Saturday, September 8, 2007

At the Speed of Superfast

Michael and Anja Kunkel, after showing parts of Stuttgart on 2nd Sept, they put me in an Intercity Express (ICE) of Deutsch Bahn, the railway company of German Goverment. They had informed me that the train is a superfast. But I did not think of an experience of this sort. They had carefully booked a ticket for me on the window side so that I can have a view of the cities the train will be passing by. As I got in, I could see the seat No. 85 on Wagon 32. It was digitally written above my seat with the Words : Stuttgart - Dortmund. I looked around; above every passenger traveling to various places, their boarding station and their destination was written. The Ticket Examiner came with a small machine which digitally verified my ticked and put a mark on it. The travel from Stuttgart to Dortmund, a distance of 475 kilometers was covered in 3 hours 15 minutes. At every station, people were alerted about the next station, about other useful information, they were welcomed, thanked, and even we could see the speed at which the train was traveling at a particular time. We had hit 300 km/hour on several occasions. When I landed in Dortmund at 5.20, Julia Küster and Sebastian Pieper were waiting for me... I could not recognize Julia. She had gone thin since I met her five years ago.

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