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Chilling on ICE

 Here ICE stands for Inter City Express.

Part of a vast array of transport vehicles operated by the Deutsche Bundesbahn (DB) or German Railway.  

ICE are considered the high speed trains that typically operate between any two large metros /hubs in Germany.

DB is a state run operation that spans the entirety of Germany.  They operate a wide variety of long distance and local train services to create an immense network spanning over 20,000 miles which is almost the length of earth's circumference around the equator.

I happened to get another opportunity to spend a week in Germany, this time in winter and enjoy riding these rails. While it got to a low of 0 deg C or just below 32 deg F on couple days it only snowed during my last couple days of the time I spent there.

Most snow I saw was in fact just across the German / Austrian border in the historic city of Salzburg. Got to walk over the bridge on River Salzac and look at a fort on a hill (Schloss as they are known) that looks very similar to another castle that inspired the setting for 'Where Eagles Dare' with Client Eastwood.


Walking across Salzac River, Austria

Speaking of which the train that took me to Austria from Munich was operated by the Austrian State and their brand is OBB.  That was not an ICE.  

I did use ICE extensively for other trips.

One was to get from say Basel (Switzerland) main station to Freiburg in Germany.  To begin my excursion of the Black Forest or Schwarzwald region in state of Baden Wurttemberg. 


Rhine (at dawn) passing through Basel, Switzerland


Contemplating in bronze, Basel

Having access to 24x7 internet on the phone is a huge blessing since it allowed me to plan my next leg of journey on the fly and optimize based on how much time I wanted to spend in any given locale.


my ICE waiting in Munich to go someplace north



Came out of Liège, Belgium with an ICE


Reaching max speed of 300 kph on leg to Frankfurt

It is an extremely quiet and slick ride with not much trouble getting seat (given it is low travel season) to get between two points expeditiously. 

For the electrical engineering fans out there the system is operating on 15kV AC power for most of the service area in Germany and trains are able to also smoothly migrate across borders with the same standards used by neighboring countries. 




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