Euro rail

The best part of our trip to Europe was riding around on the trains. The train from Venice to Milan was late and of course the German train was on time. We thought we were going to have time to get some food at the station before boarding the next train but we barely had time to get onto the German train.

Since we were late the first class cars were full so we just had to get on were we could. It had been a hot day and the station was steamy. The second class cars had a small Eisenhower era air-conditioned that barley blew any cool air out. We had already been hot and we couldn’t open the window. There was nothing to do but strip down to out under things and drink tons of bottled water.

By the morning we were in Germany and we went to the end of the car to use the shower apparently everyone else had showered over night and the only towel left for me to use to dry off was a wash cloth. We did get a nice breakfast on the train, there was a small seating area and the cabin steward served us yogurt and some breakfast tea and toast. It wasn’t a lot but it was better than nothing.

We pulled into station at Cologne and found our hotel, which was across the street. The shower on the train really handed left me feeling clean so I used the shower in the room. I was now in the land of the tall white people and the shower head and fixtures were much higher than in Italy. Back to the station and the huge Gothic cathedral, there was s small boys choir rehearsing and the acoustics were amazing. Behind the alter workers were restoring the tomb of some bishop or cardinal that laid there.

The rest of the city was charming and we dined at a café by the river. There was a stag party we saw doing a pub crawl. The Germans were the loudest of all the Europeans we has seen so far and they got louder the more they drank. In one of the places we stopped in to have a beer we had only seen a lager, then later a darker beer. After asking if they had a darker beer we were informed that that was beer and coke mixed together. To us, drinking the normal beer was just fine and it seemed a sacrilege to mix it with coke, we found out later it was called a diesel. We never tired one.

We had inquired about getting lederhosen for a man, but there was nothing in the store like that. Only other knick-knacks we did some shopping. My favorite thing from that trip was a few pairs of pants I bought in Cologne or Koln. It was also obvious that my man’s family might have been northerners, he looked like everyone there. They all had his same nose.

From there we took the train the next day to the city I had been dreaming of all my life, Paris.