Day 6 - Travel Hamburg to Amsterdam
We had to be up early this morning in order get an early breakfast. We checked out and strolled across the street to the station and still had a lot of time to wait for our train in the damp, cold air. Our train was an ICE 4 and we had to window seats in first class - quite comfortable. The first part of our trip was from Hamburg to Osnabruck. We arrived a couple of minutes early. Leaving Hamburg the sun was just rising over a heavy dew.
Osnabruck High Level - our train leaving
The station at Osnabruck has two lines of railway one above the other basically at right angles to each other. We had to go from the higher level to the low level and take a regular IC train coming from Berlin to Amsterdam Centraal. Osnabruck was not a pleasant looking place. Again we had first class reservations for two window seats and this time we had a complete compartment to ourselves. It was a combination of sun and clouds and rain on the trip but the more we approached Amsterdam the more sun and it felt as if we had gone back to autumn again. There were leaves on the trees and the grass was a bright green.
Just before the border with the Netherlands we changed locomotives from the German 15,000 volt AC system to the Dutch 1,500 volt DC system. It was a joy to be pulled by a Dutch "Nez casse" locomotive. The uncoupling and coupling was done manually and I was horrified to see the shunter standing between the buffers while the locomotive came up and squeezed the buffers. I must admit to having done this when I was firing (sixty years ago) but I was taught not to go in between until the buffers had been contacted and the locomotive had stopped.
We were treated to the Dutch bureaucratic approach when leaving the station - we had to scan our tickets to get out.
We checked in to the hotel close to the station and decided to go for a tram ride. It was a simple matter to buy a 24 hour all system ticket from a machine which spoke English. The fun began when we tried to use it, To get on to a tram one must press a button to open a door then scan the ticket. The machine will beep once. Getting off was a little more complicated. First press a button, then tap your ticket out, there will be two buzzes, a barrier will then release and the door will open, On the trams we used there were four doors, those at the front and back for entry only and the two in the middle for exit only. There was also a manned sales desk in each tram. So each tram has a two man crew, Travelling in a tram can be quite noisy with the entry and exit buzzers going for each passenger.
I can't imagine that standing between the rails in front of a stopped car with an approaching locomotive is correct H&S procedure...
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