Notes on a trip to Germany

I'm just back from a trip to Munich using trains and ferries by way of Newcastle and Amsterdam. For the highlights visit the Mastodon account @pauls_trips@mas.to where I posted multiple times a day. This post is largely to get stuff I learned into search engines.

• Despite warnings in the Web that uptake of contactless payment in Germany was behind the UK I found everywhere took contactless and weren't phased by my using my phone to do it either. The only exception was a beer garden where I did pay in cash but that was my choice, not because I had to, but because I wanted some €1 coins for a locker I knew I would be using later and the change was useful for other things too.

• Which brings me on to toilets. They were universally good: on trains, at train stations¹, in beer gardens, and in museums; but some required payment, typically €1, and although some had machines which accepted contactless payment some wanted hard cash ... but would give change. Curiously the ones at Amsterdam Centraal Station were €1.10 which seemed like a strange price, but they did take contactless. Oh, and some also asked for donations, into a bowl or a box with a slot.

• Also on trains smoking is still much more of a thing in Munich than the UK and there seemed to be a lot less take up of vaping too. Lots of people smoke in the street and in beer garden and the outside seating in bars. Smoking is forbidden in train stations but on some platforms there is a smoking area, outlined by a line of paint, which is worth avoiding sitting downwind of.

• The Web is full of stories of people having a poor experience on the German railway system with delays being endemic (and a fellow passenger of the Newcastle to Inverness train had a dreadful time when he has there) but I found the two DB trains I used fine. The first was about ten minutes late into Dusseldorf but I had enough gap that it didn't matter.

• If you've prebooked and have their app loaded then you can "check in" to your seat once you've found it and the conductor then doesn't check your ticket. You can also change seats, as I did on the second train, and update your seat number in the app, and again the conductor is told.

• Catering service on board both DB trains was good with someone coming round occasionally. You could also order direct from the DB web site so on each train I was able to look through the menu and order and it just turned up (and the server took contactless payment).

• Coming back the ÖBB Nightstar sleeper was generally excellent. A few notes:
  • I was greeted when I got on the train by a young woman who took me to my cabin, and then came back later to check (and keep) my ticket, and took my breakfast order.
  • Breakfast was pick any six items from a wide choice of breakfasty things. So I had a cup of coffee, a bottle of orange juice, two bread rolls, a packet of butter, slices of ham, and slices of Emmental.
  • The bunk is parallel to the train, not across (which it is on the Caledonian Sleeper), which I found odd as I felt I was being thrown out of bed when the train went around a right hand curve.
  • The bed was fine, if a bit short at only 6'3" or thereabouts (probably 1.9m?) so I couldn't lie full out, but the pillow was shite so I had to improvise to raise it up.
  • The cabin had a translucent blind which was letting light through from passing stations and waking me up. I only discovered in the morning that there are two blinds; the other one is opaque.
  • There was a little bottle of Kupferberg Sekt sparkling German wine waiting for me in the cabin. Also two bottles of water, slippers, eye covering etc. Very impressed by that.
  • I was given my ticket back before I disembarked. This is important as you need the QR code on it to exit the station.

• English is widely used on public transport for announcements after German but you sometimes get less data. It also varies a lot, for example at Munich Ostbahnhof the only English announcement was about smoking areas but on the ICE the guard did pretty much everything in German and English.

• My German was never great and is now pretty poor after a gap of 25+ years since my last visit, but I did manage quite a lot of simple transactions in German throughout, or we at least started in German and segued into English.

• I found English is widely and well spoken among tourist facing staff. Also common in the well educated and younger general public but less so with working class people in ordinary shops.

1. A real contrast to Newcastle Station, where they were dreadful.