European Odyssey Day 4 - Würzburg

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We manage to pull ourselves out of bed by 9:30am, just in time for a little cereal and a quick packing up. We left one of our duffel bags with Timmo. We would be meeting her at her parent's house just before Christmas. That meant that Renee and I each had our big backpacks, the kids each had their small backpacks, and one large rolling (thankfully) duffel bag with the kids boots, snowsuits, clothes, etc.). Theoretically, therefore, we were able to travel on our own now.

Timmo hauled us off to the Erlangen Hauptbahnhof (main train station) and bade us goodbye. We bought the local family train ticket, which entitled a family of 4 to unlimited travel for 24 hours within Bavaria. The only downside was that it was a 2nd class ticket. Ahh, and now a few words about train travel in Europe (or at least Germany).

So, if you buy the Eurail pass, you basically have a first class ticket. We'd purchased a five day (in 2 months) Eurail pass, which allows us to ride the trains in our chosen countries for 5 days during a 2 month period. That is economical only if the ticket (per adult) is $65 or more per ride. So, on a short ride, like Erlangen to Würzburg, it makes sense to just buy a ticket at the train station and save the Eurail pass for a longer train ride (which might cost more like $100). At any rate, if your used to using a Eurail pass, you get used to first class tickets. If you're on an ICE (Inter City Express) train, regardless of the class, you'll have a nice ride. Those trains are fast, clean and super-nice. On other trains, like the Regional trains, the difference in first versus second class is much more apparent. In first class, it's clean and quiet; in the second class cars, it's much noiser, they don't get cleaned quite as often, and there's much more people.

The good thing about 2nd class tickets when traveling with kids, is that your kids are probably not the loudest ones on the train! Also, since you generally wind up sharing seats with people you don't know, you're more likely to meet new and interesting people. By contrast, in the first class cars, you're always hushing the kids, because most of the other passengers are business people quietly reading newspapers or working on laptops; although you do usually have four seats together, sometimes in your own compartment.

Okay, back to the trip, so we trundled aboard our 2nd class seats with our luggage and plopped ourselves down.

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