Skip to main content

Federal Republic of Germany - by the numbers

 1 week trip. Helps to have a direct flight into München or Munich. Capital of state of Bavaria. In the very south of the country. 

This was one of those inspired solo wanderings bereft of specific timetables but just enjoying the journey. It did help to have handy tech in the pocket in the form of a DB planner that ran on my iOS enabled phone.  This is an app that is hosted by the national railways in Germany. The railway is branded Deutsche Bundesbahn or German Railway.  A complicated network of rail that supports both passenger and goods traffic over 20,000 miles of track.

DB can shuttle people all over the country from its northern fringes by the ocean to the southern borders and lands east and west. Some of its trains run right into neighbor states like Switzerland, Austria and Belgium to name a few.

I happened to visit in its south and western borders for the week I spent. Below are some stunning stats to show how quick one can travel with an efficacious transit network.



Train miles traveled = 3,000 km or 1,864 miles (distance equivalent to Delhi to Kanyakumari)

Countries entered /visited = 4 (Germany, Austria, Belgium and Switzerland)

Rivers crossed on foot (on a bridge) = 8 (of which 7 were in Germany and 1 in Austria)

Wupper in Wupperstal (to see the hanging monorail)

 




Neckar (in Heidelberg)





Rhine (in Basel)





Danube (including the perceived source of this river, Donauschigen in the Black Forest region)





Regen (in Regensburg)





Main (in Frankfurt)



Isar (in Munich)


River Salzac (Salzburg)



Beers drank to nourish the weary feet =  21 (at about 3 a day) :)




Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

But What If We're Wrong?

I attempted to read this book by author Chuck Klosterman backward to forward but it started hurting my brain so I decided to stop and do it like any other publication in the English language.  Start from page 1 and move to the right. Witty, caustic and thought provoking this is a book you want to read if you believe that the status quo might, just might be wrong. At times bordering on being contrarian about most things around us it tries to zero in on the notion of what makes anything believable and certain in our minds.  The fact that there is a fact itself is ironic.  Something analogous to the idea that you can never predict the future because there is no future. Many books and movies have tried to play on this concept - best that I recollect (I think I am) was 'The Truman Show'.  This book by Klosterman attempts to provoke the reader to at least contemplate that what they think they know may be wrong. He uses examples like concept of gravity, and how it ...
2 comments
Read more

Peru, South America - Week well spent

Growing up in India the only Peru I knew of was a tropical fruit (Guava for those whose lingua is English).   Not until high school did I discover that it was also a country in the South American continent. So it was this early April week that we decided to hit up Peru - the land of the once glorious Inca people that lived 500 years ago.  Today Peru is the third largest country on that continent with a diverse geography that stretches from the drier Pacific coast plains to the high mountains of the Andes and the Amazon river valley to its east. Our trip was primarily a pilgrimage of sorts to visit the last remaining, lost (now found and documented), large scale, mostly undamaged, city of the Inca nobility, called Machu Picchu (MP).  The Inca were great architects and builders.  MP is a UNESCO world heritage site affording it high visibility to the tourism trade and therefore crowded year round.  Our timing was not quite high season allowing us...
1 comment
Read more

You are important to us

Followed by piano music.   Followed by 'we are experiencing heavier than usual call volume'.  Sounds macabre like bleeding during menstruation or after a ghastly attack with a weapon on a hemophiliac.  Sorry Mrs. Johnson but it appears little Gertrude here has been bleeding heavier than usual what with her night time activities competing with the woodchucks in your neighborhood. Some services even go as far as to pick a random day to say - 'if you were to call us during the Chinese lunar month when the moon is axiomatically hugging the polar star with Jupiter intravenous when call volume is light'.  Well I will be damned.  I thought  I had checked with my astrologer before I placed this well focused call but  I guess this is what you get for listening to a quack. Umph! I am not sure which marketing genius came up with this personal touch concept of informing the caller that you are really a jackass for actually calling the customer serv...
Post a Comment
Read more