This weekend I ventured off on my first European backpacking trip. It was a weekend of firsts – my first night at a youth hostel, my first ride on an intercity train, the first time I saw a mountain and my first ride in a cable car. I travelled with two exchange students from Miami – Steph and Isabelle. Together we travelled from Saturday to Monday visiting Germany, Switzerland, Austria and Liechtenstein but as you will discover, two of those countries were involuntary visits.
Our travel plan was to visit Innsbruck (a beautiful Austrian city well known for ski resorts), Vaduz (the capital city of Liechtenstein), Salzburg (another Austrian city famous for The Sound of Music) and Linz (this Austrian city is currently the ‘cultural centre of Europe’). To fit all of this in our three day weekend, we planned to catch a train at the unearthly hour of 6:14am Saturday morning. Essentially, this meant I had to get up at 4:30am! So our adventure began in sleep deprived excitement. My travel companions were also new to European travelling and our first problem arose at 6am, when we arrived at the train station and could not find a train to Innsbruck on the screen of departures. After a quick stop to the information desk, we soon discovered that we should indeed catch a train at 6:14am. In hindsight if we had asked for an explanation then, we would have discovered that the screens only display the final destination, not the stops along the way. This information would have proved invaluable in the coming hours and days. Instead, we just followed the directions and boarded a train.
Once inside we debated whether we were in first or second class, because our ticket specified that we had to travel in second class. The problem was that second class was so nice by my standards that I thought it must surely be first class! Europeans travel in style! We eventually found a seat and made ourselves comfortable. The train was only minutes into its journey when the conductor came to check our tickets, at which point he told us we were on the right train, but the wrong carriage and that we were on our way to Munich. Luckily, the conductor spoke English and was extremely helpful. He explained that before the train split into two there was one stop, at which we would have to get off the train and make our way to the other end. European trains are long, so this was no easy task. According to the time table, the train was supposed to stop for 2 minutes, but when the time came it was more like 30 seconds. We went as far as we could in that time and then jumped back on the train, hoping we had made it far enough. When we sat down, we found a different time table with Innsbruck on it, which we assumed meant we were now in the right place. It wasn’t long before another conductor came to check our tickets, he looked at all three at once, stamped them and then gave them back while casually saying, ‘you are on the wrong train’ and left. He didn’t even pause. He just left us! We were sitting at the end of the carriage, so when I say he left…he really was gone! Meanwhile, we were freaking out wondering where we were actually going and how to get to the right place. On the bright side, this presented an ideal opportunity to speak German so I got up and started asking other passengers on the train. In this way, I eventually discovered that the train was indeed going to Innsbruck. We think that the conductor thought we were trying to get to Liechtenstein (the final destination printed on our ticket).
With a 4.5 hour train ride ahead of us, the Miami girls and I decided to try and get some sleep. The train was fairly empty so we each took two seats and soon learnt the European travelling position. You use your outside jacket as a blanket, your jumper as a pillow and put your feet up on the 2nd seat. It was actually very comfortable. Despite this, I was unable to sleep. I was just enjoying the incredibly beautiful Austrian country side while listening to my iPod. It was in this position that I realised that the train had been stopped for a longer than usual time. I discovered something was wrong when the Austrians on the train suddenly became awake, alert and restless. Steph and Isabelle woke up and we wondered what was going on. At this point a message came over the intercom which I did not understand. Once again I asked surrounding passengers, at which point I learnt that a man has jumped in front of the train to commit suicide. She explained that we now had to wait for the coroner. For this reason, our train was stopped in the same place for over 2 hours. We were allowed to get off the train and stretch our legs or in Austrian terms ‘smoke’. The 2 hours seemed to drag on forever and we were stopped in the middle of nowhere. There was a field, a couple houses and a whole lot of nothing. There were a few upsides though. I got to talk to a few more passengers and meet some Austrians. And we also discovered that our mobile phone reception was German. On an inspection of a map, we speculated that we might actually be in Germany. This assumption was later confirmed when we passed a ‘Welcome to Austria’ sign. Hence, we involuntarily visited Germany.
We arrived in Innsbruck over 2 hours late, but it was well worth the wait. It is the most beautiful place I have ever seen. The city is surrounded by mountains. The weather was beautiful so we could clearly see all of the snow topped peaks. When I first saw the mountain behind a building, I thought it looked so fake and like a big picture behind it, after all I had only ever seen pictures of such places before. We paid 25 euro (around AU$50) to ride all the way to the top on 3 different cable cars, but it was well worth the price. That is the highest I have ever been in my life, I saw the most snow that I have ever seen and I saw my first and many mountains. I cannot do the view justice with mere words (see the photos). It was amazing. The cable car ride was a little scary, the car actually swayed from side to side. The entire experience left me looking around in awe. I loved it. The city itself was also really pretty. It had cute archways, cobble stoned streets and old buildings.
