merpmonde - the finer details

Landscapes, travel, memories... with extra info. Nerdier than the Instagram with the same username. 80x Pedantle Gold medallist English / Français / 下手の日本語

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Back to the Oberkirch orchards

Two years ago, I was blown away by the views of the hills and the sight of in-season fruit in the trees. I returned yesterday, with a French-Japanese exchange group. We were fortunate because the heat had just abated, the views are still great and the fruit was there, but there's no denying the vegetation's taken a beating since May. You just need to follow the links above to see what it was like on the same date in 2024.

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The Gion Matsuri parade

It's the big day, and the big - very, very big - floats make their way along Shijô-dôri, salute Yasaka-jinja from a distance, then turn onto Kawaramachi-dôri and finish on Oike-dôri. A flat 2 km course, not too difficult normally, but when you're hauling a 12-ton, 25-metre hoko complete with rare tapestries, people standing on top and a whole brass band, all that in the heat and humidity of July in Japan... Yeah, it's not so easy.

Gion Matsuri first took place in 869, with a procession to pray to the gods enshrined at Yasaka-jinja for purification and protection from epidemics. Designed as a "parade of the provinces" of sorts, with one 'spear' for each province, today there are two parades, 前祭 saki-matsuri on 17 July consisting of 23 floats, and 後祭 ato-matsuri on 24 July with 11 floats. There are two types of floats: 鉾 hoko, or 'spears', the taller floats on wheels as shown in the video and the photo above, and smaller 山 yama, or 'hills', or 傘 kasa, 'umbrellas', transporting mikoshi miniature shrines, which tend to be carried, as shown below.

The floats are richly decorated with wonderful tapestries. One would expect these to be traditional Japanese motifs dating back to the festival's origins, but you'd be mistaken. For example, the two tapestries featured below, "Egypt" and "Baghdad", are definitely not traditional Japanese!

They are more reminiscent of 19th-century European orientalist imagery and... well, they are. The associations which operate the Gion Matsuri floats have collected tapestries (link to gionmatsuri.org article) from various time periods and locations, including 19th-century Europe. I remember the Egypt one being from Belgium, but I can't find the source again. Below, we have two examples with a more classic Japanese feel.

As mentioned in my previous post, Gion Matsuri was, for a while, unfinished business for me. On my first trip I'd left Kyôto two days before the parade, and had only seen the run-up. Seven years later, I had the opportunity to return to Kyôto in July and witness the main event. I had been concerned about the crowds, but arriving early and looking to watch from the middle of Kawaramachi-dôri, the mid point of the course, I had no trouble securing a spot to spectate, and it wasn't all that busy in that area, I could still walk around and change vantage point with little difficulty. A wonderful, colourful, vibrant moment, I'm glad I went back for!

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On the third day 'fore Gion, my true love said to me: ...

"erm, actually, it's called yoiyoiyoiyama."

14 July. Yes there's a big parade in Paris, but in Kyoto, the big parade is three days away. The floats are largely finished - @chitaka45 has just posted a video on Instagram with the floats being tested on 13 July -, now it's just fine-tuning the decoration and starting the festival.

I've always been a scaredy-cat for crowds, so a morning walk was a great chance to see the streets occupied by floats and food stands.

It was also a great chance to see some floats up close, such as 船鉾 funeboko, the unique boat-shaped float which traditionally closes the parade. Notice the temporary roof structure and plastic sheeting to protect the tapestries.

Of course, all this is very well organised and mapped out. I've kept the programme from 2016 (Heisei 28) preciously: it shows the parade itinerary and order for the 17th, and the locations of the floats for the days before, the 16th being 宵山 yoiyama, and the 15th is called 宵々山 yoiyoiyama. The 15th would be my last day in Kyôto on my first trip to Japan, so the parade became unfinished business...

I briefly walked around on the evening of the 14th, the day logically known as 宵々々山 yoiyoiyoiyama. The floats were lit up, the bands were playing the traditional festival music... but it was busy! Security was enforcing one-way circulation for pedestrians in most streets!

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It's beginning to look a lot like Gion, all around Kyoto...

The shopping arcade streets are playing the typical seasonal music, the shops themselves have seasonal goods stocked, and the decorations are going up. It's 10 July in Kyôto, and Gion Matsuri is a week away.

The term "decorations" is quite inadequate, because what's actually blocking lanes and entire streets around the Shijô-Karasuma intersection is the construction of the festival floats for the parade on the 17th.

