Expatriotical

Episode 64: My German Train Trip Adventure

• Chandra Alley • Season 1 • Episode 64

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In today's episode, host Chandra Alley shares some travel tips as well as a couple of pitfalls that she and her family experienced as they took a train trip through Germany, stopping in two other (fabulous) countries along the way. Chandra also relates how the unexpected parts of their adventure turned into really joyful and meaningful experiences.

Some of which led to this episode's delicious  "Chan Select". Listen in and enjoy the ride!


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"Live and Travel in the Know" with Expatriotical!

Bienvenue, Benvenuti, and Welcome to Expatriotical, the podcast for expats, travelers, and other adventurous souls. I’m Chandra Alley and after living as an expat with my husband and 4 children in two different countries for 6 years, I’ve learned the arts of pivoting during pitfalls, traveling tastefully for less, and soaking in amazing new cultures without losing your own.


Join me, as we dive into the joys and challenges of travel and the expat life in every episode!


Ciao tutti and hello everyone! Whether you are listening to the podcast as you start off your day, end your day, or somewhere in the middle, I hope it's great so far.


Last week, I promised that I would come back and tell you about our German train trip vacation that. Meaning, taking the train all over Germany, also going to Salzburg, Austria, and seeing the country of Luxembourg for the first time.


I felt like when I mentioned that last week it seemed really extravagant, but I'm going to let you in on some of the prices of things so that you know that we are not necessarily or ever really luxurious travelers. Maybe that's one day in our retired futures, but right now if you’re listening or if you've been listening for long, you know that my husband and I have four children, so it's expensive to pay for food and lodging for that many people, especially in Europe, where the biggest room you're usually going to find has two queen-sized beds. And we typically have to book 2 rooms if we stay at a hotel.


So just to let you know that this is a trip that was not extravagant financially, well if I'm really honest, we probably ate out more than we usually do, not probably, we did. So we did notice that when I came home and kind of crunched the numbers. But as far as our accommodations and transportation, all of that was quite reasonable.


This whole adventure actually started off to be something where we rented a caravan for six people, for my American listeners that is a small RV, and drove to the Champagne region of France and then to visit Amsterdam, and then go onto Honfluer, and then back to Paris. The problem with that was that the reason why I so desperately wanting to go to Amsterdam, was because I really really really want to see the Anne Frank Museum. And I spent one chilly Tuesday morning as we waited to go inside to the Pantheon to begin a tour with Xenia, of The Choice of Paris, I frantically tried to book tickets to get in. But it is like trying to get tickets to an Adele concert. And I tried, and Chris tried, and my dear friend, who told me what day I needed to look for the tickets and what time, she even tried for me. And she is in Amsterdam. But we were all unsuccessful.


So, I decided to hold off on going to Amsterdam and then turned an eye toward Germany. If you're wondering why we were even thinking to schedule such a long vacation, and you're new here to Expatriotical, in France every six weeks the schools let out for a two week period of time. So every six weeks we try to go somewhere even if it's just for a couple of days.


But once I found out that past a certain amount of mileage the company charges one euro per mile after the allotted amount of miles for how many days we wanted, I realized that taking a caravan probably wasn't going work, and also when I went to look at it the last time it had been booked.


So then we thought, well, I guess we'll drive now. But Chris, my husband, was really dreading the thought of doing all of that driving. Not that I won’t drive, it’s just that I think he prefers if he drives. So one night.. Which makes me sound like a bad driver, but I’m really not a  bad driver. Ok, So one night he said hey I've been thinking about taking the train through Germany. I've looked at the Interrail pass, For non-EU residents it's called the Eurail pass, and I think it would be pretty reasonable. Not a whole lot more than if we drove.


And so we decided to do it. I loved the idea! And now I'm going to share some tips along the way because we did our quote unquote research by watching different people on YouTube say different things about how to travel with the Interrail/Eurail pass. And I'll tell you what I think worked and what didn't work according to their opinions.


One thing that did work was booking second class tickets. The people on Youtube had said that they didn't really ever see that there would be a need for first class tickets and I think they were right.


