Bern Switzerland Temple, Wuppertal, Cologne

September 15-17, 2016: 

Our First Night Train: 

On the S-Bahn from home to the main train station

Thrilled to get to sit for the whole night.

Thrilled to be awake for the 100th time at 3 am.

We arrived in Vienna on Wednesday when we stayed the night with the group in a hotel, then we went to our host family's on Thursday afternoon with nothing else scheduled until church on Sunday. Carli and I were itching to use our Eurail passes for the first time. Vienna was the closest I had been to Switzerland since 2013 so I was excited to go back there. Carli and I had tried to get to the temple during the last couple weeks at home, but we were very busy and didn't make it. We decided to take a night train from Vienna to Switzerland and go to the Bern Switzerland temple! So after a few hours at our host families house we had our study abroad backpacks packed for the weekend with plans to go to the temple and then take a night train to Amsterdam. Since we threw this plan together so last minute, it wasn't very well planned out. We knew we needed to activate our Eurail passes at the travel office in Vienna's main train station. I checked the website that said the office closed at 11:30. In order to activate passes and get couchette reservations, we ended up at the train station around 10:25 to find out that the travel office actually closed at 10:30. So we walked into the travel office and they closed the doors behind us. If we wouldn't have gotten there early and gotten our passes activated, we would not have been able to travel that night and the entire weekend's impromptu plans would have been spoiled. In the haste to get our passes activated, we forgot to get reservations! But at least we could get on the train. The train ended up being about 40 minutes late due to "an international rail delay"(whatever that means) or so they said over the speaker on the platform every 5 minutes. We waited it out and talked to a train conductor who said that we could still sit in the sitting compartments even though we did not have a reservation. Though it wasn't a couchette bed, it was better than not being able to go! The train was very full and we were lucky to find a compartment with two open seats. The night train from Vienna to Zürich took about 8 hours, and it was the longest, most sleepless night of our lives. Our first night train was a horrible experience that left us so exhausted for the next few days. I think it's a good thing that we started out this way though, because it allowed us to be really grateful for the couchette bed compartments. Though we were so tired, I was very excited to be back in Switzerland and to be there with Carli. We had just enough time to stop in a grocery store in the Zürich main station before getting on a train to Bern. 

You'll notice that we ended up sitting across from each other towards the end of the train ride. That's because some people from our compartment got out at earlier stops. 

Bern Switzerland Temple:

When we were getting onto the train, we ran into two missionaries! They were also going to the temple so we sat with them on the train from Zürich to Bern and from Bern to Zollikofen. Turns out, that the endowment session at that time was in Italian. So we got headsets with English translations, and I listened to the German channel on the headset for part of it as well which was pretty cool. We'll admit that we were both very sleepy during the session. Can you blame us? We were so grateful to be able to make it to the temple. 

Wuppertal & Cologne, Germany: 

So the original plan for the weekend had us traveling form Zürich to Amsterdam after our visit to the temple but in the morning when we stopped in Zürich we went to get a rout plan from the ticket office and they informed us that it would take much longer than normal to get there due to construction on a major train rout. We had to come up with a new plan quick and as we were at the church next to the temple, we decided to contact on of my mission companions who I was hoping to see while here in Europe. Kevin Bergmann and I served together as missionaries for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Tomsk, Russia. He lives in Wuppertal, which is far, but not too far from Switzerland. We called him up and made plans to come to Wuppertal and stay with him that night (Friday) and go do some fun stuff on Saturday before we would catch a night train back to Vienna. 

This is a German ICE train. ICE stands for InterCity Express. They are the nice fast trains that connect all the major cities in Germany. 

Carli had her first taste of a Swiss soda called Rivella. It is a milk based soda, and I drank it often on my exchange. 2011-12.

How we entertained ourselves on our train ride from Switzerland to Germany. 

Schwebebahn : Suspension Railway

The Suspension railway network is unique to Wuppertal. It is the oldest elevated railway with hanging cars in the world. Not to hard to be the oldest one since it is also the only one in the world. It was designed and installed to sell to the city of Berlin, but the new railway was met by criticism which is why it was never built outside of Wuppertal. I think it's genius! By operating on a whole other plane than that traffic of the roads, jams and accidents are avoided. The cars hang about 8 meters above the roads and 12 meters above the river. They even have a car called the Kaiserwagen, in which you can eat dinner while riding through the city. 

Köln : Cologne

We left Saturday morning to visit Cologne, Germany. We mainly visited the cathedral and the  nearby squares. The Cologne cathedral is the largest Gothic church in northern Europe. We climbed the 509 steps to the very top and got a great view of the city. 

Stained glass from the inside of the cathedral. 

When you go to Germany, you eat Wurst. Period.

Wuppertal Soccer game:

On Saturday afternoon after visiting Cologne, we went to a 3rd league soccer game. Wuppertal lost, and the game wasn't very exciting... as you could expect from a soccer game, but it was fun to be there and to eat Bratwursts. 

The Right Way to Night Train:

Following the soccer game, we went back to Kevin's house and met some of his family. It was fun to talk to them for a little bit before we left for the train station to catch our night train back to Vienna. While we were in Cologne, we made sure to reserve ourselves some couchette beds in the train compartment. I figure it was a blessing, in a way, that we did not have these on our first train ride. It helped us to really appreciate them from then on! Carli really likes the beds on the train, and I think she likes them so much because she remembers how miserable it was to sit down the whole night. The bed comes with a double sheet, and a blanket. They provide instructions as well. 

Very happy to have beds on the way back to Vienna!!