That night was my first stay in a youth hostel and when we first arrived it was most unsettling. We walked into the lobby and there were like 50 guys standing around loudly talking. We move through into other rooms and all we see are more guys. In all I saw maybe 4 other girls and the other 100 or more guests were male. I’m not sure why it was like that, but it was strange and intimidating. We had bought a pizza from the supermarket anticipating a poorly equipped kitchen. Instead we found an abundance of dishes and no oven! So we made our really dodgy pizza in a frying pan, but at least it was a cheap meal. We stayed in a room with 6 beds. The room was very small but we each had a locker which was big enough to fit all of our things in, so that was very handy and secure. The real negative of staying in the hostel was that only one other person was in the room with us and she was an extremely rude German. We were in the dorm when she first came in and I tried to be nice to her and talk to her in German but she just did not want to know about it. She wanted to sleep at 9.30pm in a youth hostel – seems like a silly thing to try and do to me – and she would yell at us for entering and leaving the room, even though we were not making any noise. She yelled at Steph to repeatedly close the door, even though the door was already closed. She would mutter nasty things in German and she continually yelled at us. Even though we were being very considerate and keeping noise to a minimum. We went out and came back later that night and once more she was yelling at us. Then I woke up coughing during the night and she said ‘ugh, you’re keeping everyone awake! Go outside!’ It’s 3am in the morning and she wants me to go outside? Basically, she was extremely unreasonable. Otherwise the youth hostel was as dodgy as I expected, but it was cheap and had everything I needed.
The next morning we planned to leave early and see some more sights in Innsbruck before heading to Liechtenstein, however, after a late night out, this did not go to plan. Instead we left quite late and asked the lady in the tourism office how to get to the castle. She gave directions in English to catch a bus. At this point we ran into two Canadians from our university so we all decided to go to the castle together. Unfortunately, this did not eventuate. Instead the bus we were directed to took us through the dodgiest parts of the city. It was run down and dirty. We were on this bus for 30 mins and it just bought us back to where we started. So we went back to the tourist lady who confirmed that it was the right bus. I asked her what stop we should get off at, and she replied ‘I don’t know.’ The lady at the tourist office did not even know how to get to the main tourist attraction! I could not believe it. Schloss (castle) in Innsbruck – not found, that is the first for the weekend…
So having wasted half a day and having achieved nothing. We decided to cut our losses and catch a train to Liechtenstein. After 2.5 hours of travelling through the mountains which was just stunning, we arrived in Buchs. There is no train in Liechtenstein (the 6th smallest country in the world) so we knew we had to get a bus from Buchs. Once we arrived I decided I needed to use the bathroom so I went in only to discover you have to pay to use it (this is quite common throughout Europe). It was only 20c and we had been on the train for a long time so I thought it was worth it. However, as I attempted to put the 20c in the slot, I discovered it was too big and did not fit. And this is how we discovered we were in Switzerland! (Our second involuntary country visit for the weekend).
We exchanged Euros for Swiss francs, which I would describe as 70s money because it’s so bright and colourful. I was extremely excited by this. We caught the bus to Liechtenstein and discovered that the capital city of the 6th smallest country in the world only took 1 hour to explore. It was extremely cool though. I loved it. The city was full of character. Our main interest in coming here was because we had learnt a fair amount about the country so we had our own little jokes to explore. For instance, the royal family there is worth approximately €300billion so we hoped to meet one of the princes there. Sadly, we discovered that the only single prince was 10 years old. Nevertheless, I had a great time just looking around the city. We stayed for 2 hours and then went back to Buchs to catch the train back. We had to wait one hour in Buchs and it was 6pm so we decided to eat tea there. However, Buchs is just a small town on the border and the only food we could find was a pizza shop, where we paid 13 euros each for a pizza. Everything’s more expensive in Switzerland!
