There wasn’t a whole lot that happened today. A lot of train travel as I made the trek north from Stuttgart to Hamburg.
Probably the only interesting thing that happened during the train ride was needing to leg it between transfers. I later found out that I didn’t need to transfer but Deutsche Bahn decided to do it because transferring to the second train was faster by around 50 minutes. Anyway the problem with the transfer was that I was in carriage 2 of the second train and when I reached the top of the stairs at Mannheim station I was at the “bordrestaurant” (Onboard Restaurant) carriage. That was carriage 10 of a 14 carriage train. At a guess off the top of my head I would say each carriage is around 20-25 metres long.
And I could see the conductor was ready to blow the whistle and raise the flag indicating it was time to depart. So I had to leg it, 20kg suitcase in tow. She was hitting the whistle when I was at carriage 3. So that was eventful.
The rest of the trip was rather uneventful though. The only interesting thing was the walk (yes a walk this time) back to the bistro car to get a drink and travelling at 250kph between Hannover and Hamburg. That gave me shades of China but we hit 300kph there. On a side note, have a look at the difference here between a glass 500mL Coke Zero I got on the train and a plastic 500mL Coke Zero from one of the cafe’s here. That’s one hell of a size difference for the same amount of liquid content.
The train arrived in Hamburg just after 1:30pm. We actually arrived in Hamburg Main Station 5 minutes early which is something I was not given the impression would happen with long distance Deutsche Bahn trains. By the time I got to the hotel, checked in, dropped the suitcase and made my way back to the station to get some lunch, the original train I would have been on rocked up.
After lunch it was time for a self-guided tour of Hamburg. Since the tour buses had stopped running for the day. I ended up doing a loop around the lower “lake”, Binnenalster. Overhead a few Americans talking about the origins of Colombians and Mexicans (both Spanish origin FYI). Did a bit more walking around and then, by some miracle of the passage of time, it was dinner time. It didn’t really feel like much time had passed but there I was walking around and came across a clock that read 8pm. I visited the station once again, as that’s where all the food joints are. And found a place that was still open that wasn’t the Macca’s, KFC or Hungry Jack’s Burger King. Had a doner kebab and a drink. Made my way back to the hotel and called it a night on 24,536 or something steps.
Recent Comments