With the slow train through the hinterland of Provence

2024-01-12 19:55:54

It’s as if we were leaving Nice through the back room, far away from the glamorous Bay of Angels, towards the foothills of the Alps with their wild gorges. We are sitting on the Train des Pignes, the train of pine cones, which has its own train station. We set off from the Gare des Chemins de fer de Provence in the Libération district and are now traveling leisurely like a tram through the less sparkling Nice. Peeling ocher facades from the Belle Époque are within reach between kebab shops and used cell phone shops. Housewives board the train for shopping centers on the outskirts, workers in oil-smeared assembly clothes leave the train in the industrial zone of Carros, students are on their way to one of the lecture halls. People know each other, they greet each other, the conductor, dressed casually, sways down the aisle and cracks jokes. To the rhythm of the whistling horn and the rumbling wagons, there is a relaxed atmosphere somewhere between a school trip and a bowling trip.

Train stations like something out of a High Noon movie

Railway nostalgics from all nations and hikers with backpacks are also among the passengers. After all, the 151 kilometer long route, which leads from Nice on the Côte d’Azur to Digne-les-Bains in the Alpes de Haute-Provence department, is one of the most beautiful railway routes in France. It was opened in 1911 after more than twenty years of titanic construction work and connected the remote mountain villages in the rugged hinterland to the coast. To this day, the narrow-gauge railway masters the steep route four times a day, climbs up to 1000 meters, rattles through 25 tunnels and over 31 viaducts. You can get off or get on at 20 stations, as lonely as in a High Noon film, and the train stops at a further 30 stops if you wish. The return journey can be completed in one day, but if you want to explore the sparsely populated hinterland, which is characterized by the “douceur provençale” as in the works of Pagnol and Daudet, you should take several days.