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I leave the hostel, cross the empty commercial center, and climb aboard a typical double-decker Dutch Intercity train towards Arnhem.

Quick connection for a German regional train. Yes already leaving the Kingdom of the Netherlands… I didn’t see too much this time, but it has great vibes.

Guten tag Deutschland!

I have been in Germany many times, but I was last there in 2017, in Frankfurt am Main [Frankfurt], already 7 years ago!

Even quicker change in Düsseldorf (where I realized I forgot to activate the GPS, argh!!!), and I’m heading for today’s destination: Wuppertal, a city where there is not much to do, and that is way off my itinerary. So why go there?

Well, you see…

They have a freaking SUSPENDED MONORAIL.

OVER A RIVER.

There was no way in hell that I’ll miss on that! Luckily, there’s a train station at each terminus, so I rode it entirely, and it was awesome! Being suspended over the river Wupper, over the bridges, crossing the other monorails going in the opposite direction… It’s not much, but I had a blast.

Unfortunately my friend Melvin who lives here wasn’t available today, so I took an hostel in Hamburg, which is not exactly close by, hence I had only an hour left before leaving Wuppertal again.

To be honest, that hyper-urbanized region of Germany is not the best looking area I’ve visited so far. It reminds of these places, you know, those kind of hospitals where you definitely don’t want to end up but they make you believe you’re welcome home (sanitarium).

The ride in the German double decker train to Dortmund was pretty nice though. As for the city, I can’t say, as I hadn’t enough time to explore.

Or so I thought.

I had been warned that Germain trains do their best to fight the cliché of the German punctuality. Mine was 20 min late. Oh well, no matter, it was direct to Hamburg, and super comfortable. It’s the famous ICE (the German high-speed trains), and it was very cosy.

I’m sharing my dorm with five German Boy and Girl Scouts, here for a singing contest tomorrow. Interesting.

On a side note, thanks to a friend’s idea, I created an index page for the blog, that you can access from the « Blog » menu or at this URL: https://european-train-tour.eu/blog-index/

And here’s a timelapse of the amazing Wuppertaler Schwebebahn: