…for yet another adventure! If you take a look back at my posts, it hasn’t been that long since the last time I went on some kind of a journey. Yeah, I’d want to go somewhere every weekend if I could, of course, but that is not exactly possible for me at the moment. So about 6 months after my previous excursion, I’m back on the road again, figuratively speaking.
Actually, this adventure, at least the part of getting to and from where I’m going, is going to be very similar to the last time I went abroad, you will see that by the end of this first post already what I mean exactly. But for now, at the time of typing this up, we’re about halfway through our journey. Well, my voyage this time around is taking me to Germany again. This time though, it’s more of a family kind of event, but it’s still going to be super fun!
As I mentioned Germany, one thing I’ve experienced those few months ago, was how amazing their public transport system really is. I mean, I knew that even before, but that was all about public transport in bigger cities, last year I ventured into this whole new world, and it’s great! So, when I found out that we were going to visit our relatives living in the country, I immediately thought of taking the train(s) to get there. I did have to persuade my parents slightly to get them on board, but once we quickly compared the cost of the travels between driving and taking a train, there was no doubt which was the clear winner. As you might have guessed, the trains have won!
First, we decided to take the night train between Ljubljana and Munich, which was another new experience for me. I mean, it’s not the first time I was travelling through the night and on that exact route, but definitely the first time like that on a train. It definitely was an experience, I basically got like an hour’s worth of “sleep”, if you can even call it that at all. The train could have gotten us even further into Germany, but as my previous experience has shown, Munich is a great place to continue onwards on the journey through the country, and the tickets were reasonably priced as well. We will get to the whole cost of everything a little later on as well.
After arriving to Munich in the morning, we had about 2.5 hours till our next train towards Düsseldorf first, and another one for our final leg of the journey that got us to Leer in the north-west of the country. The train to Düsseldorf was an ICE train, high speed intercity express train, while the one towards Leer was just a regular intercity train. I was looking forward to this part of the adventure more than that first part, of getting to Munich, because I already knew what to expect from the trains in Germany. It was just as much fun as I thought, although with that little sleep didn’t really help make things as good as they could have been. Nonetheless, the ride on the ICE train was comfortable and very enjoyable, as always, and getting used to speeds of 200kph+ meant that the IC train felt super slow afterwards, despite it doing around 140kph as well. I was fighting with myself to just stay awake throughout those parts, in some moments I wasn’t very successful and I lost the battle, but it only lasted a few seconds and I woke myself up again. And after about 19 hours of travelling, we made it to our destination, meeting up with my aunt and uncle and it was the moment the real fun began!
I did mention the cost earlier on, honestly, it wasn’t that cheap in total. Considering we had to buy tickets for 3 people, for 6 train rides, paying somewhere around 400€ doesn’t seem all that bad. Also, because for the German part, we decided to go for the first class option, just because the price difference wasn’t really that big, but the benefits outweigh the difference by a long way. We quickly compared the cost of the journey with driving here, and the price of fuel needed to get us here alone would have been over the price of the train tickets already, so it was basically a no brainer in the end.
Finishing this post the morning after a good night’s sleep, means that my brain is working properly again. I was contemplating the idea last night of typing it up, but no words came out properly, and I passed out in bed as soon as I put my head on the pillow. Lots of fun plans for the next few days ahead, until Thursday morning when we arrive back to Ljubljana. So stay tuned for more adventures coming very soon! 🙂
Blogging with Jure 