By the 12th, the main structures are ready, the gangways are in place, and the top of the yama floats are installed, giving onlookers an idea of just how high these things are going to be.

The music combines flutes, small gongs and drums. Having heard lots of it just walking in the streets near the hotel in 2016, I have strong memories of it, and I'd say it's rather haunting and evocative of that first trip. Unfortunately, I don't have my own quality recording of the typical Gion music, so for illustration, here's someone else's, with their impressions of the build-up to the 2025 festival.

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Best boat shots of the Bodensee Rundfahrt

Boats have obviously been very important for the Bodensee, and they still are, but to a different extent. Road and rail can manage most of the logistics, so the majority of boats on the lake are tour boats, which do also ferry passengers along their route (as I did in June between Gaienhofen and Berlingen), but there are still some purely utilitarian vessels left.

Lindau, Germany. German company BSB's tour boat München makes a proud entrance to the harbour between the lion and lighthouse.

Lindau, Germany. Austrian Vorarlberg Lines's eponymous vessel Vorarlberg arriving for a stop on its tour.

Bregenz, Austria. When I passed the harbour on the train to Bregenz, from a distance and behind some buildings, I was convinced this was a terminal building. But no, this is VLB's Sonnenkönigin, the lake's luxury party cruise boat. Make of that what you will.

Romanshorn, Switzerland. Car ferry Friedrichshafen arrives at dawn. Two car ferry routes remain: Friedrichshafen <> Romanshorn and Konstanz <> Meersburg. The ferry become restaurant Konstanz would have operated on the latter route.

Meersburg, Germany. Bus 700 from Ravensburg boards the current generation ferry Konstanz, with passengers - the ferry trip is part of the bus route! I also saw the ferry carry an international Flixbus coach.

Diessenhofen, Switzerland. Tours of the smaller Untersee blend into trips down the Rhine to Schaffhausen, as is reflected in the name of the main company here, Untersee und Rhein. Their boats, such as Thurgau above, are therefore smaller than the ones on the Obersee as they have to fit under bridges such as the cross-border bridge at Diessenhofen-Gailingen.

Mannenbach, Switzerland. Around the Reichenau island, two solar ferries also operate. These are small boats - the Insel Reichenau above carries only a dozen people at a time... and it kind of looks like a raft to be honest! Luckily, the Untersee probably doesn't have waves too high.

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Best train shots of the Bodensee Rundfahrt

Long post coming up! I'm just going to describe the photos with a few remarks, before some notes on how the Bodensee S-Bahn operates. Until I get a masterpost up, if you've missed the Bodensee round trip, here's the final post and there are links to work backwards from there.

Allensbach, Germany. SBB Seehas RABe 521 FLIRT on a S6 local service between Engen and Konstanz.

Radolfzell, Germany. DB Regio BR 650 RegioShuttle Diesel railcar about to depart at sunset on a S61 local service to Stockach.

Überlingen, Germany. DB Regio BR 245 Traxx DE Diesel loco with Dosto carriages in tow on a rapid RE3 service to Friedrichshafen. Radolfzell to Friedrichshafen is the only non-electrified section on the lines around the Bodensee, and this (gorgeous) tunnel in particular might be the sticking point to get the whole circuit electrified.

Nonnenhorn, Germany. DB Regio BR 425 on a RB93 local service between Lindau and Friedrichshafen about to leave Bavaria.

Bregenz Hafen, Austria. ÖBB Rh 4748 Desiro ML, likely on a S1 service to Lindau, about to pass the Nostalgiebad Mili.

Bregenz, Austria. Not a Bodensee train, but a chance at this station to hear the "do-re-mi" of an ÖBB Rh 1116 Taurus on start-up, pushing a Railjet service to Vienna, IIRC.

Rorschach, Switzerland. Appenzeller Bahnen BDeh 3/6 heads for Rorschach Hafen, the terminus of its S25 service. This one-of-a-kind unit runs on normal tracks and on the rack railway up to Heiden.

Ermatingen, Switzerland. SBB Thurbo RABe 526 GTW on a S1 local service from Feuerthalen to Wil, via Romanshorn.

Bodensee S-Bahn map. All the routes used on the trip, including Seelinie and Höribus buses, appear on this map. The network is across three countries and operations are split between DB Regio (Radolfzell-Lindau and the RE2 between Radolfzell and Konstanz), ÖBB (Lindau to St Margrethen) and SBB (St Margrethen-Konstanz-Stein am Rhein, plus the S6 between Radolfzell and Konstanz). Going around the large lake, the Obersee, requires seven different trains! But this can drop to five if you get a direct S7 service between Lindau and Romanshorn, which does exist, but operates most frequently on weekends (ad for the extended S7 on a Thurbo GTW below).

