Today Fay and I were to have a new experience; riding on and ICE train. (Inter City Express train). We departed Luxembourg on a DB Inter City train at 9:30am bound for Cologne. (Spelt Köln on some maps of Europe) We were seeing grape vines for the first time. Very soon we were travelling through the Mosel Valley. The following was taken from Wikipedia :-The Moselle (French: Moselle, German: Mosel, Luxembourgish: Musel) is a river flowing through France, Luxembourg and Germany. It is a left tributary of the Rhine river, joining it at Koblenz. A small part of Belgium is also drained by the Mosel through the Our. The Moselle has been made navigable for large cargo ships from the Rhine in Koblenz up to Neuves-Maisons, south of Nancy. For smaller ships it is connected to other parts of France through the Canal de l'Est and the Canal de la Marne au Rhin. Here the grape vine were growing on narrow terraces on the hillsides: some terraces were quite small; some were very high on the slopes. I would take some time to climb to the top terraces. The valley was very pretty as were the houses. At Koblenz the train reversed and then I was travelling backwards. For a while we followed the Rhine River. We arrived at Cologne at 1:42pm; we had travelled 256 km in 4hours 20 minutes; only a 59kmph average. At Cologne we only had twelve minutes to change platforms which involved going down stairs, walking to another stairway climbing them to a new platform before the ICE train arrived. We made it but found ourselves at the wrong end of two long trains coupled together. The race was on; we had to move fast to the other end; Fay and I were way behind the rest when a whistle blew so I decided to get into the nearest carriage and walk the corridors; we were just in time; after about 10 minutes of trailing our bags pass curious people we eventually reached our reserved seats. As it turned out we were not the only couple that did this; when the race started one couple went the wrong way and got on the second train. (Remember there were two coupled trains) They had to get off at the next station and race down the platform to join us. Three cheers were accorded. The interior was plush; it was smooth on the tracks and quiet but surprisingly it swayed from side to side. I had to be careful when moving about. I went to the onboard cafe to get Fay a muffin and cup of tea; a train attendant would not let me carry it back to the seat and carried it for me; I guess he thought I would spill it all over the nice carpet. Of course he may have just been nice; he also took my bag off the train for me. The train could really move; on one straight the in cabin speedometer showed 300kmph. Most of the time it travelled a little slower. John took me to the front of the train where we could observe the drivers cabin. All we could see of the driver was his head above a big chair each side of which through a narrow windscreen we could see up the track ahead. We arrived on time at Munich at 6:30 pm having travelled 594km in 4.6 hours averaging 129.13km per hour with six station stops on the way. Our hotel was alongside of the station so we did not have far to walk. We had a lovely hotel meal before I enjoyed the free high-speed Wi-Fi internet; I ran a speed test and the result was 3.3mbs.
ICE Train Drivers cabin
ICE Train interior
Grape Vines on the terraces
In theMosel Valley
No comments:
Post a Comment