To Paris for a meeting with Kai Tegethoff MEP first – before Kai tries to head to Portugal by train. My trip then takes me east (and likely delayed by border controls at Kehl) onwards to Marktredwitz on the border to Czechia. No new borders today though.

New for this tour: I’ve found a new way of linking to active map layers. So maps for the day should be easier to read.

Here’s today’s intro video: https://peertube.netzbegruenung.de/w/mYHgR9gdBBcdpPaVHrqpJi

#CrossBorderRail live stream - 9/15/2025, 4:14:08 AM

PeerTube

#CrossBorderRail Conclusions Tour Train 1 of 74
TER 91371
06:39 Nuits-sous-Ravières - Montbard 06:48
SNCF for TER Mobigo

Train type: Bombardier AGC bi-mode MU, 2x 4 short carriages
⚡️ (1.5kV dc)
🚲: ✅
🦽: ✅ (step free if station allows, Nuits doesn’t, Montbard does)
🛜: ⛔️
🍽️: ⛔️
🧳: 🙂
🧽: 😐 (grimy roof inside, loo makes whole carriage stink. But it’s orderly)

🎫 Interrail: 🙂 (accepted)

TER 91371
06:39 Nuits-sous-Ravières - Montbard 06:48

Distance: 18.2km
Average speed: 121km/h

1 stops:
Montbard

This train, mapped: https://umap.openstreetmap.fr/en/map/crossborderrail-2025-conclusions-tour_1266988#13/47.6738/4.2743

#CrossBorderRail 2025 Conclusions Tour

The #CrossBorderRail 2025 conclusions tour - mainly to go to events, but adding a few new borders too. Each day of the project is a Layer in the map - these should be displayed by default, or if not click the three layered diamonds icon "Open browser" to the left side of the map. The icons are all for borders, roughly coloured to differentiate the borders. A cross through a track means NO TRAINS CAN RUN. A cross through trains but not track means TRAINS CAN RUN BUT NO PASSENGER TRAINS. And TRAIN AND TRACK (no crosses) means there is a passenger service. All lines on the map are TRAINS, unless otherwise shown with icons along the lines - 🚲 for bike, 🚌 for bus, 🚗 for car, ⛴️ for ferry. Click each line to get basic information what it is.

uMap

App tip this morning

SNCF‘s main app - SNCF Connect - is generally terrible. Use @12train to book instead

And when travelling use Ma Gare SNCF - it gives useful information like where your carriage will stop before screens in French stations do

#CrossBorderRail Conclusions Tour Train 2 of 74
TGV 6760
07:05 Montbard - Paris Gare de Lyon 08:09
SNCF Voyageurs

Train type: Alstom TGV Duplex, 8 short double deck carriages
⚡️ (1.5kV dc, 25kV ac, 1.5kV dc)
🚲: ⛔️
🦽: ✅ (step free into lower level, lift down inside)
🛜: ✅ (and it's just about working)
🍽️: ✅
🧳: ☹️ (Duplex, so terrible. Thankfully it's mostly business travellers today)
🧽: 😐 (Rare for a TGV not cleaned properly inside)

🎫 Interrail: 😐 (needs compulsory reservation, costs €10 or €20)

TGV 6760
07:05 Montbard - Paris Gare de Lyon 08:09

Distance: 215.5km
Average speed: 202km/h

1 stops:
Paris Gare de Lyon

This train, mapped: https://umap.openstreetmap.fr/en/map/crossborderrail-2025-conclusions-tour_1266988#9/48.2351/3.3555

#CrossBorderRail

#CrossBorderRail 2025 Conclusions Tour

The #CrossBorderRail 2025 conclusions tour - mainly to go to events, but adding a few new borders too. Each day of the project is a Layer in the map - these should be displayed by default, or if not click the three layered diamonds icon "Open browser" to the left side of the map. The icons are all for borders, roughly coloured to differentiate the borders. A cross through a track means NO TRAINS CAN RUN. A cross through trains but not track means TRAINS CAN RUN BUT NO PASSENGER TRAINS. And TRAIN AND TRACK (no crosses) means there is a passenger service. All lines on the map are TRAINS, unless otherwise shown with icons along the lines - 🚲 for bike, 🚌 for bus, 🚗 for car, ⛴️ for ferry. Click each line to get basic information what it is.

