TRAIN # 40 – 00:30 Basel to Luxembourg
I was sure we didn’t follow the fastest route through the quiet streets of Basel but we made it in about fifteen minutes. I offered a 100 French franc note expecting change in francs back. The taxi driver insisted on being paid in Swiss Francs. I suddenly realised I had made the error of forgetting that the French station was actually in Switzerland. We had no Swiss Francs.
We argued a bit and in the end he decided to take the 100 French Franc note and fished in his dirty leather pouch for change. He gave us just 6.50 Swiss francs (£2.50) back. We had paid £7.50 for a 15 minute taxi ride. “French money is up and down a lot these days”, he shrugged.
We went into the French station, a little annex of the larger Swiss one, passed through customs and made it in time for the 00:30 to Luxembourg, a Milan to Ostend overnight express which was coming in on time. The carriage was newly turned out in a blue and yellow scheme; it was quite attractive but it stank of paint inside.
We got a compartment to ourselves but we knew we wouldn’t be able to enjoy it for long. I set my alarm clock for 04:30 and put it on the little table under the window. I fell asleep pretty quickly. The next thing I knew was someone shouting “Passports”. I looked at my watch and it was 04:25. I felt grotty and grubby. I showed my passport to the French and Luxembourg officials. By 04:45 we were being told to get off the train.
LUXEMBOURG
Luxembourg had an all-night waiting room. At 05:00 we found three seats free. One of them was broken. The room contained an odd collection of sleeping tramps, an old lady, a young guy with a beard, and four middle-aged men lying on the floor fast asleep. In the corner were two young girls with rucksacks who were both wide awake and reading. We decided it would be better to leave the station.
We still had some Belgian coins left and we used two 10 franc pieces for the left luggage lockers. We put one rucksack in the one locker, the coin went in but the key wouldn’t turn. The second locker didn’t even take the money. We called over the station assistant and watched, impressed, whilst he mended them both.
It was still dark as we left the station and walked up the Avenue de la Liberte and through Metz and Paris squares. It was almost funny. We agreed that we had reached a new depth or was it a new height: “sightseeing before dawn”. We were not going to be contributing a lot to the local economy: we had barely enough Belgian francs left for two Mars bars.
We continued up Avenue de la Liberte, over the Adolphe Bridge and around into the Boulevard Franklin Roosevelt to view the Place de la Constitution. We looked down on the beautiful River Valley. It was just coming light. It was practically deserted.
We passed the cathedral, the Royal Palace and continued on to the Place Guillaume, along the Rue de la Boucherie to the fish market where two Roman roads used to meet. We went down to the Casements. We took a wrong turning and then had to climb back.
It was fully light as we passed the Imperial Garden and the Radio Luxemburg buildings. It was all very pleasant but we were both getting extremely tired by 7:00. We walked back through an underground subway under Avenue Monterey and back to Place de la Constitution. We sat in the vast interior of the cathedral for quite a while, almost falling asleep. 
When we went outside, we found that Luxembourg was waking up. Buses, cars and people began to fill the streets. We walked along the Grand Rue where the shops were just getting ready to open. We went along the ramparts and back down to the Place de la Constitution yet again and then returned to the station.
We ran across the road crossing on a red light and were shouted at by a policeman, the first real interaction we had had with a local since we left the station more than three hours earlier.
The clerk in the bureau de change couldn’t understand that we wanted German currency not local, but eventually we walked out with 35 DMs and knowing it was the last chance to use up the Belgian francs, we bought those two Mars bars.
As we waited back on the platform, I felt quite happy. Luxembourg had been a pleasant surprise. I had expected it to be a carbon copy of Brussels for some reason, but it had turned out to be an attractive fortress town in a lovely setting. It had been the perfect place to sightsee before anyone was awake.
TRAIN # 41 – 09:40 Luxemburg to Koblenz
We jumped on a local train heading across the German border for Koblenz. Although the Mosel Valley looked very beautiful out of the window, I fell asleep for some of the two-hour trip. We then had about an hour in Koblenz and we spent it wandering through the attractive town centre and stocking up on provisions.
By the time we returned to the station we had bread, jam, coleslaw, two cans of sausages and a can of meat. Including the cheese-bread, cakes and coffee we bought at the station, we had spent about £5. We even treated ourselves to two cans of beer each and still we had plenty of DMs left. Germany we found had been surprisingly cheap.
TRAIN # 42 – 13:10 Koblenz to Basel
Koblenz was to be our last station in West Germany on the trip and it was suitably busy with trains. Our last DB service, the D203, ‘Loreley’ coming in from Amsterdam and heading for Basel, arrived bang on time hauled by a Class 110. We got seats in one of the coaches towards the rear.
The journey down the Rhine Valley through Mainz and Karlsruhe was one of the best of the whole trip. As we passed through the vineyards of southern Germany we had a little picnic and then toasted the 10,000 miles that I calculated we had travelled since London Victoria with cans of Hansa Pils.
We were both dog tired though and as we approached Basel we made the decision to abandon the idea of travelling south into Italy and go east towards Vienna and Budapest instead. This, we figured, would give us two advantages; we would arrive in Hungary on Saturday not Sunday and, much more importantly, we would have a longer journey on which to try to get some sleep. Florence would have to wait.
We arrived back at Basel’s German station at 17:36. There was no sign of the taxi driver, we assumed he was away spending last night’s takings. We crossed to the Swiss Railway (SBB) station by bus. It took just ten minutes. We put the luggage in lockers underneath the platforms and went out to explore the city. The Vienna train would leave at 20:10, so we had plenty of time. By our standards, we probably had too much time.
BASEL
We had almost exhausted all the Swiss francs we had received as change from the taxi driver, so we changed our last remaining DMs. We figured that this would be enough to tide us through the few transit trips we had planned for Switzerland. We decided that we would try to import most of our supplies from elsewhere. We were certainly not planning to spend anything in Basel.
We walked off in the vague direction of the river. We came to a little square with a map and then adjusted our directions. We passed a lot of older children on mopeds who we assumed were coming home from school. On the Rhine bridge we looked back towards the cathedral. Basel looked a very beautiful little city and it was exemplified by the sunlight in the early evening. We walked back along the river bank to another bridge lined with flags and crossed it. We were stopped by a man and he asked us to take his photograph in front of the flags.
We went back through the main shopping centre, into the cathedral for a bit and then stood for a while watching the unusual fountain that had been inspired by the city’s connection with the dramatic arts. We were back at the station just after 19:30.
TRAIN # 43 – 20:10 Basel to Vienna
Back at the SBB station, we retrieved our luggage and went up to the platforms. We now had the first of three encounters with the ‘Wiener Walzer‘, an international overnight express that started at Basel and travelled via Zurich to Buch and then across the Austrian border though Innsbruck and Salzburg to arrive in Vienna at around 08:45. The train would then continue on to Budapest and Bucharest.
There were sleeping cars and couchettes available, but we had no intention of using them. Instead, we found an empty compartment in one of the coaches that was going through to Vienna. We left on time. With the Austrian border still three hours away, we decided to get an early night. By 21:00 the blinds were down, the lights were out and I was asleep.
Forty Years Later….
- Physical border controls between Switzerland and France were removed in 2009 under the Schengen Agreement.
- Euro banknotes and coins replaced the Luxembourg Franc on January 1, 2002.
- Physical border controls between Luxembourg and both France and Germany were removed in 1995 under the Schengen Agreement.
- In 2026 the exchange rate is 1.10 Swiss Francs to £1.
- I have only been back to Luxembourg once. I made another trip along the Basel to Koblenz line in the late 1990s.
