To experience the joy of continental rail travel, try Eurocity train number nine. Each day at 6.29am, the “classic” express departs from Altona station in Hamburg (just up from the fish market, where you can get an even earlier breakfast), gathers passengers at the city’s magnificent Hauptbahnhof, then gathers speed as it rolls across the north German plain to Bremen and Osnabruck.
On through the Ruhr, dawdling at Dusseldorf before converging with the Rhine to race upstream while the river meanders downstream.
