Interrail Adventure Part 2: Los Geht's!

I can't believe it's been nearly 2 years since I went abroad! While I'm still confined to dreaming about foreign holidays from the UK this year, I thought I'd look back at my solo Interrail trip in August 2019. The whole journey ended up being far too long for one blog post so I have split it up into parts. In this second part I commence on my journey round Southern Germany during my first week of travel.

Leutkirch im Allgäu - Germany (30th July - 3rd August)

I perhaps cheated a little bit on the first leg of my journey by taking a plane from Edinburgh to Memmingen. But this was because it would have otherwise taken up 2 whole extra travel days (downsides of travelling from Scotland). Plus I wanted to attend the first day of the Scottish 6 Days (big orienteering competition) and Silvana, the person I was staying with, was leaving a few days later in August.

I came to Leutkirch, a small town in Southern Germany, since it is where my mum’s German exchange friend from when she was 14 lives. I had previously visited this town with my family on a European road trip in 2013 but only briefly.

I had a really nice time with Silvana, Friedermann and their son, Simon. Over those few days I visited several other nearby towns (Wangen where Silvana works and where I got to see her school, and Bad Wurzach where Rebekka and Simon had gone to school), went on lots of walk, cycled, swum in the public outdoor pool (Freibad), played board games, attempted to speak some German, and watched German TV shows and movies. One day Silvana also took me to Bregenz in Austria (my first time in that country I think!) to climb a mountain called the Pfänder. There was a lovely view over Lake Constance and you could even see three different countries at once at one point!

On my last night, I helped Silvana to make the famous "Käsepätzle" (basically fancy German macaroni cheese with homemade egg pasta) which she had taught us to make last time she visited us in Scotland. Other food highlights included the Apfelpfannkuchen (Germany apple pancakes) and all the good Brot!

Tübingen - Germany (3rd - 5th August)

The next stop on my tour of Southern Germany was the university town of Tübingen to visit one of Silvana's daughters, Rebekka who studies there.

Predictably the train I was just on was delayed so I missed my connection in Ulm. But it's fine here in Ulm train station so not too bad to wait for an hour here. I sat down on Platform 1, then a woman and her young child sat down next to me. The woman dropped her tissues, said 'Danke' [when I picked them up]. Then the sweet little girl looked at me, I smiled at her, and she proceeded to say 'Danke' over and over. At one point she said something I didn't understand. They've got onto their train now. Anyway, it was quite cute and funny.

- Travel diary 3rd August

Another moment of casual magic ✨came on the last of several trains I took that day. A man on the seat across from me seemed to be doing something interesting with a book. He was using a rubber to erase down the side of the pages to make 3D words in the pages when you look at it side on. The evening light also looked really nice.

After some train delays and using a train I wasn't supposed to use with my ticket, I finally made it to Tübingen at 8pm, by which time I was rather hungry. I arrived at Rebekka's student accommodation to find lots of her friends all outside eating dinner and talking. There wasn't much food left but they did give me some alcohol... Talking German within a group setting proved a bit harder but I did manage to make some conversation (mixed in with a bit of English and French too) and play some games with them despite being rather tired at this point.

Rebekka kindly gave me her bed to sleep on while she slept on the sofa. I was too tired to object and I had a very good sleep. The next day I had a great introduction to student life in the summer in Tübingen. Rebekka and I went the bakery to buy lots of bread and then went to meet the same uni friends as the night before at the river. We were going to go punting (on Tübinger 'Stockerkahn') and have breakfast (although by this point it was brunch) on the boat! One of the guys also brought his guitar and we all had a nice time singing along while gliding along the river. Idyllic!

In the afternoon they were all going to a nearby lake to go swimming. After being unsuccessful in finding a spare bike to borrow, I took Rebekka's bike while she took the bus to this location that ended up being much further away than I thought. She did say her bike was bad but I didn't realise how bad. The pedals couldn't go backwards, the gears wouldn't change, the tyre pressure was very low and it had awful rusty breaks that really didn't work properly. Needless to say I was relieved when we finally made it after a 20 minute cycle.

We swum out pretty far into this rather murky lake. One of the guys decided to do use the trapeze jump from the tree on the little island and I decided I would too. It was fun but felt much higher than it looked... I decided to take the bus back with one of the other girls whose chain had broken on the way there rather than cycle with the rubbish bike.

I had a shower and Rebekka's friends had cooked a yummy dinner for everyone before I had the chance to help. I had an amazing day but I was exhausted after my long day. But energetic Rebekka then went out for a night shift at the hospital where she works - how does she have so much energy??!

I met her the next morning after her night shift and we went to a lovely little bakery where I got a very nice pastry for only 50 cents and some apricots from the market. I ate my breakfast on the steps of the church in the morning sun before she very kindly dropped me off at the station.

Freiburg - Germany (5th - 6th August)

I took a Flixbus from Tübingen to Freiburg, where I was met by Sarah (Silvana's other daughter who had also visited us in Scotland many years earlier). It was very interesting to meet her again after so long. We had lunch from the student cafeteria and got a short tour of the town. We had a nice time chatting and catching up while sitting in a café, taking in the Freiburg atmosphere. I also got to visit her flat where we had dinner and continued our long discussion. I failed to take many pictures in Frieburg but you can see a bit of the town and the Black Forest in the distance in the pics below.

I was staying at another student accommodation quite far from the centre of town so had to take a tram and bus to get there. Originally I had planned to spend a bit more of the next day seeing Freiburg, but I decided it would be nice to spend some time exploring Zürich before my night train that evening (the advantage of Interrail - not being restricted to take a certain train at a certain time!). So I got going a bit earlier to leave Freiburg. I bought some supplies for breakfast and lunch from the supermarket across the road from my accommodation. But as I entered two women accosted me in German. Looking a bit confused, they told me in English that I had to take my backpack off to go shopping and leave it at the front desk - still not really sure why as none of the other supermarkets I've been to in my life (at home or on holiday) have required me to do this... Overall I think I preferred Tübingen to Freiburg, although maybe I was rather tired and didn't spend enough time in the town to appreciate it properly.

After journeying back to the centre of town I waited for my train to Zürich. I could not work out at all how to make the big scary luggage lockers work at the station. Since I didn't have long to wait I just took my luggage with me and sat in a park, thinking about the exciting next week of solo travel I had ahead of me.

In next week's blog post I'll embark on the next leg of my journey through Switzerland, Slovenia, Austria and Czechia!