European Train System

The picture above is the HQ building for Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers Europe, which is not the most intuitive acronym I have encountered in military lore.

If anyone wants to look at the specific route I took from Ramstein AFB Germany to SHAPE (formerly known as SAC EUR), Belgium, this hyperlink allows you to select each country and the train station in each city. http://downloads.raileurope.com/map_europe/europe.html

Here is the gist of my route of travel:
GERMANY-BELGIUM
Kaiserslautern to Saarbrucken to Trier to Luxembourg
Luxembourg to Namur to Mons.

BELGIUM-GERMANY
Mons to Namur to Luxembourg
Luxenmbourg to Metz Ville (France) to Saarbrucken
Saarbrucken to Kaiserslautern


Each trip was scheduled to take about 7 hours and required me to change trains four times. If I had rented a car in Germany, I could have driven to Mons in about four hours. Although seven hours on a train and multiple connections sounds like a major headache, in and of itself going by train was less of a headache than flying commercially or driving.

As a 10-year airline employee, I know the ins and outs of commercial air travel as well as the associated headaches. Where most aiport connections force passengers to perform their daily exercise as they sprint from one end of the airport to the other, the train connections only required me to walk about 50 feet to the next set of track and wait between 5 and 30 minutes until my connection arrived.

Although driving would have been faster, I had not been driving since I left the US in July, and I remembered the "challenges" associated with learning to drive when my wife and I were deployed to Japan back in the 1990's, so for once the prudent decision won out and I didn't pick up the rental car until after I was settled in at my hotel in Mons. The other nice thing about the train was I was able to enjoy a tasty German beer as we travelled which obviously is not an option when driving.

The other huge bonus of the train was the ability to multi task ... I read books the entire way across the continent, and took photos of the scenery. I have flown in and out of Germany, Belgium and England several times for the airlines, and even though the cockpit gives you the best view of the scenery, it does not compare with the ground level perspecive. As soon as I find the cable for me camera, I will upload the pictures.

As proof of how simple the system is to use, on the first trip, one of my trains was running 12 minutes late. As luck would have it, the next connection had only 5 minutes of grace time. Sure enough, when I got into Saarbrucken, my connecting train had already departed. Nevertheless, a review of the timetables, the rail maps and some helpful assistance from a conductor got me onto an alternative train which got me into Luxembourg about 30 minutes behind schedule. I picked up the next train into Belgium and no one was the wiser.

That leads me to my last observation about advantages of the train system ... unlike air travel, it did not matter which train I boarded. So even though I missed a connection, which spells certain dooom for air travel because you will lose an entire business week standing in line at customer service, I just hopped onto the next train heading my direction and the conductors were completely fine with the admended itinerary.

So, in summary I found the train system to be remarkably comfortable and easy to use, especially considering I do not speak/read German or French, which were the two languages used on the announcements and the maps/timetables as I travelled.

Now you all know that I made it back and forth to Mons without difficulty. I am catching my flight back to my deployed location later this evening. I have rearranged my clothing so I can access every piece of warm clothing when I get on the aircraft just in case it is as cold as last week's trip.

Right now I am going to head over to the Health Spa (I mean Air Force base gym) and get in a workout before I go. For anyone that is ever contemplating military service, I would strongly encourage that person weigh the quality of life aspects of the service they want to join. As a Navy pilot, I am very proud of my military service and our heritage, but I have to admit the Air Force does a superb job of providing the best facilities to their personnel, both in the US and overseas. The gym here on base is as nice a facility as the brand new community rec centers I use at home.

My third and final entry regarding my week in Europe will likely be much shorter since I can't go into the details of the conference, but it will highlight some of the humorous events associated with dining and driving during the week.