1, 2 or 3 countries in one train. With the S7 direct from Romanshorn to Lindau-Insel. No changes, under 60 minutes.

No train currently goes all the way around, but if I can have a brief moment of fiction, what would that look like? Well, all the tracks are standard gauge, electrified lines are on the same voltage, so there's just differences in signalling, which can be overcome as a EuroCity from Zürich to Munich uses the Bodensee route via Bregenz... and that pesky non-electrified zone between Radolfzell and Friedrichshafen. So a train capable of going around the lake would have to be a Diesel, a bi-mode or a battery-electric unit - on catalogue or already in the area, a German BR 563 Mireo Plus B or a Swiss-built FLIRT Akku would do the trick.

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Yasaka-jinja

At the East end of the long boulevard of Shijô-dôri in Kyôto, stands the unmissable, majestic gate of Yasaka-jinja. Founded nearly 1400 years ago and mainly dedicated to Susanoo no Mikoto, younger brother of the Sun goddess Amaterasu in Shinto mythology, it is the main focus of Kyôto's biggest summer festival, which we'll talk about at length in the coming weeks.

Yasaka-jinja appears to be the first shrine I ever visited, 10 years ago almost to the day. For a starting point, it was rather impressive! Beyond the main gate, it was the maidono, or kagura dance stage, which stood out to me, anchored in the centre of a square, decorated with lanterns.

One finds a multitude of smaller shrines on the grounds, away from the main halls, along charming alleys. It seems so obvious now, expected almost, but there's a bit of emotion to reflect on the fact that this was once new, a basic notion but one that I was discovering.

Heading back West along Shijô-dôri to the hotel, I pass a statue - Izumo no Okuni, the lady credited with inventing kabuki theatre. At the time, I would have had no idea who this was. In fact, I've only just looked it up for this post. I didn't know much about Japan before my first trip. It was a work opportunity, a brief research collab - but it started something else. It started in Kyôto, maybe it started at Yasaka-jinja.

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Train news, June 2026

A quick post today after the long Bodensee series, with some news.

First, we have the date for the final runs of two Shinkansen icons. Both the 500 series and JR West's Doctor Yellow unit will be in service for the last time on 13 January 2027. Following the retirement of JR Tôkai's Doctor Yellow last year, there will be no more dedicated inspection trains for the Tôkaidô-San'yô Shinkansen, with the role taken up by monitoring equipment installed aboard standard trains.

In better news, the bi-mode tri-voltage B 85500 Régiolis units are finally running in Germany! They have started replacing the French Diesel cars on Strasbourg-Offenburg, as shown above: the deep blue French train waits for its return trip from Offenburg next to a DB Regio BR 1462 Desiro HC. The trains are also expected to take over the Mulhouse-Müllheim route in Southern Alsace. Below, a B 85500 leaves the border station of Kehl, headed for the bridge over the Rhine back into France.

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Local train* cruise around the Bodensee part 8: Stein am Rhein to Radolfzell

*Bus for this leg. There is a heritage railway from Etzwilen (one stop West of Stein am Rhein) to Singen, but it only runs occasionally. See the previous post for the regular train service for these start and finish points.

Continued from part 7.

It's the final leg of our thorough (with caveats at the end) tour of the Bodensee, with a ride on the number 200 Höribus along the West shore of the Untersee! The line starts at the Untertor gate of Stein am Rhein (25 km to go), and, after skirting the North of the historical centre, it quickly crosses the border into Germany.

Wangen (19 km) is a nice stop by the lake, featuring a reconstruction of a prehistoric stilt house. We've seen stuff like this on a larger scale... on our previous bus trip coincidentally, but pile-dwellings have been found at many points on the lake. The town also has some nice timber-framed houses, and a cute sign with walking distances on our route.

Gaienhofen (15 km) is the next location, and I walked along the lake shore to the next village, Horn (13 km, to not be confused with the village of the same name between Rorschach and Arbon), and its church. Further along, Iznang (9 km) is apparently quite nice, but I didn't stop there. The bus goes inland for a bit, before heading back towards the lake at Moos (4 km).

