Day #199 - Berlin to Schrobenhausen, Germany

Wednesday, September 29th

Thanks to my aunt for a little encouragement. I was just low in spirits yesterday. I'm back in the game today.

Although I was postitioned for a bounce back day, it's going to have to wait until tomorrow - simply because I had to travel a long way today. I got out of Berlin late morning and headed south toward Munich. A five hour train ride brought me to the town of Ingolstadt, Germany. Here, I had to take another short train ride to the town of Schrobenhausen. I arrived about 7:30pm.

On check-in, I was presented with my final Eurail pass. OUTSTANDING! I can't tell you how relieved and happy I was to see this package. The cost of a 3 month Eurail pass is about $1,800. I felt like I could trust this small hotel. I talked with a number of management during my recent stay. They were 'all in' with allowing me to use their hotel as a postal address. I've been lucky. I had to get 3 passes for the 9+ months of my journey. One was sent to a hotel in Ireland (Irish are good people - trustworthy), I had 1 sent to my mom while I was in Peru (nobody in the world I would trust more), and this final one to a small hotel in Germany -- good stuff.

One thing I wanted to mention about my train travels, I continue to pass through the city of Nuremberg (German - "Nurnberg'). This city is famous for the Nuremberg trials. German leaders involved in the Holocaust and other war crimes were brought to trial here after the end of WWII. Nuremberg was selected because it was largely used by the Nazis for years as a main center for their rallies due to it's geographic position in Germany.

Also, train travel is not bad in Germany. You can pretty much get anywhere in 5 hours. That's a long time - but other countries can take substantially longer. We were going 250km/hr (155 miles/hr) for a long stretch today. I took most of the train trip to go through all my pictures. At the conclusion of my journey, I hope to put together a 30-minute video to music. Well, I have the music selected, and I'm currently going through the pictures. I think I need to widdle it down to about 500 pics. If you watched that 'Cool Change' video on YouTube - they used 70 pictures for a 5 minute song. I'm using this as a rough guide.

I bought an external hard-drive and have everything saved as a backup in case my computer officially crashes - I feel good about this. Today, my watch quit working. Did you ever hear of the quote: "Intelligence without ambition is like a bird without wings". Well, "Me without a watch is also like a bird without wings". It's like I'm paralyzed. It freaks me out. I can't guess how many days I've saved myself by double-timing it to trains or buses - reaching them just before the doors close. So - order of business tomorrow is: Train to Frankfurt, then buy watch, running shoes, and power gels - then I can move on with my life.

I've been meaning to due a "state of the union" address for the second third of my journey. Tomorrow marks the 200th day of my trip. I might try to get the finances lined out and get a summary together.

I was just thinking on the train trip today how much good stuff I have planned over the next 3 months. I'll be continuing my travels in the heart of Europe (Germany, Austria, Swtizerland) for the next couple weeks, then I make my way toward Athens via the countries which make up the former Yugoslavia, then I meet up with Greg/Liam/Kim + my brother Kurt to run the Athens Marathon, Greg stays over and we fly to Cairo, Egypt for a few days, then I go to Israel and visit with one of my sister Kelly's friends, then my other sister Kay comes over to tour Italy with me for 2 weeks over Thansgiving, and finally I bring it home with about 2-1/2 weeks of playtime.

Here's to a strong final 3 months of the journey.