look through any window, yeah - what do you see?

Not a lot of smiling faces as The Hollies would have us believe.  Quite the opposite in fact.

This is the Tyrol and it''s stunning from the train.  Mountains, meadows, rushing water and more mountains.  But it took a long time to get to this point.

We caught the train in Munich for a leisurely and picturesque journey through Southern Germany, Austria and across the Brenner Pass to Verona.  So did a lot of other people.  Too many in fact.

In Germany it turns out that you can buy a train ticket without a seat reservation.  You just buy a ticket and turn up.  But in Italy, you can't.  If you buy a train ticket you must reserve a seat.

Just as the train is about to leave Munich there's an announcement and police make their way through the carriages. It's quite disturbing especially when you don't have the language. A German couple next to us explain; "there are too many people on the train".  It takes about an hour and half to persuade those passengers without seat reservations to leave.  Many of them are very unhappy.  Especially the children.

It's late afternoon by the time we reach Verona.  Luckily I had reserved seats when I bought our tickets.  Mainly  because I had wanted to ensure we got a window seat.   We're now in our hotel at Lake Garda. The lake is glistening in the evening sun as we have a beer.