And here we are, back at Radolfzell, a town celebrating its 1200th anniversary this year. I'll probably come back to this place, both on this blog and literally, at a future date, but for now, let's enjoy the fact that we've completed the tour of the Untersee, for a total of 72 km, with a walk out to the Mettnau area. From here, where I had my hotel for last week's trip, we've got some great evening views of Radolfzell town with the Hegau volcanoes in the background - notice the Hohentwiel just about the rowing boat.

The blind spot. There is one segment of the shore of the Obersee (the larger lake) that is served by no public transport - no rail, no buses. It's a 10 km stretch between Wallhausen, North of Konstanz and opposite Überlingen, and Bodman-Ludwigshafen. There's no transport because there are no villages - as can be seen in the distance in the last photo of part 2 -, but it seems possible to hike it. Something to go back for!

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Hochrheinbahnen part 5: Stein am Rhein to Schaffhausen

At Stein am Rhein (27 km from Konstanz), the Bodensee is narrow enough to qualify as a river again. This is the start of the Hochrhein, or Upper Rhine, which I did an exploration of back in January. So this is quite a moment for this blog: two mini-series joining up! This is both a sequel to part 7 of the Bodensee tour, and a more detailed look at a brief section in part 4 of the Hochrhein.

Stein am Rhein is a picturesque town in two senses. It is, as shown in the top photo, genuinely wonderful to look at from some angles, but it is also a town with lots of pictures on the buildings. Colourful trompe-l'oeil, artistic representations of episodes of urban life or other symbols, timber frames and ornate oriels are everywhere on the delightful main square.

Our next stop is Diessenhofen (36 km), where we find a common feature of previous episodes of the Hochrhein series: a border bridge between Switzerland and Germany. Like at Säckingen, this one is largely made of wood, but unlike others we'd seen previously, it does not connect two villages with the same name (on the German side it's Gailingen), and cars are allowed on it, which can make it not the most pleasant crossing.

The Swiss railway line doesn't follow the Rhine very closely from here, so what I did last week was catch a boat to Büsingen (42 km), a German exclave, which means it is German territory surrounded by Switzerland - and its logo says so much! I would have hiked from Diessenhofen to Schaffhausen, but I'm glad I didn't because it was getting very hot, and the edge of the Rhine didn't seem that interesting. In fact, Büsingen was a bit of a disappointment. I didn't find much there, though I might not have been looking in the right places, and the walk was a very exposed affair, not immediately along the river.

The border back into Switzerland is intangible but boy, can you tell you've changed country! The path is back along the river and you've got trees! What's more, Schaffhausen (47 km) and the Munot forteress are in sight.

We've now completed the connection between the Hochrhein and the Bodensee, and, when it comes to purely train connections around the Untersee, the route is Radolfzell > Konstanz > Stein am Rhein > Schaffhausen > Singen > Radolfzell. The link is to our numerous posts on Singen, and there's not a lot to talk about outside Singen on that last leg as far as I can tell, so I'm considering this circuit done. Around the Untersee by local train is 96 km, but a lot of it is away from the lake. In fact, at the time of writing, completing the circuit by train is impossible as the bridge between Feuerthalen and Schaffhausen is closed for works, but I did ride it in April.

So in the next post, we will be doing the same thing as in part 3 to complete the Bodensee tour: catching a bus from Stein am Rhein to Radolfzell to stay close to the shore.

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Local train cruise around the Bodensee part 7: Romanshorn to Stein am Rhein

Continued from part 6 - I do intend to do some housekeeping during the summer regarding these mini-series, with forward links in posts and a masterpost or contents page to put everything in one place.

We start bright and early at Romanshorn (19 km to Konstanz). While the German side of the Bodensee is renowned for its sunsets, such as in Radolfzell in part 1 or Lindau in part 4, Romanshorn on the Swiss side is the prime location to see the Sun rise, the first rays of the day hitting the Alps to the South.

I'm under the impression that there's not much going on from here on out, the area is rather residential, though I didn't stop to check anything out either. Maybe another time. Above, we've just passed Bottinghofen (4 km), with the German Bodanrück peninsula in the background.

We've reached Kreuzlingen Hafen (1 km), from where some trains cross the border and terminate at Konstanz. We can also get off and walk through the park, where the border is materialised by a line of abstract statues representing the tarot major arcana - here, Sun and Moon.

And that concludes the Bodenseegürtelbahn, or the railway line that goes around the Obersee, for a total of 173 km. We'll get to operations and trains in service another time, but for now, we've got another lake to tour - the Untersee! For this circuit, we start at Radolfzell and go down to Konstanz (20 km), so part 1 in reverse. Kreuzlingen is a triangle junction, with the Swiss trains from Romanshorn not going to Konstanz continuing straight on to Kreuzlingen station (21 km).

