Yesterday morning we left the RV at 8:45 to go to the airport to begin our three months overseas. Rio Grand Valley to Dallas/Fort Worth, an easy 1 hour and 20 minute flight arriving on time. DFW to Frankfurt, Germany, an almost 10 hour overnight flight arriving early. Easy passage thru customs, our two checked bags arrived no problem. Go to the train station in the airport and get our tickets for Strasbourg, France. It was rather straight forward, change trains twice and arrive in Strasbourg a little while after noon.

As the trip progressed I commented to my wife that today was “The perfect Train Travel storm in Germany.” The last weekend in August, so the end of the summer travel season. The last weekend the 8 Euro monthly pass for travel on regional and local trains could be used. Perfect weather to spend the day somewhere other than at home.

Another train ticket that tells what can happen when perfect storms occur. Going back to the original ticket, at one of the stops on the second leg there was a lengthy hold. This train was jammed packed, or what at the time we though was jam packed (later we learned what a jam packed train really was), and our luggage wasn’t in the car we were in. Too long a story to tell how that happened. Anyway in going to the car our luggage was in, I got confused as to which stop was next and we ended up getting off not in Offenburg, but at the stop before in Baden Baden.

I realized too late we were at the wrong stop, so we went to the ticket office to see when we could get to Strasbourg. That is the second ticket. Meaning we had to wait almost 2 hours at Baden Baden for the first of the two trains that would get us to Strasbourg two hours later than we originally planned. Yet we didn’t know the perfect storm was growing in intensity. The train from Baden Baden to Appenweier was a half hour behind schedule, meaning we and a whole bunch of other people missed the local train from Appenweier to Strasbourg we were scheduled on.

There was another train in an hour to Strasbourg, so we set about waiting for it. Appenweier has no facilities at all, so we along with everyone else just waited in the sun on the platform. About 15 minutes before the train was to arrive, droves and droves of people began arriving. We recognized one person who had been with us when we got on the train in Frankfurt. Did the people who we left behind on the train we departed too soon in Baden Baden miss the connection in Offenburg? It sure looked like it.

Somehow both us managed to get on the car that had people packed in like sardines. The door shut a number of times on my wifes backpack before enough space opened up she could get completely in the car. I’ll just say when I realized she was in trouble I yanked some nearby suitcases and created enough space for her. In the end we got to Strasbourg about 4 o’clock. We hadn’t planned on doing anything other than walking around outside and trying to stay awake as long as we could today anyways so being late did not matter. We just didn’t plan on using that method to stay awake.

Oh. one last thing. We were planning on taking the tram from the Strasbourg station to our hotel, or close to our hotel at least. We couldn’t figure out how to use the tram ticket machine until a young lady who was visiting Strasbourg from Paris came to our rescue, then we couldn’t find the tram station, but after wandering around looking at enough signs we discovered it four levels down below the train station.

After an easy trip on the tram, we looked up, saw the tower of the cathedral, walked down several streets towards it, came to the city park our hotel was supposedly located very near, looked down the street and there was our hotel, and upon entering it we were greeted by one of the most wonderful receptionist/desk clerks we have ever come across in our years of travelling. She and the room we settled in were the perfect end to a very interesting 25 hours of travel.