Dreams of the Alps

I spent a lot of last summer trav­el­ling up and down the Alps by train. Here are a couple of pictures I took out of the window. Taking photos from the window of a moving train can be very frus­trat­ing, you see a spec­tac­u­lar view, but by the time you have taken a photo some­thing like a fence is in the way. I like long-distance solo train trips, espe­cially ones with spec­tac­u­lar scenery and no stress or time pres­sure when it comes to connections.Both of these pictures are some­where near the Austrian/​German border. Inter­est­ingly German for night­mare is Alptraum – “Alp dream”. That alp is a night time incubus type thing, not the moun­tains, but it gives a strange mental image if you’re an English speak­er. An Alp dream would prob­ably involve frol­ick­ing with goats in a sunny moun­tain pasture. I clearly read Heidi too often when I was young­er.

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