The highlight of the Swiss shore of the Untersee is Arenenberg, served by Mannenbach-Salenstein (30 km), where a short climb will take you to a 19th-century estate previously owned by the Bonaparte family, in exile from 1815. Emperor Napoleon III occasionally returned to this place. I feel the château itself isn't very special, but the view of the Untersee, with the German Höri and Reichenau sides visible opposite, as well as the park and fields around the estate are worth the visit, before reaching Stein am Rhein (47 km), which we'll get into next time.

Full disclosure: the Untersee part of this cruise was not done in April, but a few days ago. Taking advantage of work winding down, I went back to the Bodensee to fill in this smaller-lake-sized gap in the series!

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Local train cruise around the Bodensee part 6: St. Margrethen to Romanshorn

Continued from part 5, in which my distance calculations have been updated; some track maps confused me a bit and the distances were starting to not add up.

We're a little inland at the start of this leg, and the most interesting sights are the hills to our left as we pass through Rheineck (43 km to Konstanz). The railway line rejoins the lake at Staad (38 km), and we make our first stop in the following town that.

With plenty of interesting buildings, trompe-l'oeil facades and sculpted oriels, Rorschach (34 km) is the visual experience its name suggests, though the Rorschach inkblot tests were named after Hermann Rorschach, not the town. That said, Mr Rorschach lived not all that far from here, having studied in Schaffhausen and died at Herisau.

But the most stunning views of this side of the lake, in my opinion, can be found at Arbon (27 km). From the Eastern edge of the town, we get a panorama of neighbouring Steinach, with lots of water birds grouping and nesting on the artificial island in the foreground, and the Austrian Alps standing in the background.

A stroll through the charming historical centre later gets us to the Seepark on the Western side, with a clear view of our next stop, Romanshorn. More on that next time (Friday, I will be skipping a post on Tuesday), but until then, we complete our walk along the lake shore in Arbon with the Seemoosriet, which, like the zone around the island in the earlier view, and places like Mettnau at Radolfzell (haven't been yet) or the shore between Nonnenhorn and Wasserburg, is a restricted nature reserve.

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The lake shore at Bregenz

Quick post today, as I rush to finish marking papers early (to clarify: it's not a rush to finish to meet the deadline, it's a rush just to get it done, I have outings to plan if you don't mind), so I'll just run through a few pictures from Bregenz, the main stop on the Austrian leg of the Bodensee tour. Above is one of the more lovely views, with the old military lake bathing installation, or "Nostalgiebad Mili". The military barracks are just on the other side of the railway line.

The waterfront offers some great panoramas, with Lindau in the background opposite, though the Swiss shore is hidden by the extensions of the canalised Rhine.

Approaching the station, we can see this timber-framed restaurant contrasting with the Seebühne open-air theatre behind it. This runs to the same principles as the open-air theatre in Hornberg, just with the lake as a backdrop, and it is, I feel, quite a bit bigger. Like the theatre in Hornberg, it is possible to walk in on non-play days.

From the restaurant, we get the opposite view, with the Pfänder mountain and ropeway dominating the landscape.

The summit of the Pfänder is a hive of activities for another time, though one of these is paragliding, with flyers aiming for the lake shore to land.

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Local train cruise around the Bodensee part 5: from Lindau to St. Margrethen, the Austrian leg

Continued from part 4. Leaving Lindau-Insel on an ÖBB regional train and passing to the right of the embankment level crossing, we make one stop at the main through station of Lindau-Reutin (105 km from Konstanz) before getting as close to the lake as possible again, and crossing the border into Austria, where our first stop is Lochau-Hörbranz (109 km).

After that, we arrive at the main town on the short stretch of the Austrian Bodensee shore: Bregenz (113 km). Bear with me for a moment, because I suggest we change metric here, from distance from Konstanz along the North shore, to distance to Konstanz along the South shore. So again, that's Bregenz (60 km to Konstanz - and that's the distance remaining to complete the tour of the largest lake, the Obersee).

Bregenz is the capital of the Austrian Land (state) of Vorarlberg, and it has a lot to offer, so here are just a couple of views of the histrocial Oberstadt, or Upper Town, with the Martinsturm and a view of St Gallus Church. The shores of the lake are also lovely, and then there's the cable car up to the Pfänder mountain, from where the aerial shot of Lindau from a previous post was taken. All of these deserve their own posts, in good time.

