Part 2 of the Around Europe Trip

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Continued from Florence

As anyone who has traveled with Mike can tell you he was asleep moments after boarding the train. We were in a small coachette on the left side of the train, for the first part of our run. Something tells me mike road with his back to the direction we were traveling but that really doesn’t sound like him. I know I road facing our travel as I was FINALLY passing through that wonderful section of scenery between Florence and Bologna. This was the first time in about 18 months since I had passed this way and I didn’t want to miss it for anything.
As the train started to meander out of town to the north we settled in. Once in Bologna we were now on “New To Us” territory. The train started heading northwest towards Milan. This part of the trip was fairly boring in the alone time on a train kind of way. With Mike sleeping I was alone. I drifted off to sleep again until we arrived in Milan. Luckily we were on a through train all the way to Basel. But funny thing is we didn’t know where Basel was. It did not say on the ticket. We had never heard of it. No clue at all.
Once on our way due north from Milan the trip became exciting again. The mountains reappeared and the train slowed down as they all do, while climbing. The highlight of this was when we were approaching Laguno where the northbound train hugs the east side of the lake before crossing mid lake to the west side and then hugging the west side the rest of the way. This was the ideal ride. Two of the most incredible bits of scenery I’ve ever seen in Europe. But as always happens when you say this is the greatest anything you soon see something better. And Basel was this something better.
When the train pulled in we had a six hour layover. We got off at our car and followed a couple of people who were, we thought, heading to the station. Well they obviously knew where they were and were heading where they had to go. Not to the station. So it took us a couple minutes or a half hour to make our way into the station. Once inside the station I was in awe. It had this mechanical creation in the ceiling that although I was able to find postcards of was unable to get a picture. Then came one of the funniest parts of the trip. We needed to know where we were and we needed money. So… Off to the money exchange we went. Mike took a US 20 and asked the woman “Can I change this?” Her reply was “What kind of currency would you like?” Mike says “Umm, Local?” And she comes back with “Oh, you want Swiss Francs.” Mike gets this grin and says “Yeah. That’s what I want.”
So, we finally knew we were in Switzerland. Next was a little postcard shopping since neither of us had ever been before. That done we ditched our bags in a locker and headed out to explore the town with our remaining five hours. As we were walking around we started to hear marching bands. The look on our faces the first time we saw one was probably priceless. Had never seen such a site before. It was the first night of Fasnacht. We just wandered around and took in all the sites and action. What a wonderful unexpected addition to our trip. Eventually we made our way into one of the hotels to use the bathroom then it was back to the station to catch our 1230am to Brussels. The cool thing about the station in Basel is that it is in two countries. The west side with the large lobby and the majority of the station is in Switzerland. But the east side is in France.
So after boarding our train we found a compartment that was free. Well folks, there was a reason for this. And it took 30 minutes to realize. There would be no heat this night. Remember we had just spent the night before on the steps of the train station in Florence… So this night rolled on and we tried our best to sleep most of it. But I was awake more than I’d have liked. This did permit me to get off the train and into the station during our nearly half an hour layover in Luxembourg. After a quick tour of the station I boarded again and was able to fall right out. We arrived in Brussels in the early morning near enough half past seven. With 45 minutes to kill we found breakfast. In the form of sugar waffles. Quite the pain to deal with as we needed to first get local money and then stand in line with the commuters for the food.
Finally we were ready to start our last leg of the journey for the beginning of the week. A couple hour ride from Brussels to Amsterdam on the nearly local train. Not sure why we were on a local but that’s the way the game worked out that day for us. I remember we had seats downstairs and just watched as people flowed on and off during the trip. And the flat Dutch countryside go by.
To be continued in Amsterdam

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