After a week in Südtirol, we again took the train to return to Germany. Our trip was uneventful, if a bit wearying. The train was again full, and we were very grateful to have reserved seats the whole way. Unlike plane travel where you are assigned a seat, trains in Europe allow you (in some cases) to buy a ticket but not reserve a seat. If you find an unreserved seat, you can take that one. If there are no unreserved seats, you either stand, or use one of the jump seats in the corridor. Some of the trains had tiny digital displays at each seating cluster to show which were reserved and which weren’t. One used paper cards with the end-points of the reservation noted. Riders without reservations routinely ignore these reservation indicators, so you have to show them your reservation and ask them to leave the seat.
As we discovered on our way to Italy, some Europeans are fairly nasty about the whole “you’re in my seat” exchange. We got to evict one woman from our compartment when we got on the train in Bressanone Saturday afternoon. As it turns out, she had a seat reserved in our compartment, but with a full compliment of six people, she claimed it was “too @$%#&! crowded” (in German, of course), and opted to sit on one of the jump seats in the corridor.
Given the crowding on the train, and the expensive snacks or food, which may or may not be available (nearly everyone brings their own food and drink on board), the whole “Europe by train” experience was less than romantic. It is still an efficient, relatively inexpensive way to travel, it just isn’t the Orient Express. We didn’t upgrade to first class on any of our trains, so I don’t know if the experience there is any better or not.
Our trip north on Saturday took about 6 hours, with a brief (less than 10 minute) train switch in München. The first train, from Bressanone to München, was older and a bit noisy, the train from München to Stuttgart, was much newer, and whisper quiet. It is hard to gauge how fast you are traveling at any given time, but by looking out the window and guessing, “are the trees and houses going by as fast as when I drive on the highway?” I think I can safely say we, at times, were going much faster than 70 or 80 miles an hour. We both agreed that driving the same distance in a car would not only take longer, but that at least one of us, the driver, wouldn’t get to sightsee along the way.
Train travel in Europe may not be a romantic as we envisioned months ago when planning this trip, and neither of us can imagine the exhaustion that would have set in had we planned a trip around a Eurail Pass and visits to multiple places or countries, but it is quick, efficient, and fun in a “gee, I’m glad I’m not driving” sort of way.
