Travel to Passau, Germany

We arrived in Zurich, Switzerland at 3:00 am MST friday or 10 in the morning local time, about 15 hours after we left home and after changing planes in Minneapolis and Amsterdam. We napped for awhile and walked around Rumwald, the small town outside of Zurich where our hotel was located but we were not very energetic. Fortunately, we went to bed early and were well rested when we caught the train the next day.

Our 6 hour journey by train on saturday took us across northern Switzerland and into Germany. The countryside was a lush green (they must get lots of rain like Oregon or Washington) and we rode thru rolling hills and farmland. The scenery was villages, small industrial plants, forests of mixed conifer and hardwood trees and farms. A surprise for us was the high reliance upon solar power in this area.The majority of homes have solar arrays or hot water heating on their southern sloping roof and this was true even for very small farmhouses.