On to Zurich

We were looking forward to these train legs as we would be following along the Moselle and the Rhine. The Moselle did NOT disappoint.

Leaving Trier, we trundled through lots of greenery, with deeply red earth showing here and there where the fields had been plowed, contrasting the bright blue sky. Colour, sun, first class tickets, a spotlessly clean train that left almost on time… What’s not to like?

For starters, I fidgeted about wondering which side of the train to be on to get the best views of the river and the vineyards. But there was no river to be seen and certainly no vineyards. I felt slightly cheated.

Then…

Swiftly followed by

And then

I could go on and on hut basically BOTH sides of the train revealed different, equally enchanting views. On one side the river, sometimes with vines running down to it, sometimes not. On the other side rocky hillsides, sometimes vertiginous, with rows of grapes running in every direction.

It brought out the performer in me and the rest of the carriage watched me jack-in-the-box from side to side, trying (mostly failing) to catch the perfect snap. Let’s just say I spotted at least two smirks and some eye rolling (something I am particularly sensitive to).

The rows of vines sometimes run across, sometimes run up and down; sometimes there are largish patches, sometimes there are handkerchief fields. There are always steep slopes and there are always rocky outcrops.

Our train ran a few minutes late (tut tu) and our connection in Koblenz ran even later ( a Swiss train, LATE? How very shocking, but fortuitous for us).

We waited for our train to Zurich looking at the castle? palace? that perched above the station

Leaving Koblenz, the Rhine was revealed in all its glory as the track ran right by the river. Rocks, vines, palaces, all so picture perfect and begging for a tasteful, artistically framed photograph. I breathed out, raised my phone, tried to frame a shot and it was gone. Our speed was such that you didn’t just lose if you snoozed, you lost if you blinked, took your eye off the camera, or moved your finger away from the shutter. Or fell over due to the swaying and bouncing as we went over points.

So not much photography from this leg.

And, on either side of the train and the river, the vines…

From Mainz, the scenery expanded, losing the sheer rocky slopes, and the train moved slightly away from the river. You could still catch glimpses of it but mostly it’s vines to the left of us, vines to the right of us and probably vines in front of us. Think of all those bottles of wine!

Quite soon, we lost sight of the river completely, speeding through a wide plain that seemed to stretch to the horizon and cultivated with… wait for it … NOT vines! The fields seemed interminable, with comparatively undersized tractors trundling through them.

And then it gets boring. It’s flat, huge fields and industrial buildings. Roger buried his nose in his Kindle, I followed suit.

The route into Mannheim HbF involves a lot of industrial mess, dilapidated high rise apartment blocks and several spaghetti junctions of motorway confluences – including one on/off ramp that ends abruptly in mid-air. Leaving Mannheim, we go through industrial chimneys, electricity pylons and mobile phone masts. After all the lovely scenery we have been through, it’s a bit of a shock.

A longish tunnel and a brief dash through woods just showing a blush of bronze, red and orange (deciduous? If I remember my O-level Biology correctly?) later, we were back to industrial flatlands. Factories, electricity farms and not much else. Boring again. Roger returned to hus Kindle, so it isn’t just me who finds this a bit tedious.

Karlsruhe, Baden-Baden, it’s still flat and boring. And industrial. And for a lot of it the rail track runs between a high concrete wall on one side and motorway on the other: it’s tricky to see anything.

We swoop across more flat plain, more crops and more boring vistas. We could be anywhere.

By Freiburg, things are looking up. Literally. A line of hills starts to appear to the East, there is less urban sprawl and there are more trees.

The odd small patch of vines is joined by more and more small patches, until we have green corduroy rows of vineyards running alongside us to the East. We have over an hour to go.