The first leg of our journey

Today was a long journey.  We left Brussels on board the 13:09 EuroCity Iris train to Basel.  This is a train were I used to work on, though I only used to accompany it up until Luxembourg.  Underway we realized that there was a huge railway strike going on in France and so we weren't very sure that the train would continue after Luxembourg.

But once we arrived in Luxembourg, the train departed towards Basel and so our fears were gone and we opened a bottle of red wine to celebrate and had some finger food with that.  So as I wrote, the first 3 hours of the journey were familiar territory for me, but after Luxembourg a new world opened.  The journey stretched from Luxembourg over Thionville, Metz, Strasbourg and Mulhouse to Basel.  Between Metz and Strasbourg the train drove through a mountainous region and the railway followed a small beautiful canal, which it also crossed at certain points.  In Strasbourg the train was about 20 minutes late and a huge crowd boarded the train.  Two Swiss ladies joined us in our compartment and we shared some Delichoc cookies with them.  One of them first refused the cookie politely, but then I pointed out the fact that the cookie had real Belgian chocolate on it and not the low-quality Swiss wanna-be Belgian junk chocolate that they're used to in Switzerland.  After a laugh appeared on her face, she did take a cookie and ate it with quite a lot of taste.

Upon arrival in Basel, the train was still about 20 minutes late and we missed our connecting train to Zurich. The next train was bound to leave 30 minutes later, so that gave us some time to buy some food in a local supermarket. We bought cherries, red wine and water. The train from Basel to Zurich left very punctual and arrived very punctual in Zurich, as one would expect of the very punctual Swiss Federal Railways. In Zurich we had about 1h20 to change trains, so we got out of the station.  We walked a bit through the city and enjoyed how the lights turned on as the sun was going down.  We walked over each bridge we saw - they build them to cross them, don't they? - until we saw a bench next to the river.  As we sat on that bench, we drank our wine and ate our cherries.

When it was time to return to the station we took a final look over the river and as I saw a boat passing (the same style of boats that run on the canals in Amsterdam), I wondered how it could ever pass under the low bridges.  In the station we boarded a Budapest-bound sleeper car of the 22:40 EuroNight Wiener Waltzer train to Vienna and Budapest.  Before (and whilst) falling asleep we watched the movie 'The Grand Budapest'.

Tomorrow morning we should wake up near to the Austrian-Hungarian border, unless there is an 'emergancy'.