Travel Blog

Train ride to Madrid via Brussels, Paris, Toulouse, Narbonne, and Barcelona – April 4, 2016:

5/17/2016

After receiving the InterRail card I almost cancelled the trip and applied for a refund. According to my research the fast trains required a reservation, but it was impossible to get on the internet. I ended up spending the morning of my departure day calling railroad companies and traveling agencies, trying to get a reservation for my further travel in Spain – at first all in vain. As it later turned out, all the train tickets set aside for InterRail were already sold out because of the start of the school holidays in Southern France. Everybody in the region started traveling at the same time as I did – and a lot of them in the direction of Barcelona and Spain.

I ended up getting a train ticket (not just a reservation) for the Talys to Paris and for the night train from Paris to Barcelona. From there I would just trust my luck.

The train from Cologne arrived in Paris at Gare du Nord. From there I had a little over 50 minutes to get to the Gare de Lyon on the other side of town, which worked out fine using the subway. I even had some minutes left at the night train to brush my teeth along the platform before the train departed.

The cabin in the night train was fully booked. I had to share it with 5 other guys, which turned out to be fun, as some of them were quite chatty.

Arriving in Toulouse in the morning I had to find the ticket office first and get a reservation for the train to Madrid. The staff at the counter were all pretty good English speakers and able to help me, though I had to wait several hours before a train to Narbonne departed, where I was able to catch a train to Barcelona that still had a seat left. Eventually I managed to get to Spain despite the huge number of French starting their vacation in the region.

At the train station in Barcelona I tried to call the hostel in Madrid, but the gentleman at the front desk there refused to speak anything else but Spanish. The little language guide I had bought in Cologne came in really handy. I compiled a Spanish sentence and was able to inform him of my late arrival. It made my train ride much more relaxing to know that my room wouldn’t be given to somebody else and would be waiting for me.

The Spanish railroad system turned out to be truly amazing. All the train stations and the tracks seem to be just a few years old, and the trains are always on time – quite impressive. Even more impressive are the numerous tunnels and the huge underground train stations. On the way to Barcelona through the Pyrenean Mountains and later between Barcelona and Madrid the train tracks just cut through the hills. One tunnel followed the other, as if money hadn’t even been a consideration.

Yes, that’s 300 kilometers per hour on the automatic display (train from Barcelona to Madrid). These high-speed trains are truly fast!

The Madrid train station with its palm garden was a welcome sight in the evening.

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Visits in Basel and Meissen - 7th to 10th of April 2016

5/16/2016

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Seeing my good friends Lionel and Ansgar again is always a treat for me. I didn't do any sightseeing in Basel this time, but I was fascinated by the main train station and how busy it was with all the commuters coming into the city.

I arrived in Dresden a few hours before Ansgar got off work – time enough to explore the city a little bit before we were heading to Meissen. Nature in Northern Europe was several weeks behind compared to Oregon and most of the trees still without blossoms or leaves.

Ansgar is not just a great friend, but also the best guide anybody could ever hope for. As an art historian he knows just about everything there is to know about buildings, paintings, artists, and their history. I explored Dresden by myself before he got off work, but then got the grand tour of Meissen the next couple of days.

One of the many highlights in Meissen are the Cathedral from the 13th century and the “Albrechtsburg” up on the castle hill. The late Gothic “Albrechtsburg” is considered to be the first palace in Germany and was built in the late 15th century, replacing a much older castle from the 10th century.

The train ride to Basel was the first time in a long while I used the high speed trains of Europe again. The German ICE provides a level of luxury and convenience I could only dream of in the US. Not all the trains in Germany are this modern though. The train from Meissen to Berlin was a rather old-fashioned and slow one. The main train station in Berlin on the other hand is as modern as it gets with its platforms on different levels serving tracks going from East to West and from North to South and its railroad tunnels underneath the city.

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Farewell Salem - March 17, 2016 and April 3, 2016:

5/16/2016

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I guess it's human nature to love the most what we are about to leave or have already lost. Walking through the streets of Salem in springtime, seeing the cherry blossoms at the Capitol Mall and Willamette University Campus, and knowing that it will be the last glimpses of Oregon I'll get for a long time was bitter sweet.

The last five pictures are of Court Street, featuring my old home in the last two images.

Flight to Europe - April 4, 2016

The first part of the journey was from Portland, OR to San Francisco, CA. The flight to Europe started with an unpleasant surprise. The exit row I was supposed to sit in on the United flight to London turned out to be a regular one with not much leg room. Luckily my neighbor was reseated to sit closer to a co-worker, so I ended up having the whole row for myself. I even slept a little stretched out across all three seats - a first for me on an airplane. Still, the Irish coast and later London were welcome sights after crossing the Atlantic. The last leg of the journey was a short hop from London to Cologne across the English Channel (last picture below).

Back in my home town Cologne after more than 10 years - April 6 and April 11, 2016

The "Heinzelmaennchen-Brunnen" nearby the cathedral commemorates the little people who - according to legend - helped the shoemaker in his work. I always thought of my hometown fondly for building a fountain depicting fairytales instead of victorious battles and campaigns.

The Cologne Philharmonics was built underground, which turned out to be a less than perfect solution. Whenever there's a concert or the musicians are rehearsing, guards have to keep pedestrians from walking on the square above the concert hall to avoid any disturbances (the gentleman in the green jacket is such a guard).

Cologne Cathedral is one if not the best known monument in Germany - so much so that it outshines the twelve Romanic churches the city also houses. One of them - "Gross Sankt Martin" - dominated the Cologne skyline for much longer than the towers of the cathedral, which were only completed in 1880 - 632 years after the foundation stone for the cathedral was laid.

The "Overstolzenhaus" is one of the oldest patrician buildings in Germany (ca. 1230).

"Sankt Maria I'm Kapitol" is my favorite Romanic Church. Consecrated in its current form in 1049, it replaced older structures reaching back to Roman times, and it still houses the wooden doors that adorned it in the past with all their beautiful wood carvings.

These landmarks were just the way I remembered them, but so many other things had changed in the more than 10 years I hadn't been in my hometown. Discovering the new subway stations I had never seen before and the new blocks of houses along the harbor made me feel like a tourist seeing the city for the first time.