bretzelitos

Our Day 1 in Interrail has been completed without any hiccups, means on time, no late departures, no late arrivals and no sudden messages from the train personnel.

We left Rambouillet at 0645 with the TER train to Paris-Montparnasse. The train was not very full, everybody wore their masks and behaved well with regards to the distances between each other. At 0720 we arrived at the “terminus” station after stopping once in Versailles Chantiers. As you can see, the train was a so called “Blue Sofa Train”.

In Gare “Paris Montparnasse”, we joined the Metro Line 4 towards Gare de l’Est. Here we got a little bit nervous because people did not really take care about the distance rules, sitting down at prohibited places and we saw several people running around without face masks.

In Gare de l’Est, the situation was better. Hence we took a French style breakfast as we had 50 minutes of required redundancy to get rid of.

Boarding to our TGV towards Frankfurt started 25 minutes before departure. The seats in the upper floor environment were comfortable and invited for looking out of the window. We left on time and after leaving the Paris agglomeration, our train driver accelerated to 320 km/h or close to 200 mph – an incredible speed in a train. Shortly after Metz, we left the LGV EST towards Forbach, our only and last stop in France, just shy of the German border. After stops in Saarbruecken, Kaiserslautern and Mannheim, we eventually arrived in Frankfurt absolutely on time.

In Frankfurt Central Station, we took lunch in the Markthalle, some Italian pasta with a glass of white wine.

After the anticipated 55 minutes of change time, we took the ICE in direction Munich, just for one station… changing for the last time today in Aschaffenburg.

Our regional train to Obernburg was already prepared when we arrived on track 4.

After another 20 minutes of Diesel fuelled propulsion, we arrived at our first night stop – my home place where I was raised until leaving house for studies and work. We had a good dinner with my dad – still going strong, being 84 years old.

On our balcony, we closed the day with a glass of traditional herbal liquor from our region.