A little train ride...

After a wonderful time in Florence, it was time to head to Germany!

Early Monday morning,

we hopped on a train to Bologna.

Then another train to Verona.

Then our final train to Munich.

This day long excursion took us through Northern Italy, the middle of Austria, the Alps and a nice chunk of Bavaria, a.k.a Southern Germany.

This train trip was A's first train travel in Europe and she definitely got to experience the European train system.  The first train was fancy, the second a basic regional train, and the final one a solidly nice train, but not fancy like the first. (Too bad!)

The final train, a 5 hour trip, placed us in our own compartment that would be shared with other people.  Before the train left the station in Verona, we all said a little prayer to have good folks sharing the compartment with us and for all of them to have showered or used deodorant recently.  (Come on! You would too!)  For the first 2 hours, we had the compartment to ourselves which was really nice.  We chatted, napped, and enjoyed the scenery.  A stop in northern Italy brought us our first passengers...a nice German woman, who spoke no English, and an Italian man, who talked on the phone for the majority of his train ride.  Another stop, the Italian departed and the train compartment was left to the four of us.

Somewhere in Austria, we picked up our final and most memorable passenger...Captain Smelly McGee from Australia.  Cappy, in his early 60's, bumbled his way into our compartment.  A man on day 21 of a 24 day tour of Europe and I'm pretty sure he hadn't bathed more than once during his trip.

As his odor filled the compartment, he began chatting with us.  Now I'm quite the talker, but on this day, I just didn't feel like engaging ol' Captain.  B & I leaned our heads into the hallway frequently for breaths of fresh air as A engaged Capt. Smelly in conversation.  They discussed his trip, his phone card usage (he'd used all but 14 minutes of his 160 min card...shocking!), McDonald's filet of fish vs. an Australian competitor, and the value of said food. Captain old us stories about losing his money, passport, and other things by leaving them on the train...more than once. He also showed us his Captain's hat that a lady had drawn boobies on at last year's Oktoberfest.  Classy!

Did I feel bad about leaving A with the old guy? No.  Not really.  She's pretty good about shutting out people if she wants, but she chose to keep chatting with him.  So I left her with him chatting about whatever it was he rambled on about including above mentioned topics.  Now the sweet German woman is there for all of this.  She's quietly holding her bag, looking out the window, but you can tell she even thinks he smells.

Almost a hour before our final destination, the train makes a stop.  The German lady gathers her stuff and says "Munchen" and walks out of the compartment.  Now this is not the final stop.  Nor is this her stop because the tag on our compartment said she was going to Munich.  So we wonder where she's going.  Maybe she changed her plans and is getting off at this location instead.  We say goodbye and deal with another hour of Cappy.

The train pulls into the Munich Hbf and we gather our stuff as quickly as possible.  We are ready to be off the train and away from Smelly McGee.  A and I bust down the hallway and head to the door...where low and behold who do we see??  The sweet German lady from our compartment.  We make eye contact and all start to laugh.  She had this guilty look on her face because she left early and was trying to tell us to come with her.  Our best guess is she went to the dining car for the remainder of trip to avoid the odorous man.  The three of us laughed SO hard that she had left.  B is stuck behind the Captain and at one point yells at him "Mister! Mister! You forgot your bag." He'd left his suitcase just sitting in the hallway and was getting off the train.  No wonder he'd lost stuff...he didn't know how to keep track of anything.  

With our arrival in Munich, we headed through the train station and around the corner to our hotel.  We were greeted at the front steps by my cousin and her husband having a beer on the patio.  After a nice little visit, we headed to our rooms, dropped our bags, and headed off for our first beers in Germany.

Until then, happy travels and many laughs...