Day 2 of (Not Quite) All the Small Things had ended in the Swiss town of Sargans in the east of country following rail journeys with DB and SBB. Day 3 was another full day of travel but started a bit differently, with a bus across an international border.
Arriving into Mannheim on a DB Regio ‘RE’ service from Trier, I had just over an hour until my booked ICE service to take me south into Switzerland. With a journey time of just over three hours, I had decided to treat myself on this leg of the trip with a first-class ticket through to Zurich.
Day 1 of (Not Quite) All the Small Things was a success with over 600km travelled by train, 4.5 countries covered (England, France (kind of), Belgium, Luxembourg, and Germany) with one of those (Luxembourg) being a ‘new’ country for me to tick of my list. As such day 2 of the trip started in the German city of Trier, close to the Luxembourg border.
The second train of (Not Quite) All the Small Things had brought me across Belgium into my second Benelux country of the trip and my 29th ever, Luxembourg. As with many smaller nations, the country and its capital city share the same common name, although the country is officially the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg, whilst the city is technically Luxembourg City.
Having arrived in the Belgian capital onboard a Eurostar service from St. Pancras, I had just 40-minutes to make my way through Midi station before my next train departed. As the main station for Brussels, Midi station is served by a number of international operators such as Thalys, DB and SNCF, however despite my journey crossing a border it was with the Belgian national operator, SNCB.
January means one thing for Flights and Times, a big trip spread over a few days that I wouldn’t get chance to do at other times. Unfortunately, owing to Covid, this didn’t happen in 2021 but last year saw me exploring Budapest, Bratislava and Prague as I started to travel again. For 2023’s trip I decided to do something a little bit different and so was born (Not Quite) All The Small Things, where I aimed to visit a number of Europe’s smaller countries, all whilst relying on the European rail and bus networks.
Flights & Times 