On a cold Saturday morning, Jamie and I lay silently in our bed, listening for a sound we were all too certain to hear: the ringing of our alarm clock. We were ready for a routine ride on the regional train to Nuremburg--the Franconian city known far and wide as the Christmas Market Capital of the Federal Republic. We were excited for the market, but we sure didn't expect the journey there to take on Van Allsburgian dimensions. How wrong we were; in the end, as is so often the case, getting there was the adventure.
Our Goal: The Nuremberg Christmas Market
We'd noticed that the rail connection from Munich to Nuremburg, a short one-hour-and-one-minute journey on the high speed/high price/high strung Inter-City-Express, tended to run just over two hours on the less expensive regional trains. In comparison to the ICE trains, which are everything that European rail service is cracked up to be, the regional trains are something like Germany's version of a Greyhound bus.
The tension between the German Railways's red regional fleet and its white inter-city service was evident on a trip we took recently to Wuerzburg. We had rushed to the station on another recent morning, bought our ticket and climbed on board the red regional express train. We stowed our bags and took off our coats. We settled into our seats and prepared for a relaxing journey. We observed the passengers around us and tried to guess where they were from and where they were going. Finally it hit us, we'd been sitting in the train for over twenty minutes, and we were still waiting on track twenty-one in Munich. Soon, the harried voice of our conductor boomed out of the normally scratchy loudspeaker. "Because of the actions of a passenger on an Inter-City train," he announced, "our time of departure is delayed indefinitely." The words "Inter-City train" were pronounced in a particularly perturbed tone. Clearly, the fact that the hare was delaying the tortoise was not too pleasing to our conductor. It wasn't only the conductor's tone of voice that left of us scratching our heads in the wake of this pronouncement. It had been a more specific statement than many of the announcements made by German Railways personnel, but it was far from precise. We were left to speculate at to just what the passenger onboard the fast train had done to upset the crew of our train until we lurched out of the station fifteen minutes later. Finally after our train returned to a complete stop in the midst of the snowy Bavarian countryside, we were treated to some answers. "Because of the actions of a passenger on an Inter-City train who has pulled the emergency break," the conductor bellowed into a microphone somewhere in the belly of our train, "we have left Munich with a delay of 38 minutes." He paused. "And we have just been informed that we will be waiting here until an ICE train passes us." Another pause. "We will also be waiting at our next two stops so that additional high speed trains can pass us. In spite of this, we wish you a pleasant journey. Thank you for traveling with German Rail." As you can guess by now, we didn't get to Wuerzburg on time... But the rest of that day is a completely different story. The regional express ride to Nuremburg was quite different.
In contrast to the great selection of seats and nearly limitless space for luggage that we found on board the train to Wuerzburg, we knew the Nuremburg express was going to be packed before we even climbed onboard. We arrived half an hour early, but the platform was already swarming with a veritable horde of soon-to-be Christmas shoppers. Clearly, seats on board the train to Nuremberg were going to be in as high demand as mulled wine at a German Christmas Market. We were prepared for the big squish--and visions of standing all the way to Franconia were dancing in our heads.
The train pulled into the station, and the people got out. And got out. And got out. And then, just when we thought it was our turn to get in, some more people got out. It was almost like watching a clown car unload, only it was ten-train-cars long. Finally, the people were all out, and we raced to get on board. Luckily for us, our determination to board the train as quickly as possible in the most remote car possible was rewarded with seats around a little table in the middle of the car; we almost fooled ourselves into thinking we could sit back and relax. As the minutes until our impending departure ticked by, passengers just kept boarding the train. We gritted our teeth and settled in for a long ride on the slow train to Nuremberg.
As we pulled out of the station, we were greeted by the remarkably cheery voice of our conductor. It would be an exaggeration to say that he entertained us with stories and jokes, but in contrast to the vast majority of German Rail's workforce, he shared information that could be considered less than necessary, and even translated everything he said in German into understandable English.
We soon learned the reason that the conductor's spirits were so buoyant despite the fact that his train was weighed down with enough passengers to raise questions about Germany's railway firecode (or lack thereof). "Welcome on board the Munich-Nuremberg Express," he crowed, "the fastest regional train in Germany." Wow. Apparently, we were in for a real treat. Instead of spending two-plus hours in a train doomed to stop at "every station passed underway," as we had on the way to Wuerzburg, the Munich-Nuremberg Express was traveling on a remarkably straight track fenced off from the bucolic Bavarian landscape and normally restricted to the high-speed Inter-City trains. Villages, farmsteads, and forests whizzed by our window. The stations we stopped at seemed to be in the middle of nowhere--the exact opposite of the typical city-center central stations so common in Germany.
Nevertheless, at one of the desolate park and ride stops we deigned to halt at, we spied a troop of Germans in Santa hats waiting to board the train. Far from aiding us in imagining ourselves aboard the Polar Express on a magical Christmastime journey, this was a worrisome sight. Not only was the train was already overcrowded, Germans in matching outfits on public transit generally mean trouble. Like soccer fans or bachelor's party participants, who wear matching t-shirts, fill the train with drinking songs, and generally take advantage of Germany's lack of an open container law, the Santas shuffled into the aisle and immediately opened up their backpacks to reveal a dazzling array of all things alcoholic. From Sprite mixed with vodka, to beer and schnapps, to tins of fruit floating in liquor, they had it all. Clearly these Santas were unwilling to wait til we got to Nuremberg to start fortifying themselves against the cold with mulled wine.
The Santas occupy the aisle...
...and break out the booze.Before the Santa squad had had enough time to bother anyone but an old woman who was incensed by the fact that they were talking to one another across the car, however, we saw the outskirts of Nuremberg whizzing past us out the window.
The Munich-Nuremberg Express, the crown jewel of German Rail's regional system, had delivered its cargo of Christmas shoppers to Nuremberg in record time. We realized that we could look forward to thirty bonus minutes of perusing the market. The Christmas spirit overtook us and we headed straight for the mulled wine.
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