Robert Smallshire

Anyway, made it to a cycle-friendly hotel in Hamburg at 01:30. 🥱

Got “chatting” in bits of English and German to a kid in the local train to Hamburg (the intersection of our language skills was tiny): He’s a Syrian asylum seeker aged 16 who paid $2000 to be trafficked to Libya, another $11000 in a small boat to Italy, and $1500 from Italy to Germany.

Sadly though, my onward train from Hannover was cancelled due to a switch failure. The DB app now says “use any train” so now I’m on a diesel regional train chugging through the German night. Not sure when/if I’ll get to Hamburg.

Well, I made it from Fulda to Hannover with a very tight connection at Göttingen, and had the pleasure of sharing the journey with a wonderful German lady who told stories of exploring the interior of Iceland in a Unimog sometime in the late 1970s. We swapped adventure stories.

I wish to revise my previous scepticism about Fulda. A charming town with interesting buildings old and new, and plenty of street cafés.

The joy of finding there a ramps connecting the platforms underpass. I need to entertain myself for four hours here until the next available bike slot north, and Fulda doesn’t look particularly inspiring as German towns go.

A colossal faff getting my and two other bikes onto the train in Mannheim to supplement the five already there. We did it with a team effort. Now the booking seems entirely necessary.

Yes!

This looks like it might a cross platform interchange. Hope so!

Now on an ICE train to Mannheim, about 30 minutes away. Frustratingly, this train actually goes where I ultimately need to be, Hamburg, but I couldn’t book cycle places. At this point mine is the only bike occupying one of the eight places.

I decided to cycle from Vaihingen to Stuttgart. It’s only about 10 km, on excellent infrastructure, and almost entirely downhill. Easier than struggling with more train boarding.

This journey is from the originating station to the terminating station for this service, so embarkation and disembarkation need not be rushed. Important with a loaded bike!

On the whole train (German) there is accommodation for exactly one bicycle. You have to book this is advance.

Stage 1: This service from Zurich to some place which is not quite actually Stuttgart. It’s further north. It will have to do.

I appear to have reserved space for my bike, but not a seat for me.

The author’s touring bike in Zurich station.

Day 2 of returning from a 3270 km cycle tour from Oslo 🇳🇴 to Monte Carlo 🇲🇨 by train: The crux – Germany 🇩🇪.

This morning I start in Zurich🇨🇭. Let’s see how far north I can get having patched together a bizarre and somewhat fragile route with extremely scarce cycle reservation slots at short notice.

And then a quick ride to a nearby hotel where I will figure out a plan for tomorrow. North!

Zurich at least has (almost) level boarding and the train has gap fillers, making it much easier to wheel the bike off the train.

I know somebody with a hip replacement who does a lot of cycling, so don’t rule it out.

Literally making it up as I go.

The train from Milan to Zurich is operated by SBB, the Swiss national operator. It has numbered spaces for bicycles. You can’t book these spaces online through the SBB app or website. They instruct you to use the Trenitalia site if you are travelling with a bike!

I’m sure there’s some sort of fancy integrated ticket I could use that would work in a specific fragile scenario, but everything to do with ticketing is more difficult with a bike, especially when travelling internationally. I prefer incremental and robust.

And off the train at Milano Centrale 🇮🇹. Very grand. As my confidence increased that we would arrive on time, I booked a train to Zurich🇨🇭 departing in about 40 minutes.

Police ID spot check on the train, but only if you look like you’re from Africa or the Middle East. A reminder that this coast is the EU frontier.

Yes, I’ll post some equipment reviews over the next few days.

I’ve gambled enough on the roads of Italy.

With the bike in carriage 3, my ticket tells me I’m seated in carriage 7, so I have to fight through hoards of people apparently having even more difficulty with their luggage than I am. Next stop: Milano Centrale, in 6 hours, where this service terminates, giving plenty of time to disembark.

Once on board through, the bicycle facilities are very good. Hanging space for six bikes, of which mine is the only one. There’s a lot to be said for joining a train at its starting station. More time to board, and less contention for scarce resources. Most of the bags will stay with the bike.

According to the instructions from Trenitalia, bikes go in carriage 3, and indeed this seems to be the case. All bags off (again!) to get the bike onto board, and even then it’s a struggle with a robust steel bike.

The principle problem is step-only access to the platforms from an underpass. I arrived on platform 6, but I needed to be on platform 4. The bike is too unwieldy and heavy with all the bags, so everything has to be ferried up to the platform.

But I knew my destination half an hour away just inside Italy 🇮🇹 at Ventimiglia would be a challenge, because I’d done a recce of the station while cycling through the town yesterday, knowing I would need to change trains here.