Europe Day 4: Observations

Random observations from the train as we're leaving the Stuttgard station on Friday morning:

There are construction cranes everywhere in Germany. There were tons in Munich, and it seems like every city we go through has several.

German countryside is very picturesque...I can't actually get good pictures at the speed we're going in the train, but it's beautiful looking out...especially going through the mountains.

There are churches everywhere. I have no idea how many are active, or historical, but every town has several...and they all have steeples.

Our train:


Also, everywhere we go there is graffiti...a lot of which is very artistic and well done. I'm not sure how much of that impression of a lot of graffiti is just because we're using public trains everywhere, but I'm rather surprised by the sheer quantity of graffiti around.

Smoking is far more prevalent in Germany than in the US...

Annoyances: Public toilets, except in the subway station, cost money to use...also no bubblers anywhere.

Lots of things are made of glass...many more glass walls and doors than I'm used to.

Update at 1:20 pm on the train...we thought this train was going to Interlaken, but Craig just found out that it's actually stoping in Basel today...so we should be able to switch trains there...hopefully...we'll see how that goes. We should be at a station in about 10 minutes, and we'll see what happens.

2:04 We had a brief false alarm where we tried to get off our train in Basel, Germany instead of Basel, Switzerland, which is 10 minutes farther down the line, but a nice German gentleman corrected us. Now we are on a substantially less nice train, but we are all pretty sure it is going to Interlaken, so it's all good.

Rest of the day:
We did eventually make it to Interlaken, found the hostel (very nice...substantially better than the one in Munich...not that that one was bad), and got equipment for skiing. Then, we drove very high on a mountain, took a gondola even higher (which was moderately terrifying), and went night sledding.


Night sledding consisted of sitting on these sledges and going down a very steep, curvy road...several people commented that it felt like Mariokart, where you should be able to drift around corners...Sledges are harder to steer in real life! Unfortunately, it had been raining, so the night sledding, while still being a lot of fun, including a large amount of night walking through slush while pulling a sled. We ended our night with a fondue dinner at the bottom of the sled run, and went back to the hostel