Castle Eberbach, Porsche, and Mercedes Museums

The Eurail solution worked. I have a ticket to Rome. I'm going to try to do a day trip to Pompeii when I'm there. The downside is the train ride is almost 3-1/2 hours long. Leaving me only a few hours to actually enjoy the ruins, even if I leave really early. But I did it with Cork, so I should be able to do it with Pompeii.

Anyway the last two days have been pretty exhausting. Yesterday I went to the Mercedes-Benz museum here in Stuttgart. It was really cool, lots of historic pieces. Engine parts and models from way back before there were cars, when it was all theoretical. It was kinda cool to see a 5hp engine from the 1800's. The Porsche museum was more of a showroom. Most of the cars in there were racing winners, and classic favorites. There was also a replica of the original 356 No. 1, which was pretty cool. As well as a Porsche brand tractor. Pictures will be up on Facebook eventually.

Today I went on a day trip to Eberbach. Frommer's recommended it as a cool ruined castle up on a small mountain just outside Heidleberg. The town was really cool and small, with a beautiful church. It took me a while to find the path up to the castle. It probably would have helped to lookup the German word for castle BEFORE leaving. The hike wasn't too tough, a little steep. When I got up there were some beautiful ruins. I couldn't go to the watchtower in the back though, due to reconstruction efforts. Apparently the castle was destroyed by some spoiled noble in the 1400's to prevent anyone else from stealing it. The guy had "too many castles" and it was a "money sink". Tough life, what terrible problems he had. Anyway, it gave a great view of the town and valley. Again pictures will be on Facebook. Tomorrow... LEGOLAND!

Stuttgart and the Eurail Solution

Pictures are finally up on facebook. And I'm finally at a hostel with an internet connection faster than a 28.8 modem. Actually I have to give this hostel props. It's Inter-hostel in Stuttgart and it is really nice. Very clean, really nice people. Really nice bathrooms, kitchen, and laundry. Great wifi. All around great hostel. Stuttgart is really nice so far too. Had to suck up a 100 euro train ticket to get here, but it was worth it. Tomorrow I plan to go to the Wilhelma "Zoo" althought it's more than that. You'll see in the pictures.

Yesterday I went in to talk to the Eurail office in Paris Gare-de-Lyon. In my documentation it had them open from 10am to 2pm on Sundays. Not only were they not open, it didn't look like they had ever been open. They had a sign, in front of one of the regular ticket offices. The sign claimed this was the office, but it was blocking the window, and it had collected quite a bit of dust.

So I went to talk to the regular ticket office. Once again I got a disgruntled employee who did not want to help me. I explained I had a flexible schedule and could stay overnight in any city. I just needed to eventually go to Stuttgart. He basically told me off and said it was 100 euros to go to Stuttgart. (And he spoke perfect, advanced English with the man before me, but all of a sudden had trouble with me....) I asked if I could do standing seating, an option which in my documentation was allowed by Eurail. This should allow me to go on any train, regardless of reservation, I just won't have a guaranteed seat. He said Paris no longer allowed this due to previous problems with Eurail pass members. (Can't verify if this is true or not. Just repeating what I heard)

So enough about my problems. Here are my solutions! I used Rail Europe to lookup what trains are available with my pass. I double checked that my pass was locked out of trains I knew I already could not get (ie the Paris-Stuttgart trains). This was true, so now I knew that the website was showing me what was actually available to me. I have written down 3 seperate itineraries from Stuttgart to Rome on July 3rd. I intend to go into the Stuttgart train station tomorrow, and ask the man politely to reserve these trains for me. Hopefully, my advanced notice, advanced planning, and my research into polite German phrases will pay off. I'll keep you all posted tomorrow.

Lost in Spain/France Thanks to Eurail

So now we get to today. Today was both very adventurous, and a nightmare. So apparently, Eurail works great for INSIDE countries. But anytime you want to cross the border, it becomes something of a pain. All the trains that cross the border must be reserved, and most are reserved well in advance. This was not made very clear in the literature for Eurail. Not that it isn't in there, it is. But they didn't make it clear just how quickly these spots fill up. See the trains only allow a certain number of Eurail passengers per train. (The part they don't publish very well.) That number, I'm guessing, is very very low. So you do the math.

So that was problem one. Problem two was that I didn't learn this until 7am today, when I arrived in Barcelona asking to organize a trip to Paris and the attendant stared at me with a blank face. She looked through todays trains and said I could go to Cerbere and catch a train. So I do just that I catch the 8:45 (not the 10:45 like SHE told me). A very nice beautiful scenery local train to Cerbere, just inside the French border. The smallest train station on the planet! With only one North outbound train every 2 hours! Which I promptly ran for as fast as I could to ANYWHERE else. It seems the Spainish train operater just wanted to get rid of me and pointed me in the direction of France.

While on this new train, I quickly looked at a map for the biggest city on the local route I was on. There I found a nice French ticket person who didn't just blow me off, and helped me get to Paris. He really did some research too cause he was looking for like 30 minutes. Even got me bumped to first class somehow. Really nice guy. I got my fluently French speaking mom to call my hotel (cause I couldn't for some strange reason) and tell them I'd be a little late. The train ride was goregous and relaxing. Just what I needed.

So now I'm in Gare-de-Lyon, and I go to the booth to try and see if I can reserve a ticket to Stuttgart for sometime in the near future, doesn't have to be soon... and I get blown off again. I think it's just the major cities maybe? All their ticket operators are either disgruntled or just plain stupid or both. I'm not saying I shouldn't have made a reservation, but their job is to help me. I don't know the language well enough to be impolite here. I say merci and gracias like they were commas.

Anyway, new plan. Gonna stay a second night in Paris, gonna go to the Eurail help office, gonna plan out every international crossing from here to Greece with the Eurail official. Thankfully my trip is very flexible, so I should be able to make some crazy connections, and get where I want to go... which is kind of what I like about all this. What I don't like is disgruntled ticket operators and bad Eurail documentation. So let's cut those two out and get back to the awesome train rides, and crazy adventures that don't get me stranded in the south of France with no place to sleep.