This is a writeup of the train ride from Munich to Paris.

6:20 — I'm on the way to Paris on the TGV. That is the ini­tials in French of their high speed trains, though not nec­es­sar­ily the maglev ones like I thought. With my Bah­n­Card 50 the ticket to Paris was 130 Euro. In com­par­i­son the cheap­est flight was 337 Euro and most of them were 550 or more. Of course that was for Mon­day morn­ing flights which must be super-busy for busi­ness travel in the mornings.

First class travel on the train is amaz­ing. Seats are wide, well-padded with pil­low head­rests (and side flaps to rest your head against), tons of legroom, a really nice big tray to work on, and power out­lets. It sure beats air travel, except for busi­ness or first class air travel. They also have a nice din­ing car, though in first class they will bring you any­thing off the menu. The other day I had a really good cashew chicken curry — very nice to have a hot meal after a long day.

6:47 — Well what do you know, I get a break­fast in here. I brought along 2 peeled oranges and 3 bananas for break­fast and snacks along the way. I just got orange juice, choice of hot drink (cof­fee, tea, hot choco­late), a roll or muf­fin, yogurt, and some cold smoked salmon and two soft-boiled eggs. Wow! Also we stopped at what seems like a minor lit­tle place just out­side Munich. It's been a good 5 min­utes — not sure why. Ah, here we go again.

7:03 — On the Ger­man trains and sub­way they usu­ally make announce­ments in Ger­man and Eng­lish, though some­times the Eng­lish one is not the full announce­ment and just the major point. On this train they do French, Ger­man, and Eng­lish. I just found out that the long stop was for main­te­nance work on the train and we're now 20 min­utes behind sched­ule. I don't mind; I am par­tic­u­larly con­tent with life right now.

7:15 — Stopped at Augs­burg. Quaint-looking place.

7:30 — Stopped again for main­te­nance. We're 20 min­utes behind sched­ule, just about.

.…long time riding.…

12:15 — Arriv­ing in Paris. Basi­cally noth­ing too inter­est­ing hap­pened between 7:30 and now. I spent much of the time look­ing out the win­dow at the scenery. Except for the towns I could be rid­ing through any agri­cul­tural state. There are fields, cows, fences, etc — noth­ing spe­cial. The towns look different.

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Ran­dom train facts:
Siemens builds the Ger­man trains and they are rated to330 km/h. In Ger­many they run only at 300 by law. Same train in France runs 320. Each year they bump it up a bit. It took sev­eral years of tests and mod­if­ca­tions for Deutsche Bahn to get cer­ti­fi­ca­tion to run in France. France has a state train cer­ti­fi­ca­tion author­ity that had a lot of picky changes to make. Prob­a­bly for the best, as the French are the experts in high speed trains.