And due to only booking second class and the fact that interrail was having a sale, also helped us get the pass or passes for a total of 638 or €648. Now the reason why it was so inexpensive is that children under 12 are free. I am honestly not going to take the time to count all of the different trains that we went on, but it’s quite a steal for 6 people to go on as many trains as we took.


The couple of exceptions would be the trains that we took out of France and then would need to take into France. Those required seat reservations and so for our trip out of France we had to pay a total of €126.


So let's go ahead and jump into the trip and let me tell you about that first little bit. Due to a miscommunication of what time our train was supposed to leave. We ended up missing it by about four minutes max. We were supposed to take our train from Gare de L’Est to Stuttgart, Germany.


What a way to start our trip. But thankfully, I would say we all remained calm and started problem-solving, and by God’s grace we were able to get to Strasbourg, France, then onto two other smaller towns in Germany, and finally to our original destination of Munich, Germany, for only an additional six euro total. That was a huge blessing and we didn't have to pay hundreds if not over €1000, for the last-minute change.


This actually gave us a fun opportunity to go back to a restaurant that we absolutely loved, hint hint, keep listening because it's going to be mentioned as the “Chan Select” for this episode, and we got to explore things that we hadn't gotten to see the first time we were in Strasbourg and at that time it was December.


On those first train rides there, there was always plenty of seating and we were usually able to sit the kids together around a table and they would play cards or color or whatever. And Chris and I could sit next to each other and chat.


And it helped us to see parts of Germany that we wouldn't have gotten to see if we would've gone the original way. In fact, at one station we changed trains and it was almost like the train station was in the middle of some fields. It was really neat to see how accessible getting places is in Germany. You can drive your car or ride your bike to the train station leave it there, with the bike, preferably, locked up, of course, and jump on a train to Munich or wherever.


Once we arrived in Munich, we ended up eating at this really cool old beer hall. I'm going to be honest that I have not seen so many intoxicated adults, and I'm not talking college or university-aged students, I'm talking mainly men in their 50s and 60s, in a long time. But there was a really festive vibe there. And not everybody was intoxicated by any means. It's just that the hall can hold over 5000 people and we were there on a Friday night.


But they have live music where the band plays, traditional, Bavarian folk songs, if I'm even describing them correctly, and they serve beer in 1 L Steins, which is incredible to see these men and women carrying around four and five in each hand to a table. And then they serve traditional German Bavarian food. And it was delicious. And there are ladies walking around selling pretzels and different sweet treats, they were dressed in traditional Bavarian German costume and it was all fantastic.


After we finished our dinner, we trekked our tired selves and our backpacks, because that's the way we chose to travel instead of dragging our smaller suitcases through the muck um, and the yuck of city streets. And here's one thing that we did learn, we need to buy better backpacks. Our nice backpacks that are used for laptops and traditional office work, didn't quite cut it when you loaded them down with eight days of clothes.


But the kids seemed to do pretty well as they weren't carrying toiletries and all the snacks and stuff that we, as the adults had.


Anyway, we trekked ourselves via taxi, which ended up being really nice talking to our driver, back to our hotel or to our hotel that was just outside of the city center.


The next day we got up and did a Rick Steve’s walk of the center of Munich, which was nice to see, and by the afternoon we headed to the train station to catch our train to Salzburg, Austria.


I had been stalking Salzburg, because of a book I read by L.A. Fatzinger called The Salzburg Executioner, and after talking to my dear friend Regan, who you can hear in Episode 51: The Government-Sponsored Expat with Regan Schnoell. And she had told me about how lovely Salzburg was or is, and I had looked it up on Google and clicked on images and was just like “wow this is beautiful”.


So we took a train to Salzburg. And I believe that it was on this train where we discovered that a lot of German trains have what I believe they call kinder rooms, which are rooms that you can reserve or use if they're not already reserved if you have children or specifically younger children. And that was phenomenal. The first one we were in had little games if you had toddler-size kids, and you could close the door and have your own private space. It was wonderful!


The second time we were in a kinder room, a young family with one little boy had reserved the room or three of the seats I should say, but they kindly shared a few, and then the rest of us just shared the back of the room with the extra seats, and it was just fine.


