12 July

We bid a final Auf Wiedersehen to Dusslingen and headed for Switzerland via several train changes. Some of the connections only allowed us a few minutes to make our move, but we made them all and arrived in Friedrichshafen on Lake Constance in time to visit the zeppelin museum. It was pretty interesting, but, not being fluent in German, I would not rate it as "must see," even with the English audio guide.

We had two choices for our route out of Friedrichshafen. We could go to Interlaken via Basel or via Zürich. The first stop on either route is Singen. We boarded the first train, which went through Zürich. The car we boarded was standing-room-only, so we got off and walked forward, thinking that, even if the train left us on the platform, we could take the other route later. We found nice seats in the front car, with Janene facing forward and me facing backwards. We had just settled in when Janene jumped up, grabbed her bag and my hat, loudly proclaimed, "This car is not going to Singen," and started to get off. We've encountered several instances where the train would be split somewhere along the route and you had to be careful to get on the correct car, so I grabbed my pack and hopped off, too. The train immediately left the station.

It was then that I learned that Janene wasn't saying "NOT Singen." She was actually trying to say "NACH Singen," which is what the display readout on the train said. "Nach" means to or toward, but she thought it meant "not". So we took the later train and went to Basel for the night, where we found what would have been a quite nice hotel if only the invention of air-conditioning had may its way here from Texas.

host gift air bed

friendly cars

Hohenzollern Castle

photo for Lee

Friedrichshafen Station

Buchhornbrunnen

Zeppelin Museum

entrance

ticket front

ticket back

model of hangar

partial reconstruction of the Hindenburg

1932 wind tunnel test

structural details

Hindenburg info	model of passenger deck	crew deck
structural details	Hindenburg cutaway model

To Basel, Switzerland

Lake Constance	at Sipplingen	Rheinbrücke Schaffhausen–Flurlingen
Train to Basel	view from Basel hotel