uMap
Rolling into Paris on time. I might dislike some aspects of how SNCF operates, but this Montbard - Paris TGV has solid reliability in general. #CrossBorderRail

#CrossBorderRail Conclusions Tour 1 of 17
Paris Gare de Lyon - Brasserie à la place Saint-Georges

Distance: 6km
Est. duration: 0:30

This bike route, mapped: https://umap.openstreetmap.fr/en/map/crossborderrail-2025-conclusions-tour_1266988#14/48.8614/2.3562

Oh it was the record breaking TGV

Fixing the Birdy is never done 😀

Hit a bump crossing Paris and the front reflector breaks off

(There are other reflectors on the bike so I’m still road safe)

Back in the city. And it’s a breezy autumn day. Perfect light.

#CrossBorderRail Conclusions Tour 2 of 17
Brasserie à la place Saint-Georges - 23 Bvld Madeleine - Café les Deux Gares (Gare de l’est)

Distance: 2km
Est. duration: 0:45

This bike route, mapped: https://umap.openstreetmap.fr/en/map/crossborderrail-2025-conclusions-tour_1266988#16/48.8738/2.3417

SNCF: let’s speed you to Strasbourg in less than 2 hours

Also SNCF: let’s design platform barriers so badly it takes everyone ages to get onto the platform 👏

Oh and send a rubbish truck through!

#CrossBorderRail Conclusions Tour Train 3 of 74
TGV 9575
13:54 Paris Est - Stuttgart Hbf 17:04
SNCF Voyageurs, DB Fernverkehr

Train type: Alstom TGV Euroduplex, 8 short double deck carriages (8 more to Colmar)
⚡️ (25kV ac, 15kV ac)
🚲: ⛔️
🦽: ✅ (but platform 27 isn’t step free - I assume there’s a lift)
🛜: ⛔️ (doesn’t work)
🍽️: ⛔️ (bistro closed today)
🧳: ☹️ (Duplex. Awful. Thankfully it’s empty)
🧽: 🙂

🎫 Interrail: 😐 (needs compulsory reservation, costs €19)

TGV 9575
13:54 Paris Est - Stuttgart Hbf 17:04

Distance: 607.9km
Average speed: 192km/h

3 stops:
Strasbourg
Karlsruhe Hbf
Stuttgart Hbf

This train, mapped: https://umap.openstreetmap.fr/en/map/crossborderrail-2025-conclusions-tour_1266988#8/48.894/5.778

#CrossBorderRail

#CrossBorderRail 2025 Conclusions Tour

The #CrossBorderRail 2025 conclusions tour - mainly to go to events, but adding a few new borders too. Each day of the project is a Layer in the map - these should be displayed by default, or if not click the three layered diamonds icon "Open browser" to the left side of the map. The icons are all for borders, roughly coloured to differentiate the borders. A cross through a track means NO TRAINS CAN RUN. A cross through trains but not track means TRAINS CAN RUN BUT NO PASSENGER TRAINS. And TRAIN AND TRACK (no crosses) means there is a passenger service. All lines on the map are TRAINS, unless otherwise shown with icons along the lines - 🚲 for bike, 🚌 for bus, 🚗 for car, ⛴️ for ferry. Click each line to get basic information what it is.

uMap

The passenger across the aisle from me here:

- travelling on Interrail (as per questions from the train manager)
- is charging their phone with a UK-EU plug adapter
- has a bottle of wine, a can of beer, and an electric toothbrush poking out of an opulent leather handbag
- has red nails so long typing is hard
- is at least 70 years old

Departing Strasbourg

I know a stop for illegal passport controls at Kehl is ahead

There's one obvious ethnic minority passenger in my carriage. The train is about 1/3 full. Let's see what happens...

😡😡😡😡😡😡😡😡😡😡😡😡😡😡😡😡😡😡😡😡😡😡😡😡😡😡😡😡😡

Yeah. Who did they control?

The ethnic minority person.

Fuckers, really.

I approached the police and asked why they only control ethnic minorities.

“She was the only one not to show her passport without asking” he said.

It makes me so effing totally fucking furious.

Every single time.

Racism pure and simple.

And they hauled a black guy off and were going through his papers on the platform.

I could have been transporting *anything* and got through no problem.

These checks are
- racist
- arbitrary (as they check trains more than other modes at Kehl)
- costly (labour intensive)
- inefficient (why not check while a train is moving?)
- ineffective (the pedestrian bridge at Kehl isn’t checked)
- annoying (they delay everyone)

Could you imagine anything more abjectly shit?