In Salzburg, we walked the streets of the city, and we ate dinner and an open air beer garden. The next morning we went to the fortress on top of the hill, which gave a gorgeous view or lay of the land and walked around the fortress and explored. It was great. And before we left Salzburg, we made sure to visit the fountain in Mirabell Garden where they filmed the famous song “Do Re Mi” in the movie The Sound of Music.


Here’s where things kind of got derailed, not literally, of course ‘cause we’re talking trains, but figuratively. When we boarded the train that would take us from Salzburg to Munich, and then we would go on, on a different train from Munich to Nuremberg, we entered a car that seemed to have private rooms with each containing six seats. So imagine a hallway on one side and then multiple private six seat cabins on the other side.


Basically picture the Hogwarts Express, just not pulled by a steam engine and not quite so vintage looking. We could see on the outside of each cabin that it appeared that at least for a period of time a lot of them were reserved, but we went ahead and sat down adn several minutes later, a group of ladies came and said that they had reserved that cabin, so we grabbed all of our backpacks and moved over to the next cabin. At that point, I decided to walk down into the next couple of cars to see if there were any available train seats.


Remember, we had watched these videos that said that you really didn't have to reserve seats, which is technically true. You can legally be on the train and grab whatever free seat is available. But of course, if a seat has been reserved, you need to vacate it.


I walked down the length of two or three other cars and they were all packed. On my way back I had seen a space where there were four seats that were relatively close to one another, but the couple right in front of me grabbed two of them. So I returned to the cabin that Chris and the kids were in and said, “I guess we'll just sit here until somebody kicks us out.”


And a few minutes later, a gentleman poked his head in and politely said they had reserved the cabin and they were really sorry. We of course said there was no big deal and we made our way to the end of that car and decided to just stand there where the two cars meet- near the restroom actually- at least until the train got started.


Once the train got going, Chris then went to see if he could search and find other seats and when he got back, he said that there were a ton of people standing just like us.


This is where the story takes a turn for the better, not that we were in any peril, but I will say that for the first several minutes of the ride me standing in the door well of a moving train car made me a little bit nervous. But it was the same gentleman, that had said they had reserved that second cabin that we had infiltrated, we later found out his name was Bernt. He came down and said that he thought they could clear out space for a couple of the kids to go sit down there. This was probably after we had been traveling for a good 10 to 15 minutes.


We said “Oh no, no that's OK.” But he said, “No there's only five of us and we can probably make room for a couple of kids.” We graciously thanked him and Carson and Isaiah both volunteered eagerly to have a seat instead of standing and wearing their backpacks.


Bernt came back a little bit later and said, “Actually we have space for two more kiddos.” So Lilliah and Caleb went down and joined them as well. I could see that there were a few guys standing outside of the cabin, so after a few minutes, I went down to check on them, making sure the kids were OK, and my kids were happily playing cards and chatting with Bernt and the other gentleman that was sitting in the cabin. And when I realized that these three gentlemen, who are probably in their early 60s, and were all well over 6 foot tall, that’s about 183 cm for my metric users, were standing in the hallway and had given up their seats for our kids. We said, “Oh no no no, you don't have to do that.” But they said, “No we're only going halfway. We'll be fine and we’re getting off pretty soon.”


And Bernt said, “Yes, when they leave, then you and your husband can come sit down here as well.” And that's what happened. Four of the five gentlemen got off in a small town, which we later found out was their hometown. And they were at the end of a once-a-year guys’ trip where they all reconnect, and said goodbye with hugs (to each other) and well wishes to each other. And we had the pleasure of getting to talk to Bernt for the next hour before we arrived in Munich.


He was absolutely a delight. And it felt like we were kind of getting to know the country of Germany a little bit better through him. When we arrived in Munich, we said our goodbyes to Bernt, as Chris and I hustled to catch our next train. Which took us to Nuremberg. We used Nuremberg as a base, so we were able to stay there for three nights. And we explored the center of Nuremberg, and a wonderful open air market that they have.


And our last day there, we actually went out to the Nazi rally grounds. Now I'm saying this to say that I had my trepidations about going out there. You may not be able to tell it by looking at me, but according to ancestry.com, I'm 22% German. I knew I was somewhere in that quarter percent German heritage realm, because my grandpa was half German, his last name was Ahlers.


