeing more of it. Continue reading →

Tübingen – Bebenhausen

Day 18

Today was pretty exciting, we were going to Lichtenstein Castle! Which is kind of like Neuschwanstein lite. We decided to go to this one because, being smaller and less famous, it would probably have fewer tourists. We were probably right?

First we had to take some buses. The train was out to the first town we had to connect at, so they were running a train-replacement bus. The connecting bus parked in a weird spot so it left without us, but we got another one. It runs down these rather narrow valleys with little towns, and the castle is prominent above the town to stop at. We were walking up, there’s a hiking trail, the beginning of which is a little difficult to find but once you’re on it there aren’t a hundred different routes to choose from. There was an option to go down another trail to see a spring or something, but we decided not to – it would have increased the amount of uphill walking we’d have to do after, and taken more time that we wanted to spend at the castle. So we continued upwards. The trail became extremely narrow, just a ledge on the side of a very steep hill, which was not great for my increasing paranoia about falling off. I don’t have great balance, and I think about earthquakes a lot, especially apparently while I’m on the side of a steep hill. Continue reading →

Heidelberg

Okay so the last post was excessively long and I’m going back to Europe in 10 hours so let’s upload some blogs without pictures just so I don’t give myself another two weeks to forget what happened in the summer. I’ll add pictures when I get back, and will probably edit the text more too. EDIT: pictures added!

Day 15, cont.

Little villages in the hollows

The next destination on our list was Tübingen. The train station was not that impressive upon debarking our train, but the brand new not-even-finished bus loop outside sure was! It appeared to have as many platforms as letters in the alphabet. In fact, Tharash suggested it had too many platforms/buses, given how difficult it was to figure out which was the correct bus. The good news if you were anywhere else in the city was that like 98% of all transit passes through the bus/train hub by the Neckar River (which is a much smaller river here than in Heidelberg). But the bus station was really aesthetically pleasing, and they have little symbols to help you identify which bus you want, and scrolling boards saying how long until the next bus at every platform. I was also shocked when we actually got on the bus, because it had a ticket machine on the bus. Now that’s living in the future. (As of this writing, my hometown has FINALLY FOR THE LOVE OF FRIES rolled out a contactless payment system for fares, so my hometown is thinking about joining the 21st century as far as public transit is concerned. Now to turn one of those parking lots downtown into a proper bus station, and we might get somewhere.) Continue reading →

Trier

Day 13

Technically this starts in Trier but I figured Trier’s post was long enough already without shoving Koblenz into it as well. (edit: and this still has 250 pictures in it, I think I’m going to break up Tübingen even more than I planned T_T) I carried out my resolution to eat all the tasty things at the breakfast buffet this morning, and I had a croissant with Nutella as part of that omnomnom. Then we got on an earlier train than originally planned, and travelled back northeast to Koblenz. There we went for a walk, putting our stuff in a train station locker again, navigating our way around the confusing, loud, in-the-way car infrastructure in order to get to the old part of town and specifically the point at which the Mosel meets the Rhine, where there is a huge statue. We caught a train back from the old town area to the Hauptbahnhof where we had left our stuff (at the old town station there’s no ticket gates even, you just walk onto the platform, it’s amazing), and had a little bit of a snack, although the lady at the bakery misheard me and got Tharash a cappuccino instead of a tea. Oh well. Off to Heidelberg! Continue reading →

Cochem

Sorry I’m slowing down on these, I’m running a bit out of steam on them (and I still have three more to do T_T ) (why did I take so many pictures) (help)

Day 11

Trier was one of my favourite places on this trip! There’s so much to see there, but it’s all so close together. The train trip here was nice though I was sleepy. It doesn’t stick to the riverbank as easily as it did lower down on the river, I guess the river was too wiggly here for that to be cost-effective so there were a lot more bridges and long tunnels than the previous trip from Koblenz to Cochem. When we arrived it was still like 11am, too early to go to our hotel, so we decided to put our luggage in a train station locker and go to a museum first. But we needed change for the locker, so we went to the bakery in the train station and bought some buns to get the coins necessary. This accomplished, we walked to the Rheinisches Landesmuseum Trier, passing through an 18th century garden on the way. We stopped by the ornamental pond to eat lunch, and watched the ducks and pigeons faffing about. Continue reading →

Aachen

Day 8, cont.

Despite our first train being late, it was fine: our second train in Cologne was late too. We only had a few minutes in Cologne, though, not enough time to visit the Cathedral again (which I had previously visited in 2012), but enough time that I could walk to the end of the platform and get some new pictures. Though we got off the first train precipitously enough that Tharash forgot his waterbottle. : ( But he resolved not to worry about it (probably seeing how upset I get whenever I lose things : P). Continue reading →

Bruges

Aachen was really high on my list of places to visit for this trip, because I’ve seen the Cathedral there in several documentaries (my favourite being The Day the Universe Changed, Episode 2: In the Light of the Above, which discusses the impact of rediscovering Greek and Latin scientific and philosophical writings on Western European thought). Also, we used this video to help us plan the trip. So here we go! Shorter post this time because we were only here less than 24 hours.

Day 7, cont.

We got on the IC (inter-city) train to Brussels where we changed to the high-speed ICE (inter-city express) train. It was a very high speed train because however fast I guessed it was going from looking out the window, it was probably going about 50% faster than that. (A high-speed train later in the trip was going about 240k/h, which it said on the screen that announced the upcoming stops, so it was really booking it. North America could never.) There was a really cute black baby on the high speed train, but he was a wiggly little boy and when the mom walked away for a few seconds to attend to some luggage I had to keep him from squirming out of his seat and running after her! Eventually she got him to sleep. Continue reading →