Trains

The first weekend I was in Germany, I went to Hamburg for a day. I had already been on the train the day before because I went to the Climatehouse in Bremerhaven on a school trip. I should probably write a blog post about that, too. Included in my fees for the university is my semester pass. My semester pass lets me use all of the transportation in Bremen and Bremerhaven. I use the trams in Bremen almost every day so this is very useful. My semester pass also lets me get on any regional train in the states of Bremen, Hamburg, and Lower Saxony. If I did not have a semester pass, it would have cost about 30 Euro to go round trip between Bremen and Hamburg. What I find amazing about the trains is that I can show up to the trains station 10 minutes before my train leaves, walk to the platform, wait a minute or two for my train to arrive, and just get on the train when it gets there. There is no security! To get on the monorail at Disney you have to go through security. Also, the airport security that I have experienced in Europe has been very similar to in America. I do not know if they have that airport security and no train station security because of international laws regarding aviation. It is also surprising that there are no ticket turnstiles to go through before you get on the train. While you are on your way, an employee comes and checks that everyone has a ticket. When this happens, I just show them my semester pass. Once, someone asked me to show an ID, even though my semester pass has a picture on it. I just find it so amazing that just show up at the train station and get on a train. It is just so simple.

Another thing that I have noticed about rail in Europe is that in every train I have ridden, there are two sets of track right next to each other. In the US, whenever I drive over a railway track, it is only one set of track. I think the two sets of track are helpful because trains do not have to let other trains pass.