Nine-year-old Ali peered out the train window at the verdant, unfamiliar landscape. At the sight of misty low clouds wreathing a high hill, his eyes widened.
"Is that a volcano?" he asked, avid. He'd seen pictures of them in books.
On a normal day, the four-hour high-speed rail run between Vienna, the old imperial seat of power, and Munich, the beer-loving metropolis near the foot of the German Alps, would carry a mix of tourists, students and businesspeople. Passengers usually sit quietly with eyes glued to phones and tablets, glancing only occasionally at the tidy towns and orderly roadways spooling past outside.