After yesterday’s long post, this really will be short as most of the day was spent traveling. Here’s how it went:
- 7.30am Walk from hotel in drizzling rain to Dijon Station, about 15 mins
- Take train from Dijon to Mulhouse, just over an hour
- Take train from Mulhouse to Strasbourg, just under an hour
- Take train from Strasbourg to Stuttgart, just over an hour … with a fast run from platform 2 to platform 16 because it was a tight schedule and our train as late to …
- Take train from Stuttgart to Ulm, about an hour
- Drive hire car from Ulm to Biberach an der Riss, about 45 mins
- 6.00pm Arrive at our hotel, Gasthof Grüner Baum
Ain’t travel sometimes grand!
A few observations
- German influence was clearly apparent at the railway stations in Alsace, in terms of language, food, and those cute coloured stem glasses that Sue at least equates with her last trip to Germany. We’d loved to have gone walking for an hour or so in Strasbourg as we had our biggest wait there, but it proved expensive to get rid of our bags and it was pouring.
- Vineyards, running in different directions to each other, come right down from the hills to the edge of the town in Stuttgart, lending a rural feel to what is quite an industrial town, being home to cars like Mercedes Benz and Porsche. We were sorry we were on the train and couldn’t get a good shot of the vineyards. They were something else!
- Things still run pretty much to rule in Germany. Len had booked the hire car for 5pm but we arrived at 4.30pm. Upon making inquiries – which involved a phone call from the tourist office pick-up point, he was told firmly that the car had been booked for 5pm and it would be there then! And so it was, but what another waste of 30 mins at the end of a long day. And then the car turned out to be not what we’d ordered, but an Audi 2-door TT sports car. Give us a nice comfortable sedan any day, we say, rather than these low-seat cars with big doors that you have to watch when you open them in tight car parks.
- German country towns are SO pretty, and so well maintained it’s sometimes hard to tell what’s old and what’s new – at least here in the south. We love the fact that servers in traditional establishments like gasthofs still wear traditional dress. That’s bringing out the tourist in us isn’t it … We should add that we hope they, the servers that is, are comfortable!
Anyhow, here we are in Germany, the last country of our trip, and we are looking forward to something quite different again.
Three-words
LEN: Familiar old haunt
SUE: Waiting, Rain, Prettiness
and the stills…
I’m very impressed that you wrote this post after such a day! Did I tell you Amber and Matt are in Munich right now? You’re so close!
Yes, you did, Hannah. Close but we are not going there this time which is a shame – Munich is a city I loved last time – but this time it needs to be Berlin and the east. I hope they are having a great time.
Pleased to hear that you have arrived in Germany. It sounds beautiful there. What a marathon, though, of rail connections! Well done for your persistence and stamina. Are you still zooming around in the Audi sports or did they swap it for das Auto that you ordered? Look forward to hearing how you enjoy re-visiting this place of memories from Len’s time as a student! Cheers, Mary
Thanks Mary … yes, we are still zooming around in the Audi as we picked it up in Ulm and came straight down to Biberach. It does the job!
Len was here working … he’d done a Masters in England and then training with a company in Scotland, and then worked in Europe (most of it here) for a year or so. Watch for the next post on more churches.