Austria!!!

Last time we reported on our upcom­ing route, we were in the mid­dle of try­ing to decide whether to go south to see a cou­ple cas­tles in Tirol or briefly east to Salzburg Aus­tria before cross­ing into Italia. We decided to go East. We may have time to swing by the cas­tles on our way back to Frank­furt, but if not we’ll add them to our grow­ing list of places we’d love to come back to.

On Thurs­day after­noon, we caught a train west to Salzburg. On the way, we decided to pass right through to a town called Hall­statt, where they’ve been min­ing salt since since 800bc.

Upon arrival in Salzburg, we rushed to buy tick­ets to Hall­statt, as it can be stress­ful find­ing a last-minute place to stay in a new place after dark in a for­eign lan­guage. Per­haps we rushed too much, because after we couldn’t find a train or plat­form num­ber on our sur­pris­ingly cheap tick­ets, we were informed that they were not train tick­ets, but bus tick­ets. Huh.

So we took the bus to Bad Ischl, where we then were able to catch the train to Hall­statt. On the way, we fell in love with Aus­tria a bit. Most of the scenery was moun­tains, farms, gon­do­las, but some­how it all looked so… Aus­trian. I can’t explain. The fog that had set­tled over us in Rothen­burg never lifted, and as we trav­elled through the Aus­trian coun­try­side among the clouds, all the scenery faded to gray in the most sur­real way.

As the train pulled away after we got off at Hall­statt, we noticed that there was no train sta­tion… Or town. Just a lit­tle wooden stair­case down to a dock on a lake. A lit­tle panic would have set­tled in if we were the only ones who got off the train. As luck would have it, there were a few others.

Across the lake, there was a town. Steep roofs, crowded onto the shore, and two steeples pok­ing through the fog. As Brian and I aimed and shot sev­eral dozen pho­tos of what may be the most beau­ti­ful scene I’ve ever wit­nessed, the clouds opened up and it started to rain.

Before long, a lit­tle white boat named Ste­fanie came along. We paid two Euros each (just over three Cana­dian dol­lars) to climb aboard.

By the time we got to the lit­tle town across the lake, it was absolutely POURING rain. The lit­tle town looked like a paint­ing – steep lit­tle houses stacked against a steep moun­tain­side. Cobble-stone streets and steps trick­ling between the build­ings were cov­ered in thick green moss, and curl­ing clouds lay in the trees just above. The roofs seemed suited to pro­tect against heavy snow, but all we could see was rain. Rivers poured off the roofs, into the nar­row streets. Soaked to the bone, we grinned and said, “this is such a beau­ti­ful place, we don’t mind.” At least we weren’t ter­ri­bly cold. Yet.

The hotel we were hop­ing to stay at was full. As we sloshed down the street look­ing for a “zim­mer frei” (room avail­able) sign, we started to fear the worst. This is obvi­ously a tiny town. There are a lim­ited num­ber of beds. What if you really do have to book in advance here?

Then we spot­ted a tiny white house with a zim­mer frei sign in the gar­den. We rang the door­bell and a lit­tle old woman answered.

“sprechen­sie Eng­lish?”
“nein”
“zim­mer frei?”

She smiled and nod­ded. Put on her slip­pers and picked up her umbrella. She led us around the out­side of her house and up the stairs to a tiny room to which we smiled and nod­ded and said, “Ja, ja!”, so glad to have found a dry bed to sleep in! The price was good, included break­fast, and oh yeah – it didn’t have a heater. We thought this may be the last bed in town, and were too cold and wet to be picky.

We hung some of our wet clothes to dry, but when back­pack­ing, one doesn’t carry many sweaters. We had no choice but to keep wear­ing some of our drip­ping wet clothes. We went out in search of din­ner with the idea that if we drink enough we won’t feel cold any­more. We didn’t wind up drink­ing much, so we made a blan­ket cucoon in bed and were warm enough to sleep, but not much.

The next day we wan­dered all over town tak­ing pic­tures (which you’ll see on flickr when we get home), and took a tour of the salt mine. In Order to get up the moun­tain, we rode a funic­u­lar – which is like a gon­dola on tracks – a tiny car runs straight up the side of the moun­tain at a ter­ri­fy­ing angle. The track is behind me in the photo above.

While in Hall­statt, we read more and became more enam­oured with Aus­tria. There have been a few moments where I’ve said “for­get Italy, let’s just stay in Aus­tria and Germany.”

By the time we left Hall­statt, we knew we had to see Vienna. It was never part of the plan – it was out of our way. But we had to.

So on Fri­day after­noon we caught Stephanie out of Hall­statt and a train to Vienna.

Vienna was as amaz­ing as we thought it would be – so much of me wants to bab­ble on about it as well.

How­ever, it is cur­rently twenty past mid­night on Sun­day, and I am typ­ing this one let­ter at a time from Brian’s iPhone in a sleeper cabin on a train to Venice. We left Vienna at 8:40pm Sat­ur­day and will arrive in Venice at 8:45am on Sunday.

We can type these blog post­ings any­where along the way, but can only post when we find wi-fi. We miss you all ter­ri­bly, and dad – please tell our kit­ties we love them and we’ll be home to give them scritches and cud­dles before too long. We hope all is well back home, and we’ll post more as soon as we can!