Day 1 in our quest to get to a conference on  the environment without breaking the environment.

I like trains and we’re about to go on a lot of them. Our mission? To get to an A Rocha conference in Southern France without flying. And back again.

And to visit as many bookstores and libraries as possible on this trip. #BunpityBoulevardPressOnTheRails

To get to Cologne this morning, we have a challenge and technology.

Construction on the local line means we’re going in the opposite direction to get to Cologne.

S23 to Euskirchen then the RE 22 to Cologne. The train is leaving from the opposite platform, the side we normally stand on.

These days, we have apps to get all this information and the creative re-routing. When I was an exchange student, years ago, I had to assemble my request in my head and ask a usually daunting railroad clerk to write out a new itinerary. I usually had far too many ideas and not enough German words to express them.

My old calculus teacher would call this an even number of mistakes. I suspect this concept will be popular this trip.

Here we go!