We board another train for the short hop to the Swiss border. Moving inland slightly, we go through Hard (55 km) and this peculiar house with tower, which is home to the town history and textile museum. The last stop in Austria is Lustenau (50 km), where we can wander along the Rhine as it flows before entering the lake, with the Alps from whence it came in the background. This section of the river is known as - wait for it - the Alpenrhein.

Just 15 km, and that's all for Austria on the Bodensee. Our train terminates at St. Margrethen (47 km), and is seen below on the left about to turn around back to Bregenz, while the Munich to Zürich EuroCity Express, which followed us in, makes its stop.

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The Lindau-Insel rail embankment

Lindau's historical centre is on an island, which requires some kind of structure if trains are going to reach it - which they do. Given the relatively placid nature of the Bodensee, an embankment would suffice, so, since the opening of the Bavarian line from Munich in the 1854, that's what's been in place.

The Austrian Vorarlberg line was extended to Lindau in 1872, and the two lines meet at a junction at the North end of the embankment. Being the shore of the lake, a road naturally runs across, and this means we have a four-track-wide level crossing. But it's more complex than that: the crossing is also a crossroads, with a street arriving smack in the middle of the railway junction (on the left in the picture below). For this reason, the crossing requires human supervision, from the hut in the picture above, and is the first example of a manually operated crossing that I can remember seeing.

When the signal is given to the attendants, they start by ringing the warning bells slowly, before picking up speed and the barriers coming down once the crossing is clear. Another clue for a lack of automation is simply how far ahead the barriers come down. While it's no Higashi-Yodogawa (link to a video showing the crossing closed for up to 40 minutes at a time, though this crossing was re-designed in 2019 and is no longer the bottleneck it once was), it's still signposted that you might be better off using an alternate route!

Shorter barrier closing times to Lindau-Insel left. Waiting times of up to 15 minutes here!

The Insel embankment junction is one corner of the Lindau triangle, linking Insel, Reutin and Aeschach stations. Express trains like the EuroCity Express between Munich and Zürich skip Insel, while other regional trains start and Reutin, turn around and Insel and continue through Aeschach towards Kempten. Trains from Friedrichshafen in Germany, Bludenz in Austria or Romanshorn in Switzerland, will typically terminate at Insel, meaning that one can spot trains from three countries on the embankment!

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Fénétrange

We were at Fénétrange yesterday with the Association Amitié Strasbourg-Japon, for a guided tour of the local history house, Maison du Patrimoine, and parts of the castle. The guides were very knowledgeable about this rather remote and somewhat unassuming village, but which was the seat of a largely independent fiefdom under the Holy Roman Empire.

Medieval remnants still stand, though much of the castle has been rebuilt over the centuries, morphing from a fortified dungeon to a stately residence. When the Protestants took over the village church, the lords had a chapel built in the castle, featuring the above stained glass displaying the coat of arms of the Empire and the blue, white and blue of Fénétrange.

The castle also features an unusual, for the time, pillar-less and anti-clockwise spiral staircase. The lack of a pillar thus gave right-handed soldiers a huge advantage in defence, as they could swing right with no obstruction.

The guides also made us some oublies. These were traditionally made with leftover dough for eucharistic bread, with some added sweetener (honey in this case), and pressed into decorated wafers.

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Local train cruise around the Bodensee part 4: Friedrichshafen to Lindau

Continued from part 3.

Back on the train at Friedrichshafen (78 km from Konstanz), the city of Zeppelin, the airship maker. The aviation museums (two!) are stories for another time, but just outside the station is a lakeside park featuring a couple of Zeppelin memorials, and that mug you use when you pinky-promise you're going to have only one beer - the bronze stein celebrates the twinning with the US city of Peoria, Illinois.

From here, the Alps come firmly into view on the Swiss side of the lake, and the views become spectacular with the contrast. After Kressbronn (92 km), we also change Land, moving out of Baden-Württemberg. Nonnenhorn (94 km) is the first stop in Bavaria, and a good place to get off to walk along the lake to Wasserburg (96 km) and its picturesque peninsula, like a mini-Reichenau.

The end of this line is on the island of Lindau, Lindau-Insel (102 km), which I showed views of in the post immediately after my trip. The town deserves several posts to be honest, but as part of this series, you can expect a very geeky one on the Aeschach-Insel-Reutin rail triangle soon.