Konigssee!

Thursday is a holiday. No one seems to know why, but apparently, the 17th of May is of religious importance here.
I've agreed to go on a trip to a nearby lake (with my intern mates and a couple of other hostel mates) on this day, so I get ready by 6 am.

Its raining, and freezing. Some summer, this.

'Nearby', I realize, is misleading. It takes about eight hours to get there by train- but those were very eventful hours.
Train travel is completely hassle free. To get to any station you want to, enter the destination names in a ticketing machine at the railway station, and it prints out the entire itinerary, including train codes, times and platform numbers, and the smallest possible wait times between two connections. Of course, it also issues tickets. I realize that I overpaid on the first trip here. For €5, you get an all day pass valid on most trains in Germany- I traveled about 700 km on that pass!

The trip to Konigssee, I realize, involves four train changes, each with gaps of about five minutes. Amazing. I spend a few minutes contemplating on the genius of the graph theorist who programmed the machine to optimize travel time for the passenger.
This is the first of several things I noticed that involved considerable ingenuity to set up. One of the others, was the dustbin design.
Nah, I'm not talking about fancy lid opening devices with automated crushers, et al, although those exist, too. The dustbin on the train, I realize, is a can fixed to a wall that rotates outwards, and is stable in two positions, fully open and fully closed. How is that? The center of mass of the can is located a critical location with respect to the pivot, and filling the can makes no difference to the action of the dustbin, even though it moves with added mass at the bottom.
Amazing! (Will add photo later)

Three out of five people in our group form a noisy bunch, and wild swearing ensues as we almost miss one of the connecting trains. Most unpleasant business.
To complicate matters, both my fellow interns are heavy smokers, and don't seem to mind the fact that a box of cigarettes costs €4. They waste no time at all at stations, and puff away to glory- which, of course, means that I spend most of the time on the other end of the platform.
In addition, its raining, and I don't have an umbrella.
Fortunately, all this unpleasantness fades when I get to Konigssee.

Several connecting rides later, we get there, and I realize I'm at the Austrian border!
I'm also at the Alps foothills, but I reckon it feels cold enough already. ('Pleasant weather, expected to get warmer', remember?)

Here's what the lake at Konigssee looks like:









The Alps, and the way to the alps:




A few unexpected encounters:


The rain forced me to buy an (expensive!) umbrella:


Two hours later, it was time to head back. The return journey took nine hours, four train changes, and we made it back to Erlangen by 2 am! The temperature registered five degrees then, but at least it wasn't raining anymore. ('Pleasant weather...')

More shots, taken from the railway stations on the way, and in trains. One of the snaps has the well designed dustbin I mentioned earlier.

Train station on the way back. Pronounce that:




Self Portrait: Took this to see how my arm narrows down with distance. This was supposed to help me draw with perspective. Jacket ruined the entire business.


Notice the über dustbin in the center.
At Nuremberg railway station, 1 am. This is what happens to people who have traveled for sixteen hours in eight trains in one day, especially when they need to wait thirty minutes for the last one:



I sign off with a few random pics:

Railway station cafe: (very inviting!)


Make your own coffee:


Typical German Railway station (I've seen about twelve now):



This is Second Class!

A couple of pictures of me (I am very vain, eh?)
Were taken early in the morning, hence the un-tired expressions on my face.



Concluding note: It seems ironic that some one like me, who does not enjoy sight-seeing one bit, finds himself at one of the most picturesque places on the planet. (Perhaps it is wiser to say that I enjoy several things more than I enjoy touring.) The journey was a bore, the lake was cold and wet, as were my shoes at the end of the day (eww....). The ingenious dustbin and the ticketing machine more than made up for it, though.