But you can't tell by looking at me that I'm half black or of African descent. According to ancestry, I'm 13% Nigerian and then a mix of a lot of other west African ethnicities or nationalities. So going to the heart of one of the biggest rally grounds of racism ever, made me feel, I don't know.. just weird and uncomfortable. But Chris is a super huge history buff, especially about World War II.


So we went out there and it was really interesting. The city of Nuremberg has turned it into a recreational area. Where people bike, walk or run around the lake that's there, and they've even used part of the huge stadium to have a soccer/rugby pitch. It was definitely a surreal experience to be out there, but not necessarily a surreal like in a good way, it was just again… weird. But since in America, at least when I was growing up, you learned a lot about World War II and a lot of the images that you see from the Nazi rallies came from there, it was interesting to piece together, present day with what I had learned about history.


Also, during our time in Nuremberg, we took a trip to the oldest medieval town in Germany called Rothenberg ob der Tauber. And we explored this beautiful quaint, medieval city and walked around most of the medieval wall. We enjoyed a delicious Italian lunch, and then caught trains to head back to Nuremberg.


From Nuremberg, we took a train to Cologne, Germany. We later realized that Cologne could've just been a day trip, but we didn't know any better, so we arrived there in the evening, checked into our apartment hotel, and had dinner. The next day we took, what I consider to be, the best riverboat tour I've ever had. I will try to remember to put the links to this company in my show notes, but it was the cleanest, quietest, smoothest riverboat I've ever been on. And we even ordered some delicious sweet potato and regular fries and a glass of wine.


After the boat tour we went and got lunch, and then we did another Rick Steve’s city walk. And by that time it was only maybe 3 o'clock in the afternoon so we went back to the hotel, and took a nap. Maybe carrying those backpacks around had finally gotten to us. Then we went back out and let the kids play at a playground, grabbed some food for dinner at a market, and I made dinner in the apartment-hotel room that night. The next morning we walked two minutes to the train station, caught a train to Luxembourg and that train trip was also a little bit crowded.


The difference with this trip was that you could not reserve seats. Whereas the other trains where we had a little bit of crowded issue, we could've maybe figured out how to reserve the seats, specifically that trip where we stood for half of the journey from Salzburg to Munich. But these were regional trains that we took, and didn’t allow for that and they were packed. Caleb sat on my lap, Isaiah sat on Chris's lap, and there was the sweetest German lady who was just being a quote unquote good neighbor to a mom who was traveling alone with her three children ages three to about seven.


But this was again a part of the journey. And I had the pleasure of having a wonderful conversation with this lady who would become the adoptive- for that train ride- grandmother of these precious children, and honestly a few other little girls that were on the train and just found her absolutely interesting.


But the trip wasn’t terribly long and once we had arrived in Luxenberg, and it was absolutely gorgeous! A friend of mine had told me to expect that it was very clean, and it was. And then Caleb's classmate’s mom is actually from Luxembourg, so she gave us some fantastic tips for things to look at and explore there. But overall, it was such a quaint and beautiful and scenically diverse city. There's a river that runs through it, and it kind of separates the upper part of the city and the lower part of the city. And we walked around and explored pretty much all of it.


That night, we actually had dinner with a friend and colleague of Chris's as well as his family, and they kindly hosted us that night and it was wonderful! After a delicious homemade breakfast that next morning, they drove us to the bus stop to head back to Paris. Wait a minute! You may be thinking, I thought you were taking the train. Yeah that's another lesson learned. A few days before we were supposed to head back to Paris from Luxembourg, Chris went to reserve our seats, as this was another train where you had to do that, as we were entering France. And he discovered that all of the seats had already been reserved.


Thankfully, literally, I thank God, that the fact that Brooke, remember her from Episode 55: The NGO & Missionary Expat with Brooke Anderson? Well, when Brooke had stayed with us when she went to leave, she actually took a bus from Paris to Amsterdam. And I remembered the name of the bus company was Flixbus. So I looked online and I found that we could take Flixbus, all six of us including reserving our seats, for €183 from Luxembourg to Paris.


