2006 Vacation in Europe, Part Two

Day Two (10/7): Well-Trained

Saturday morning in Brussels, Belgium comes a lot earlier than you expect when you're fighting a six-hour time difference. Despite this, I managed to roll out of bed, get cleaned up, and repack in good order.

European bathrooms are pretty nice, overall; bigger tubs than what we usually have here, and most hotel bathrooms have these neat towel-warmer things on the walls; like the Internet, they are made of tubes, and work by circulating the hot water through them. The Hilton we stayed at also had big fluffy towels.

Brussels is a big city, and big cities look pretty much the same wherever you go. However, areas typified some common trends in the parts of Europe that I saw: the streets are narrower and more twisty (lots of one-way streets, and streets that should only be one-way but aren't), everyone loves having flower boxes below their windows, brighter color schemes in general. There's a "closer" feel to the towns, for lack of a better word, and it only becomes more pronounced the smaller the towns become. There are many small restaurants and businesses*, and pubs everywhere you turn. The part of Brussels I saw must have been the Irish sector, because every little bar advertised itself as an Irish Pub.

On our way back to the train station, we stopped at a small food market and picked up some cheese, some damn fine salami, and some bread. This would be carried onto the train to serve as breakfast/road munchies. Once again, confusion in the Brussels train station led to frayed tempers and delays, but we managed to catch our first train heading south into Germany.

The tickets we had were open passes, good for six days traveling through Belgium, Germany and Austria. The more countries a ticket includes, the more expensive it is; the more days it's good for, the more expensive it is. First class, more expensive. The days that the ticket covers are not set in stone; if you travel on a day, you write the date on the ticket, and the conductor validates it. Thus a day is used. If you write down the wrong date, you are out of luck, as you will then have to write down the correct date, thus using TWO days.

Guess how I discovered this.

The Eurail trains are a mix of old and new; the one we started out on was older. The first class cars are of the sleeper variety; my first thought, sheltered geek that I am, was that the interiors looked a lot like the train cars from the Harry Potter movies. I should get out more. Traveling with kids like we were, first class tickets were a must; everyone gets more room, and fellow passengers don't have to put up with us.

The trains, old or new, are quite comfortable, and it's a great way to see the countryside. If you're traveling anywhere except between major cities, you will have to make a few connections; you may occasionally need to make them very quickly. Fortunately, the trains do run on time (with rare exceptions), and all of the stations are laid out in the same fashion. You may not get to the platform in time, but you won't get lost while doing it. All of the platforms have schedules posted for the entire station, and once you get used to reading them, you can quickly figure it out. The schedules are all online as well; plan your route ahead of time.

We made several stops on the way to Landstuhl, most notably Aachen and Kaiserslautern. We would make many more connections in "K-Town" over the week, as it's the closest large town to Landstuhl, and where many of the personnel from Ramstein Air Force Base live.

However cool you may think traveling by train is, it will wear on you after a while. We arrived in Landstuhl and walked a short distance to the hotel, ready for some rest. The Hotel Merkur is a deceptively large place, with suites in the main building, and larger apartments in a newer annex behind. All of the rooms are well-appointed without being crowded, accessed using RFID tag-embedded proximity cards. Those same cards are placed in a slot near the door in order to turn on power to the room; when you leave, you take your card, and everything turns off to save power. Very neat. The windows are big, and can be opened either by tilting them inwards, or swinging them wide. The window opening is shuttered by powered metal slats which, when closed, admit no light whatsoever; great when you intend to sleep in, but if you expect the sun to wake your jet-lagged self up in the morning, you will be out of luck.

The weird thing, from an American standpoint, is the lack of air-conditioning. I can only assume that things get pretty warm in summertime, but it worked out well for the time of year I was there; it was cool enough outside that I could simply open the windows and render the room comfortable in a few minutes. There was also a oscillating fan for air circulation.

We met the owner, Garrett, an old friend of the Chipmans. He was an excellent host throughout the trip; all of the staff there were very courteous, friendly, and helpful. The bar at the hotel is small but well-stocked, especially with beer, especially with Kostritzer (a dark beer), Paulaner (a white beer), and Bitburger (beer beer). I'm not a beer devotee by any means, but I found the Kostritzer to be particularly good. The small restaurant off the lobby, where we ate most of our dinner, had very good and reasonably priced food. The menu lists items in both German and English, so it's pretty easy to tell what you're getting.

So we settled in, had dinner, had a few beers, had a few more beers, washed it all down with beer, and made our plans for the next day: a trip to Heidelberg.

*(From what I can tell, the tax laws over there heavily favor small business; witness Wal-Mart's recent full withdrawal from Germany.)