By Train: Desenzano-Verona-Munich-Frankfurt-Cologne-Meerbusch

Wednesday, 20th September

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Woken by the first of the the alarms I'd set, at 5:59. Our first connection, after the long walk up the hill to Desenzano station with our luggage, was the regional train from Milan to Verona, which departed punctually at 7:38.

With the dawn, the mountains beyond Lake Garda were clear blue silhouettes, with a hint of distant snow tipped peaks. At Verona Porto Nuovo, we found an empty bench on the still empty platform and ate our croissants with butter and peach jam.

At a window seat on the 9:04 EC to Munich, we settled down and enjoyed our ascent into the Alps. Though not quite the Dolomites, the mountains certainly had that appearance, with large vertical cliff faces and deep, mountain stream carved crevasses. A cheerful German mountain hiker boarded, carrying a large rough cut stage and his rucksack. He regaled is with talks of traversing the peaks, till a young lady at next to him and diverted his attention in animated conversation.

Opposite us sat a quiet Italian woman who dozed or looked out of the window and whose face then lit up with a smile whenever she texted with an obviously close friend. Next to her, a young business man spent the whole five hour journey typing.

As we crossed the Brenner Pass, the mountains became shrouded in clouds and the rain descended. The Italian church bell towers changed to tall slim church spires and then into Bavarian onion towers. A faster change in Munich as we boarded the ICE to travel up the length of Southern to central Germany. The mountains soon disappeared and we had four hours of gently rolling agricultural countryside.

We were traveling up to Frankfurt at an occasional maximum speed just over 150 mph when a chance comment by one of our seat neighbours triggered an animated discussion about the dire state of the fast train network in Germany.  This included, not achieving the maximal potential speed of over 300 kmh (188 mph) apart from one brief stretch between Frankfurt and Cologne, standards not being as high as those meet by Spain, Italy and France. We suddenly had an expert at our table who could quote facts and figures on the subject. Talk shifted to the trials of another passenger trying to put together a presentation with material sent at the last minute.  Commiserations and counter problems were thrown in by others. The neighbours left with their woes at Frankfurt, whilst we now continued on at over 188 mph.

We arrived on time in Cologne Messe/Deutz, as with all our train journey so far. Only to find, that within an hour's travel of our final destination, trains were blocked from traveling on by 'persons on the line'. A small group of us passengers set off to use the underground to bypass the problem and reach Cologne Hbf. From there we were able to catch a later train to arrive at Meerbusch and my mother's welcome.