Train to Stuttgart at 9am

Headed to Italy this morning under an “Italian” sky – here in Tübingen people refer to really blue skies as “Italian”. That somehow seems appropriate as we start on our way to Italy.

Now that we’re more more or less German tourists making a trip to Italy, Chris also thought about Goethe’s Italienische Reise (“italian journeys”) works and how our trips compared to Goethe’s. [Editor’s note: for all that we thought about trying to think about this on the trip, we actually never thought about it again.]

Stuttgart to Munich

On what’s called an ICE train, we were initially in a compartment with 2 other women. But the air conditioning in the car wasn’t working, and a conductor came along and suggested that we could switch to a seat in another car. I scouted out the possibilities in other cars, and suddenly understood why the conductor had said it would be easier to switch seats if we waited until we got to the city of Ulm 20 minutes later. As it turned out, to switch seats we’d need to go through the dining car on the train,  and then through at least one more car beyond that to find available seating. Since we were traveling with two small carry-on bags and 2 backpacks, that wasn’t going to be as easy to do on swaying train. In Ulm, we could hop off the train, walk down the platform outside the cars, and then enter a new car from the outside.

The new car was definitely cooler, fortunately. As Chris later commented, the ICE train was initially anything but.

Our Hour in Munich

In Munich we had an hour to kill between trains, which was plenty of time to get sandwiches and pastries to stave off starvation during  the train ride from Munich to Verona. On other trips, we have always gotten pastries at the same bakery in the Munich train station. The first time we got some there years ago, in our opinion the pasties had been surprisingly good for baked goods purchased at a train station, and so we’d always gone back to the same place on every subsequent trip.

Imagine our surprise this time, though, when we discovered that the place were “our” bakery once stood is now a tobacconist shop. Ack. How can that be? We move to Germany and our favorite pastry shop in the Munich train station closes? Hmph.

EC train from Munich to Verona

Well, this is a nice surprise that our seats are  in a much newer style train car than the type we used to get when we regularly rode the EC trains between Munich and Bolzano (or between Bolzano and Verona).  During the years we lived in Italy, these EC train routes changed from being run by the Italian train company, to being run by either the Austrian or the German companies. But even after the change of ownership of the routes, the train cars had seemingly remained the same: old run-down cars that had been used by the Italian company. However, today’s train is a mix of cars, with ours a newer, Austrian models with one of the older ones immediately behind ours, but our car was a new one.

Of course, this is the first time we bought the tickets for the train in Germany … maybe the seats in the new cars are only assigned to the people who buy the tickets in Germany?

Hmm.

Coffee Break in Brennero

The train usually stops for at least 15 minutes in Brennero on its way south into Italy. Historically that was probably to do passport control checks, since the Brenner Pass is the border in the Alps between Austria and Italy. These days it’s not as clear why the train stops for so long there, although they do seem to switch conductors during the pause.

For us, 15 minutes is more than enough time to hop off the train and head to the vending machine room in the station.  There, for a very reasonable 70 eurocents (~$1.00)  you can get a surprisingly decent cup of espresso from the LaVazza-brand vending machine, LaVazza also being our favorite brand of Italian coffee.

Ah, welcome to Italy. 🙂

BTW, Chris was tipped to the existence of that machine by one his coffee-loving colleagues in Bolzano. She’s German, but years of living in Italy have made her a fan of the local style of coffee. And that machine puts out a better cup of espresso than most palaces in Tübingen, that’s for sure.

They still never call ahead

During the 3 years we lived in Bolzano, we never did figure why  a scheduled train which is running on time — and which is listed on the official schedule with an assigned platform to pull into — always comes to a complete stop just outside of town. It always stays there for a few minutes before starting up again and finishing the final kilometer or so into the platform. We always joked that it was like they forget to call ahead to book a reservation at a platform.

Now, there have been changes to the Italian train system in the last 9 months since we left Italy. Including, sadly, the elimination of our favorite 9:31 to Lecce train, among a myriad of other changes to the schedule. However, some things never change: as usual, they apparently forgot to call ahead to reserve a platform. So our train stopped and waited for several minutes just north of Bolzano, before the train pulled into the station … unexpectedly right on time?

Brigadoon

We remembered just in time to spot our traditional castle landmark on the way to Verona: Brigadoon. We were a little rusty … but then again, we’ve never pulled out of Bolzano so late in the afternoon to go to Verona before. But, we spotted our old familiar friend and realized, even more so than stopping (but not getting off) at the Bolzano station, that we were really back on the road to Verona once more.

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Editors note: The Brigadoon blurb wasn’t actually finished on the iPad – I’m not sure why I got distracted and didn’t finish it. Also, we didn’t have anything else to note on the remaining 1.5 hours of the trip the way down to Verona. We arrived in Verona right on time, and celebrated a successful  train trip by hopping into a taxi to get to the hotel, which gave us plenty of time to hang out in Piazza Bra, with those views of L’arena and the video crane, before dinner. 🙂

BTW, it took us 9+ hours door-to-door to take the train from Tübingen to Verona, with 2 changes of trains (in Stuttgart and Munich).

At the end of the trip we were all the way in Venice, which would have meant a 12+ hour train trip to get back to Tübingen.  So, we opted to fly from Venice on the way back rather than take the train. Since it’s only a 1 hour flight from Venice to Stuttgart.

However, for a 1 hour plane ride, it took us 6 hours door-to-door to get back home:  first, we took a 30 minute boat/bus from Venice to the airport, then we spent a stressful period in the crowded and chaotic Venice airport, then after the flight we had to wait almost an hour  in the Stuttgart airport for the once-per-hour bus back to Tübingen. And it was then another hour once we got on the bus to get back home.

Not exactly just a 1 hour plane ride, in other words.

All in all, when we have the time, I’d vote for the train.