Take the Train!

We've been traveling from northern Italy to Germany on the famed autobahns. With this single experience, I can declare to you that this mode of travel is no longer nearly as efficient and fun as it once was.

For example, in Austria we bought a 7 day "vignette" which allowed us to use the "fast" roads. Well, maybe fast except for the one we chose, of course. That would be the A10 to Salzburg, which makes you pay 9.50 Euros for the privilege of getting stopped on the autobahn via a series of stoplights! Oh, and you get to go through a couple of tunnels, too. Big deal. I happened to look around (an activity for which there was more than ample time) and noticed where the license plates were from. You wouldn't need a calculator to count the Austrian plates. The count was...are you ready? 0. Austrians know better than to sit in a bureaucratically-induced traffic jam that costs 15 bucks when they could be taking faster back roads for free.

So I'd call it a tourist trap. An infuriating one.

The famed German Autobahns now come with some pretty slow limits in many, many places, so they weren't much fun either. Most come with the traffic jams you'd expect from slowing things down to a crawl. So, if you want to avoid all this, take the train. I mean it.

If you don't know which train to take, our Honeymoons guide has put together a mind boggling list of train trips and suggestions from all over the world. See: "Tracks:" A Train Travel Blog Carnival