Great. Next train cancelled 😡
Let’s take a 🐹 to an insurance company

@jon Today seems to be a bad day for DB. Our first train got cancelled after 15m in Basel SBB because SBB is really sick of DBs shenanigans. Then an hour later it also got cancelled at Basel Bad. One of us took a connection via Hannover but that train stranded in Fulda 🙃. Because the rest of us were with bicycles we went to the Reisezentrum and they gave us a connection where we'd arrive at 0600 in Berlin, lol. Luckily we found another one where we would arrive 2230. Right now the train is only half an hour late but should arrive, hopefully. Fingers crossed that there are no further news on this front today. 😅

(I'd still take the train every time. Fuck flying and fucking tax that shit.)

@jon no, this is the shittest shit
@jon Arresting people for not taking their passport with them to the beach. (France.) And delaying us for so long that there wasn't enough of the day left to get to the beach, so the kids didn't get their beach visit that holiday.
@TimWardCam French ID law doesn’t oblige you to have a passport with you anyway. There are 20 or so acceptable IDs. But “l’etranger doit prouver son nationalité”. Which gives police enough room to discriminate if they want to.

@jon
"Could you imagine anything more abjectly shit?"

Yes - left SNCF run it 😂

@jon Is this illegal shit also happening on the Brussels-Dortmund Thalys and leading to delays there?
@ubx No, not often. I go through Aachen quite a lot and only got checked once. I think that's more a combination of the Thalys trains getting increasingly unreliable, and all of NRW's rail infra being unreliable!
@ubx (for reasons I don't understand Kehl is the most absurd of all with these checks)
@jon Clearly everyone knows that all Russian saboteurs are black... boggle
@jon i don't get why they don't check a couple of white people and make it look slightly less obvious that they are racist. But nope. They don't even hide it.
@quixoticgeek @jon Partially because they know there will be no consequences and partially because they assume all the other white people agree with them (because to them it's so normal and obvious) + doing it this way makes everyone else around a little bit complicit.
@redjives @quixoticgeek how quickly the officer made up something in response to me asking him about picking on the minority was interesting. It wasn’t the first time he had been asked.
@redjives @quixoticgeek @jon And partially they know that some of those white persons, including me, would file a complaint because of the illegal control.
@nyca @redjives @quixoticgeek Schengen is suspended here. So I can’t file about this one. I have the numbers of the police vests though so could complain they behaved in a discriminatory manner.
@jon @redjives @quixoticgeek That's what you should do, yes. Nothing will probably happen, but they have to count it at least.

@jon I don't show my passport without asking, other than when I'm queuing at a passport booth in a port (the clue's in the name, eh? "pass" "port").[#]

Otherwise you're just acquiescing in advance to a police state.

[#] I have occasionally had to show my passport for domestic travel. Within Burma that was sort of expected ... but having to do so within ***FRANCE*** wasn't.

@TimWardCam passengers were warned with an announcement to have ID to hand.
@jon OK, fair enough, provided the warning was repeated in a reasonable set of languages.
@jon french police or german police ? (or both?)
@jon Good for you, thank you for speaking up
@jon yes - nothing has changed, I went by bus from Barcelona to Denmark in 1983. Among the passengers were a guy from Africa - he was the one targeted at every bordercrossing to have his baggage controlled!

@jon Maybe it's time for a little practical joke? Talk to that person, and a few other fellow passengers. Gather around him/her, and when the Bundespolizei approaches, you all offer your documents, without asking. See if the police ignores you others and just checks the "obvious" one.

(Assuming you can find enough like-minded co-passengers.)

@jon professional traveler I'd say
@jon I meet screencap this and post it in the Facebook group for older interrailers and see if someone there turns out to have been sitting across from you
@IanMoore3000 The passenger seems to have alighted at Strasbourg
@jon
I'm good with all of that except the long red nails. As a working chef I could never have long or painted nails. It's a staus that I have continued to this day. And... er... I might be a little older than she is.
@jon interesting that the average speed isn't so much bigger than the first train in your day ;-)
@julienw Long stop in Strasbourg. Plus slow to Karlsruhe.
@jon haha! I can wave at you when you stop here in Karlsruhe.
@jon Oh. Isn't this one no longer on Lyria services?
@wrzlbrnft it’s number 7xx. So Dasye I think?