A Lovely Train Ride

Sometime you simply can’t let the stupid stuff get to you. I’m sitting in a train traversing Switzerland en route Kaiserslautern Germany from Italy, the second stop for the work week of travel. Magnificent doesn’t come close to describing the view of Swiss Alps with its scenic lakes and breathtaking mountains. Of course they look even better with a wonderful (and expensive) meal in the restaurant car resplendent with a half bottle of wine and an espresso afterward. Sometime travel doesn’t suck.

Of course, sometimes it does suck … and earlier in the day would have been one. From Vicenza the plan to Kaiserslautern called for ten and a half hours on four trains. Unfortunately, the train into Milan was seventeen minutes late and the connection to Zürich was missed. After a long wait at the ticket counter a less than brilliant ticket agent gave me an itinerary adding four hours to the trip (he was sticking to my exact itinerary rather than look at the best way to “K-town”). That he also insisted I shouldn’t worry about the “compulsory reservations” didn’t make me feel very … er … comfortable. I called Lisa and a few minutes later she had much better connections off the Internet which only added two hours. After standing through the line again and demanding to speak with the supervisor everything was as good as it was going to get and here I am en route Basel, Switzerland (vice Zürich) and points onward.

The Milan station is one of the biggest I’ve seen; built under Mussolini, grand isn’t an adequate word for the architecture; but pathetic isn’t an adequate word for the overall rating. Hungry, annoyed from the ticket agent and with over an hour to kill, I toured a huge facility under renovation seeing scores of shops ready to open, but all closed; and to my utter amazement, not a single café or restaurant offering seats and food.

OK, enough complaining, if you ever get a chance to take the Cisalpino train from Milan to Basel, do so!!

Now let me backup to earlier in the week to the stay in Vicenza Italy; as you may have noticed previously, Italy is one of my favorite countries despite some real shortcomings in the service department. The train down Sunday, via Munich, was long but uneventful; but when you get off the train and the world is just pleasantly different: fantastic architecture (Jefferson’s Monticello is modeled after a building here) is not always well maintained but still just cool; a beautiful young woman in a stunning sleeveless slit dress and spike heeled sandals riding a bike to work with a baby trailer on the main street (you just don’t see that in St. Louis); a businessman wearing purple slacks that don’t look wrong. And everywhere at night, people of all ages out and about walking the old city (an UNESCO World Heritage City) or enjoying a sidewalk café. Three nights with three great meals just make it that much better. And the mission behind the trip went fairly well too. I’d also decided on an early morning run yesterday through a cool looking ancient arched gate with a very long steep stone stairway up a hill thinking the view had to be gorgeous. It was gorgeous but the real hill was hidden from bottom view. At a pace hardly more than a fast walk (i.e. nearly dying) I reached the third stage in a long climb and started seeing American Soldiers from the 173rd Airborne Infantry Brigade doing physical training. They were running the same hill … with full rucksacks. They’re preparing for deployment to Afghanistan and seem physically ready to me. It always does my heart good to see young stud Infantrymen doing their thing. I ran a lot faster on the way down by the way.