Hello and welcome to today's independent travel podcast with me, Simon Calder, slightly later

than I intended to record today. That's due to my train being late. And that's due to me being in

Germany because whatever you might think about British trains, they are, I think, better at at least telling you,

keeping you informed when things aren't going well and certainly better at compensating

you when they don't go right. But there are still some very good things about German railway.

So for example, I'm travelling around Stuttgart and I'm now about five miles from the city centre.

I'm going to be spending the day travelling around and ending up at the city's airport.

And that's all with a ticket that this morning cost me six pounds

six years 80 and that is going to entitle me to travel on the very good or at least theoretically very

good s barn system it's also going to allow me to ride buses and the U-Bahn,

which is basically trams that go underground at the crucial point. Now, I've been

travelling around also by Intercity Express I- trains and these are well the the glory I would guess of

the German railway system they're very sleek very white and generally very fast

capable of maybe 150 miles an hour.

And if they're able to travel at that speed, it's a very nice way to travel comfortable.

There's fantastic ideas in the railway system, which I just love.

So for example, you can, using the very good Deutsche

Barn German Railways app, you can very easily tell them, I'm sitting in seat 62D,

I've got a ticket, you know I've got a ticket because I bought it off you. So please, when the

ticket collector comes down, tell them that I'm already good to go. And that you can actually do that

very easily. And it just means that you are undisturbed. And they say, ah, that's the person who's

62D. Yes, I know from my

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