But before purchasing, we checked to see if maybe we could rent a car, and unfortunately there were no cars available for six or more people. This is a conundrum that we run into as a big family, but that's OK. So I bought the bus tickets. So after a delicious breakfast, our gracious guests drove us to the bus stop, and we got on the bus and headed to Paris. I was really nervous beforehand because thoughts of dingy, Greyhound buses, that's a reference that most American listeners will understand, were rushing through my mind.


But I was so wrong with that assumption, and extremely pleasantly surprised. The bus was very clean. It looked quite new. Actually, the seats were very comfortable, and the air-conditioning worked, and there was a toilet on board. We thankfully did not have to use said toilet, because they even stopped a couple hours into the trip for 15 minutes at a convenience store slash gas station where we were able to step out, use the restroom, stretch our legs, grab a coffee, and get back on.


Even though the bus had been initially about 20 minutes late, it arrived on time at Paris Bercy bus station. And we took the metro home.


It was a wonderful trip. An adventure trip, as a friend of mine recently said about her trip to Morocco. Ours was probably not quite as adventurous, but it was definitely not a relaxation vacation. But it sure was a lot of fun! And I will say, it was a whole lot more relaxing taking the train than it was or it is to drive.


And I would highly recommend that if you get the chance, it would be worth your while to consider taking the train around Germany, or beyond, because the Eurail slash Interrail passes, work in many countries. And it's a fantastic way to see the landscape, and apparently also a wonderful way to meet the people that live in those countries.


Now let's move on to today's “Chan Select” which I mentioned at the beginning of the episode is in Strasbourg, France. It’s called Au Petit Bois Vert, which means In the Little Green Wood in English.


It serves traditional Alsacienne food and I’ve eaten there twice now, and the first time I had something hardy and almost more of a German style food, since Strasbourg is just over the border from Germany and at points in history has been part of Germany. And this last time we ordered a table of Tarte Flambees, from a traditional one made with fromage Blanc, Lardon (which is bacon), and onions, to one that was served with all of that as well as Munster cheese and cumin.


I'll be honest that when we ordered those my kids complained. And then they came to the table and they devoured them. In fact, their favorite was the one with the Munster cheese!


And like the last time I had been there I ordered a traditional dessert called Kougelhopf. Apparently, normally it's a yeast cake made in a bundt shape. But this is iced and it's more of a delicious frozen ice cream that they then pour some sort of clear alcohol on. Of course my kids don't get to try any, but it is decadent and unique and delicious. And we were taking the train so no worries that there was a little bit of alcohol in it.


And another great thing is the location of Au Petit Bois Vert. It's right along the river. So since the weather was nice, we sat under this gorgeous giant tree and watched the ducks and a couple of tour boats pass by. But even in the winter when it's cold, the decor inside is warm and inviting and very traditionally festive in the Alsacienne way.


I will be sure to include their website in the show notes, and as always, I am not an affiliate, just a fan!


And now for our “Quote of the day”. I love it because it was actually the first one that popped up when I googled quotes about trains and clicked on images. Sometimes it takes me quite a while to find one that I feel like is suited to the episode. But this one took me just a moment.


It comes from English author, Agatha Christie, who wrote such novels as And Then There Were None and Murder on the Orient Express, how fitting. She said, “Trains are wonderful… to travel by train is to see nature and human beings, towns and churches and rivers, in fact to see life.” And after a mostly wonderful experience, overall, I absolutely agree!


That's it for today everyone. I hope you have a wonderful rest of your week regardless of where or when you're listening to this. And I can't wait to meet you back here again next week for an incredible interview that will leave you with so many different thoughts as you go on in your expat journey.


And a small reminder, if you haven't yet found Expatriotical on Instagram, and you have an account, of course, please follow me there as well so you can see some of the fun photos and videos from the travels that I talk about. My handle is @expatriotical that @ E – X – P – A – T – R – I – O – T – I – C – A – L.


Thank you all so much and I can't wait to meet you back here again next week. Until then, this is Chandra Alley reminding you to “Live and Travel in the Know” with Expatriotical!