Thursday May 23 -- Frankfurt to Friedrichshafen

Up early, cleaned the apartment and packed. I don't think I left anything behid this time. I was missing a pack of toothpicks after I left Weesp. Anyway, all the important stuff seems to have come along.

Got to Frankfurt Station with an hour to spare and wandered around for a bit before settling down with a cup of coffee. Unfortunately my first train has booked places, so I couldn't go early as I did from Weesp.

It was an ICE train, very comfortable and quite fast, over 200 kph in places; but we never got anywhere near the 300 kph of the Chinese trains. We went out through the green belt and Mainz, and then down through Heidelberg--which we visited in 1984--and Worms. This is where the famous negotiations called the Diet of Worms were held, and the delegates brought a great deal of money to the town, so they were offered the best in food and drink that the townsfolk could supply, sometimes to excess. Hence the origin of the phrase: 'No thanks, I'm on a Diet'.

We arrived at Ulm where I changed trains -- on the same platform -- to a sleepy little electric train that ambled through the counryside in no great hurry. It was very marshy and the electronic signboard on the train didn't bother to announce where we were stopping; we just pulled up more or less at random in these tiny little sidings. 

My ticket said 'change to a bus at Biberach', but I only realised when I got there that this was because they were electrifying the rail line, so we had to hop along through the intermediate stations by road. A bit more scenic here, with eagles flying and mountains in the distance. Then the last leg on a moderately fast train again, though we had to pause at one station while they decanted a large number of kindergarten kids, all in yellow visibility vests, from the train to the platform. It was like counting baby chicks.

And so to Friedrichshafen, where I walked noisily with my bag on wheels--not risking my back--to the apartment, and Stephan turned up almost immediately to let me in. It's another really nice place, spotlessly clean, in the basement of a big square house about 1 km from the central station. And the bed, I think, is a bit less soft than Frankfurt, and probably better for my aching bones.

No food in the house, so I took a walk back into town and along the shores of Lake Constance. This is very spectacular, with snow-covered mountains in the distance, and regular ferry and pleasure boats across to Switzerland on the other side and one tiny corner of Austria which touches the eastern corner of the lake. I might try a boat trip on Saturday.

Walked along the lakefront and returned to the town centre. There is an enormous food/department store where I went for provisions. Most of what I needed was on the ground floor, but I couldn't find milk anywhere. I looked at the moving ramp to the next floor but all I could see at the top were women's undergarments. Eventually I tried it for want of any other options, and found another floor of food which largely seemed to duplicate the one below. This one had milk, however, in a tiny little fridge lost among the milk products and milk desserts and powdered milk and baby milk. 

So back to the flat with a more reasonable set of provisions for dinner and bed. This is the day of the EU elections, but it didn't seem to disrupt anything, and I saw no signs of voting. We'll see what the results are in a few days.

Love, Jon.