Mike - that has changed. Legal age is now 18, and it is strictly enforced.
Ah, the harsh winds of progress. Glad I enjoyed it while it was “the good ol’ days” and that they were sensisble enough to make it 18, not 21. All that does is train young people in how to effectively (or sometimes not) break the law.
Speaking of those relaxed ideas of yesteryear, I got myself yelled at for taking the lyrics in “The City of New Orleans” a little too literally, you know, the part about “passing the paper bag that holds the bottle…” The summer after we returned to “the world” I went to vist a college girlfriend in Chicago, a good excuse to take the train into the city. On the return trip, I figured, might as well get a six-pack to pass the time, because in the early days of Amtrak, even getting to Champaign could be an adventure. I had my brown paper bag stashed discreetly and was sipping from it when the conductor caught me and told me in no uncertain terms there was no drinking on his train. Guess they take that stuff more seriously back here than the Germans do…[%-)]
At least he let me keep the rest of the six-pack, so it wasn’t as rude as it could have been. Live and learn.[;)]
You can do more than just ride the steam, etc. rails. Numerous steam trains in Germany offer daily to weekly plans where you can be the engineer with a mentor at your side. The Harz Mountain steam trains have a daily to a week long (as long as you wish each day) engineer program for approximately 800 Euros for the week. Even if one doesn’t want to engineer the sightseeing is fantastic and they have numerous steamers running each and every day–check it out–jd