From Darmstadt To Karlsruhe
My last leg of the day was to take a direct train between Darmstadt and Karlsruhe. This was a quick journey of about an hour and a quarter.
The route is more interesting in sunny weather than the couple of pictures I took, as it passes through Heidelberg, which would make another break. In fact both Darmstadt and Heidelberg, would make a better overnight stop than sterile, inaccessible and complicated Frankfurt. For Frankfurt, think of Birmingham or Manchester with lots of high rises and no culture or good places to have a quick meal or coffee. I pity those, who have to go there on business regularly.
Exploring Darmstadt
I love exploring towns and cities in trams or regular buses, as you see the city from an intimate and personal angle. If like I did this in Darmstadt, alighting when I saw something that took my interest. These pictures show a history of my short visit to the city.
I started by going to the main square called Luisenplatz with its column and statue of Ludwig 1. I finally found a cappuccino in a rather pleasant Italian cafe.
I then walked to the castle and then back to another main square by the old town hall. On a better day, it would have been a pleasant walk and there were a couple of museums that seemed to be closed because of rebuilding. At least I found a very good tourist map of the city, which was magnitudes better than anything found in Frankfurt.
I also came across a BT phone-box, which appeared to enclose a working German telephone. Does anybody use them any more? And especially in a smaller city in Germany!
I then went to see Waldspirale, which is one of Friedensreich Hundertwasser amazingly mad buildings. Another in this blog is at Spittelau in Vienna. One other work of his, I must see is the station at Uelzen in Germany. Some might think Hundertwasser completely bonkers, but he certainly created buildings that entertain.
I wonder what it’s like to live in one of those eccentric flats in Darmstadt.
From Frankfurt To Darmstadt
It didn’t take me long to get fed up with exploring Frankfurt, with its unfathomable U-Bahn/S-Bahn system, lack of information and maps, endless stairs to the U-Bahn. I mentioned all this in the Tourist Office as I left and the lady said that they keep telling the authorities about the information and especially the dreadful map, but nothing happens. All they need to do is talk to Munich, where everything is so much better.
I was also finding it difficult to find a cafe where I might get something delicious and gluten-free for lunch.
So I implemented Plan B and took a train to Darmstadt, which is just a few kilometres north of Frankfurt.
I started by catching the train in an S-Bahn platform underneath the Hauptbahnhof and within an hour I was in Darmstadt, where with help from a guy in the tram information, I got a go-anywhere ticket for the trams and started to explore.
Exploring Frankfurt
In the morning, I explored Frankfurt.
It was still cold and the city doesn’t seem to wake up as early as London or Berlin.
Frankfurt At Night
I went and had a look at Frankfurt by night.
I ate supper at Fisch Franke and it was an excellent gluten-free fish and chips.
The only problem I had was that it was bitterly cold and getting back to my hotel I got lost and a ten minute walk took thirty minutes. Frankfurt is not too well served by maps.
My Eyrie In Frankfurt
I thought I’d stay somewhere more expensive in Frankfurt, so I booked a room in a tower hotel on the 29th floor.
Everything was fine, except for some of the views in the morning due to the weather and the fact that they didn’t provide any cups for tea,although they did provide tea, coffee, creamer and a kettle.
I certainly won’t be staying there again! The wi-fi was also too complicated and the security was more applicable to Fort Knox. It was also extremely difficult to find from the nearest stop on the Frankfurt U-Bahn, but I can’t blame that on the hotel.
From Kassel To Frankfurt
I could have taken a German ICE train from Kassel to Frankfurt, but I took a regional train, hoping to get some good views from the top deck.
Unfortunately, as the pictures show, the weather wasn’t that good. But you do see the countryside better from the high position and the comfort and ride is of the same standard as something like the ubiquitous Class 377 in the UK.
One reason I took this train, was that I’d been told by the lady in the Tourist Office in Kassel to buy a Hesse Ticket.
My Hesse Ticket
I thought it was a bit steep at €33 for twenty-four hours, but it did include the buses and trams in Frankfurt and the train between the two cities.
The price actually included up to five passengers. But there is no similar ticket for a person like me, who usually travels alone.
How visitor-friendly is that?
A Train With The Engine In The Middle
As I left Kassel, I saw this train, which appears to have an engine module in the middle.
It is actually a Stadler GTW and it must be a good concept as over five hundred of them are working all around the world, in both diesel and electric versions..
One great advantage for passengers is surely that the noise and vibration problem of underfloor diesel engines is minimised. The train is also a low floor design.
The design is also very flexible.
- The power packs are probably interchangeable, so you could switch trains from diesel to electric according to need.
- A battery could be incorporated into the power pack, which is charged when running under wires.
- The articulated design goes well on curvy track.
- Extra passenger modules can be added.
- For the UK, they could be a way round not buying any more diesel multiple units. We would buy some diesel versions and if we had too many due to the march of electrification, we just swap the central module.
I wouldn’t be surprised if we saw more trains with a central power pack. I think if the UK used the same loading gauge as Europe, we’d have seen one in the UK on test by now.
A Design Crime – Crap Station Design In Kassel
Some parts of Kassel’s urban tram system might well have been good, but these images of some of the stations, show the crap level of some of the design.
One thing that surprised me was the crudeness of some of the stations I visited, which just had steep steps and no lifts. This certainly wouldn’t be acceptable in the UK for a new station and I’m surprised that German disability rules allowed such a station design.
I nominate their stations as a Design Crime.
The Trams And Tram-Trains Of Kassel
Kassel’s urban tram system mixes both regular trams and larger tram-trains on lines that cross the city. I took these pictures as I sat in a cafe on the Königsplatz in the centre.
The smaller generally blue ones are trams, whereas the larger silver ones are the tram-trains, which have routes that reach far into the suburbs.
The passengers could be seen alighting, boarding and transferring between the various trams, very much as they do in Piccadilly Gardens in Manchester, East Croydon and Fitzalan Square in Sheffield. It is interesting to note that the current Sheffield Supertrams are more the size of Kassel’s tram-trains, rather than their trams. Comparing Sheffield to Kassel, it is a bigger city, but its tram network, is nowhere near the size of that in Kassel, which is about six times as large.
After sitting for half-an-hour or so, I decided to explore the outer reaches of the system on a tram-train.
One thing that surprised me was the crudeness of some of the stations I visited, which are shown separately in this post.
There also only seems to be a train in places only once every thirty minutes.
On the core section of the East London Line near where I live it’s sixteen trains per hour, and limbs of the line to places like West Croydon and Clapham Junction, there are four trains per hour. Like much of the transport in London, these trains are also step-free from the platform, which I think a modern transport system should be. As the picture shows there was a protected gap in Kassel, which would have been difficult in a wheel-chair.
Kassel seems to have about half London’s frequencies. This low frequency and the poor street access probably explains, why in the middle of a Monday, there wasn’t a large number of passengers about.
The Anonymous Widower 