European Trips on Shoestring Budgets

Germany has lots of different types of trains. Probably the handiwork of some fraud bureaucrats with nothing else to do! I mean, there are the ICE, IC and EC which are fast trains. Then there are RE and RB trains. Then there are S-Bahn and U-Bahns. These are still understandable. But then, sometimes you find IRE and IR trains as well. It confuses me to the point where mind feels only slightly better than overcooked spaghetti !
One really needs to know which kind of ticket is valid in which class, and to top it all, the tickets are printed exclusively in the German language. Quite tough for first timers.

The five of us took the Schones Wochenende karte [ literally, the beautiful ticket ] which is valid for 5 people for the whole day. The catch is that it is valid in only the short distance trains [i.e. RE RB IRE and SBahn ]. So our weekend trip to Heidelberg consisted of 3 breaks. But the ReiseZentrum [Information Center] people at train stations are very helpful. And they understand English. So one can go there and ask for the schedule to any particular city and they will take a printout of the shortest connection [train timings, platform numbers and all included] for FREE.
Mind those words. FREE.

In sharp contrast, you will rarely, if at all, find free drinking water anywhere in Germany except the fountains near old castles. It makes the stomach go squeasy especially if you choose to drink coke/sprite over water everytime you find that water costs the same as coke at railway stations.

We went on a weekend trip to Heidelberg and Stuttgart. Heidelberg is a town famous for its old castle, of which only scattered remains exist. The town being featured as tourist destination, it is very crowded. Our journey started with the train at 8, and we reached Heidelberg at 12. After that we had a brief lunch at McD - the Happy Meal, which seemed to have vanished somewhere between my tongue and throat. But we had to move on.
Having decided to walk around the city, we peeked into passing by tourist destinations [like the old University Library and numerous churches] and covered close to 3 kms by foot, of which around 400 m was steep uphill. The city looked quite scenic from the height of the small hill. Then we sat in the garden and had some rest, topped up with liberal doses of lively laughter.
Since we had already made a specatacle of ourselves, we discovered there was a way to avoid feeling embarassed.
"Hamare mulk Pakistan mein to aise hi hanste hain!"
After that, we felt free to indulge ourselves in the most insane activities without feeling the least bit of shame!

For dinner, we had to look around a lot before we found a place suited to our price-quality indifference curves. It was a Chinese outlet which offered buffet, unlimited food for 6.90 euros.
I personally took four plate fulls of food, and it was the yummiest food I have had so far in Germany.

We spent the night in train stations and trains. On non descript train stations, we would sleep on the benches. Every time a train would pass by, I would be woken up by the big and chilly gusts of wind! A little shuffling and swearing later, I would try again to sleep. The attempt was only marginally succesful. But all these efforts proved to be ok when we reached the Mercedes museum. It is splendid and grand.

From the first car to concept cars, the SLRs, S class and Maybach. It was all on display. From there we went to the Porsche museum with high hopes and tired legs. Our legs cried out in joy when we realised that the Porsche museum was only a room full of artefacts. Compare that to the Mercedes Museum which has 4 floors with HUGE space in each floor.

The return journey was very fool-filling. At McD's we had a grand lunch. Almost till the point where I was afraid to cough, lest some of the unprocessed burger be spilled over to unsuspecting co travellers!

Back in our apartment at 8, we slept like drunken donkeys. But the thought of waking up for the moring lecture at 9 am the next morning sent chill waves down our spine!