There was time to help set up and clean up for the breakfast and snack meals before Glenn and Sue took us to the train station for our 3:26 train to Madrid.
We also had our first “chance” to clean the bathrooms! We had an early lunch (early lunch in Spain is 2 p.m.). The train station is new. After a quick prayer, we were on our way. What a wonderful and peaceful time we had at the camp!
The train was comfortable and out ride to Madrid was through another productive part of Spain -- olive trees everywhere. They should be Spain’s national tree! We are surprised that so much of Europe’s land is producing something. We climbed a lot through mountains. From above looking down, it reminded us of the Swiss mountains and forests and villages. After that we rode through miles of plains -- mostly hay and grain farms. One interesting “farm” was all solar panels!
When we reached Madrid, we had over an hour to change train stations from Atocha to the Madrid Chamartin Station. By asking right away, we had no problem. The night train to Paris was much better than we expected. We were glad that we hadn’t paid $335 for a bed. They gave us water and ear plugs and played soft music. It was a first class car, so it was quieter and we had much more space than on the night train that we took in 2001.
We slept pretty well and woke up to mile after mile of mostly wheat fields. We guess it must take a lot of wheat to make so many hard rolls to feed all of Europe and Israel! When we reached Paris, we went right to the information station to schedule the rest of our trip to Heidelberg/Bad Mergentheim. Unfortunately, after waiting in a long line, we had to deal with a non-English-speaking ticket agent. The one who spoke English had left his station. Our agent wasn’t much help. It was the same old story -- all the trains were full and we couldn’t get a reservation. We would have been glad to take slower trains, but we couldn’t communicate well enough to function. She finally found a train to Luxembourg, but it didn’t leave until after 2 p.m., so we had to sit in the train station for half a day. We are more than a little disgusted with the train system here compared to 2001. We are having a very frustrating time getting suitable connections and are disappointed that it is so hard to get reservations, even several days ahead of time. The Eurail passes aren’t nearly as convenient a way to travel as we had expected.
When we got to Luxembourg, they helped us schedule the rest of the way to Bad Mergentheim. It was after 4, and we decided to have them schedule us for tomorrow instead of taking their first plan that would have gotten us to Heidelberg at 10:30 or to Bad Mergentheim at 11:30. The travel information at the train station gave us a book listing sleeping places and phoned for us. We are staying at the New Chemin De Fer Hotel on Rue Jos Junck (think just junk) street right next to the train station. We think that’s funny.
It’s an inexpensive hotel with the toilet down the hall, and we’re on the third floor (4th floor to us in the U.S.) We went out for another Kabob sandwich and walked around town awhile, almost getting ourselves lost!
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