Trains

I’ve led small-group tours to Cinque Terre in Italy five times since 2006, most recently in May ’09. Here are some thoughts.

European trains generally run on time, but if your train is delayed and you have a tight connection, even the Swiss sometimes will hold the following train a few minutes until the arriving train comes in and passengers can transfer.

This happened to us on Oct. 9, 2009, when our Milan-to-Basel train was delayed 45 minutes by some security issue. The officials held the Luxembourg train we needed to catch, and passengers made the connection.

You are well above the timberline far north, running along the stark, clear-aired, snow-pocked edge of Norway’s Hardanger Plateau. Any speck of color seems to be out of place. Just before your train stops at Myrdal, you look to your right and see the browns and greens of the mountain walls of a grand canyon of a rift. You gasp at the sight many hundreds of feet down the temperate Flåm Valley.

A number of my friends and I, who are in good but not spectacular physical shape, decided to craft our own bicycling itinerary through Switzerland and northern Italy. The result was a wonderful 2½ weeks of biking among the spectacular Alps, June 17-July 3, 2008. Six of us biked and one nonbiker rode in taxis with our luggage.

Two of us had biked along the Danube in 2006, utilizing the services of a tour company that furnished bikes, daily shuttle and reserved lodging plus contingency services. With that experience “under our belts,” we decided we could plan this trip ourselves.

I write regarding the letter “Staged Distraction” from the gentleman whose railpass was stolen from his jacket on the seat (Nov. ’09, pg. 51).

I read the subscriber’s letter “Venice to Munich by Train” (Aug. ’09, pg. 40) lamenting the fact that, for a first-class DB Bahn rail ticket from Bolzano to Munich, she paid €93 by ordering it while in the US instead of getting it in Italy for €75.

by Martha Wiley, Landstuhl, Germany

by Deanna Palic

by Jay Brunhouse