Saturday, November 22, 2003

Hitting The Rails One of my initial goals when I moved to Germany was to learn how to ride the trains.  Now after living here almost four months, I've finally gotten around to enjoying what the Deutsche Bahn has to offer. The impetus was that I needed to find a way to get to the airport in Frankfurt to catch my flight back to Texas come Christmas time.  I'd been advised that parking a car there can be expensive, and shy of having someone take you up there and dropping you off in a car, the next best option is to take a train.  So today I decided to explore the train option by going out to Frankfurt and seeing just how easy or difficult it was.  So with my weekend train pass clutched in one hand, along with the schedules listing the trains to catch, I set out on my journey before dawn from the Landstuhl Bahnhof.  The train arrived pretty much on time and left within two minutes of arriving in the station.  Luckily finding a seat wasn't a problem.  I pretty much had the car all to myself.  In fact the trains were mostly empty until I got on the final train into Frankfurt.  Then it was packed.  But early on I made myself comfortable and began contemplating the rest of my trip. The trip itself was fairly uneventful.  I never got asked for my ticket all morning.  The Germans have you on the honor system and mainly just do spot checks on tickets.  I didn't get asked to produce mine till the afternoon when I was coming home.   Anyway, most of the trip up consisted of stopping at the many tiny villages on the way to Frankfurt.  Bad Münster am Stein was a fairly typical station and where I had to change trains at one point.  Not much going on there.  Nor at Imsweiler, Rockenhausen, Alsenz, Enkenbach, Hochstätten, Altenbamberg, or Bad Kreuznach to name a few (Up until I got tired of writing the names of these places down.  Trust me.  There were lots, lots more).  Let's just say that Rockenhausen ain't exactly rockin' on a Saturday morning. Eventually I arrived at the Flughafen Frankfurt Main and took a quick walking tour.  Lots of flight information signs, lots of shops, lots of planes, and even one "erotik shop."  For the record, I didn't go in the erotik shop.  For long. All this exploring worked up a tremendous appetite, so I wandered into a place called Käfer's.  The sign was what lured me in.  Frequent readers of this site will know that I haven't had much luck with European cuisine.  Basically I almost always order something either revolting or just not what I had in mind.  But the sign out front was advertising roast meatloaf with fried egg.  Now I know what meatloaf is.  I also know what a fried egg is.  I'm not adverse to either.  So I felt confident that this time I could have a meal with no goofy surprises. Does this look like meatloaf to you? So after that meal, I checked out the departure schedule one last time, marveling at incredible list of destinations that hundreds of people were leaving to within that twenty-five minute span.  Then I hopped on another train and took a different route back home. There's lots more that happened that I just don't have time to go into detail about.  Like the drunken soccer hooligans at the Frankfurt Bahnhof dancing and singing through the station, the African guy who played a game of charades with me in order to get me to take his picture -- twice, the twelve year old looking kid with a blond mohawk and a Marlboro sticking out of his mouth, and so on.  Let's just say that I've never had a more interesting trip to an airport.  Can't wait to hit the rails again. Related sites: The Deutsche Bahn English Site Riding the Rails in Germany:  this site proved very valuable to me today The Frankfurt Airport website:  just click on "English" at the top if German isn't your thing 7:17:09 PM     |

© Copyright 2005 Alex L. Mauldin.