Finally, on Monday we visited both Salzburg and Linz on our way back to Vienna. Salzburg was disappointing. It was an overcast day and started raining so we didn’t stay very long. We decided to look at the Fortress and Castle there. The Fortress was pretty cool (it’s the biggest one in Europe), but the castle was not a castle by my standards. We walked straight past it without noticing it. We ended up having to ask people for directions to the castle. Eventually we discovered that this so called castle looked just like any other building and was in fact full of offices. It was a big disappointment. Schloss 2 – rejected. The highlight in Salzburg was an extremely friendly German selling giant pretzels which we enjoyed for a snack. I’m sure Salzburg has a lot more to offer in the summer because it has a lot of nature, but on the day we visited, it was quite gloomy.
Our final stop on our epic weekend was Linz. In contrast, to Salzburg, Linz was stunning despite the rain. The streets and buildings are just so full of character. I really liked it there. Once again we attempted to find the Schloss. We caught the bus up the hill to the schloss and were greeted with beautiful views of the city and river. Even though it was raining, the city looked beautiful. We explored the entire hill area and discovered many beautiful buildings, alleyways, something which could possibly have been a moat, but nothing really screamed schloss. In fact, we were unable to identify which structure was the schloss. Our solution was to just take photos of everything to ensure that somehow we had captured the schloss. Schloss 3 – not found.
That sums up the main events of our weekend. It was a lot of fun and I have discovered that travelling really appeals to me so I am very excited about April where I will be travelling the whole month. It was great to have this short trip before the long one to be able to figure out the train system a bit more. Also, I spoke a lot of German in those 3 days – asking for directions, help and instructions. I feel like my German is definitely improving and more importantly I’m gaining confidence in my ability to use the language every day. I hope that when I come home in July I will be able to wow you all with my linguistic skills.
Our travel plan was to visit Innsbruck (a beautiful Austrian city well known for ski resorts), Vaduz (the capital city of Liechtenstein), Salzburg (another Austrian city famous for The Sound of Music) and Linz (this Austrian city is currently the ‘cultural centre of Europe’). To fit all of this in our three day weekend, we planned to catch a train at the unearthly hour of 6:14am Saturday morning. Essentially, this meant I had to get up at 4:30am! So our adventure began in sleep deprived excitement. My travel companions were also new to European travelling and our first problem arose at 6am, when we arrived at the train station and could not find a train to Innsbruck on the screen of departures. After a quick stop to the information desk, we soon discovered that we should indeed catch a train at 6:14am. In hindsight if we had asked for an explanation then, we would have discovered that the screens only display the final destination, not the stops along the way. This information would have proved invaluable in the coming hours and days. Instead, we just followed the directions and boarded a train.
Once inside we debated whether we were in first or second class, because our ticket specified that we had to travel in second class. The problem was that second class was so nice by my standards that I thought it must surely be first class! Europeans travel in style! We eventually found a seat and made ourselves comfortable. The train was only minutes into its journey when the conductor came to check our tickets, at which point he told us we were on the right train, but the wrong carriage and that we were on our way to Munich. Luckily, the conductor spoke English and was extremely helpful. He explained that before the train split into two there was one stop, at which we would have to get off the train and make our way to the other end. European trains are long, so this was no easy task. According to the time table, the train was supposed to stop for 2 minutes, but when the time came it was more like 30 seconds. We went as far as we could in that time and then jumped back on the train, hoping we had made it far enough. When we sat down, we found a different time table with Innsbruck on it, which we assumed meant we were now in the right place. It wasn’t long before another conductor came to check our tickets, he looked at all three at once, stamped them and then gave them back while casually saying, ‘you are on the wrong train’ and left. He didn’t even pause. He just left us! We were sitting at the end of the carriage, so when I say he left…he really was gone! Meanwhile, we were freaking out wondering where we were actually going and how to get to the right place. On the bright side, this presented an ideal opportunity to speak German so I got up and started asking other passengers on the train. In this way, I eventually discovered that the train was indeed going to Innsbruck. We think that the conductor thought we were trying to get to Liechtenstein (the final destination printed on our ticket).
With a 4.5 hour train ride ahead of us, the Miami girls and I decided to try and get some sleep. The train was fairly empty so we each took two seats and soon learnt the European travelling position. You use your outside jacket as a blanket, your jumper as a pillow and put your feet up on the 2nd seat. It was actually very comfortable. Despite this, I was unable to sleep. I was just enjoying the incredibly beautiful Austrian country side while listening to my iPod. It was in this position that I realised that the train had been stopped for a longer than usual time. I discovered something was wrong when the Austrians on the train suddenly became awake, alert and restless. Steph and Isabelle woke up and we wondered what was going on. At this point a message came over the intercom which I did not understand. Once again I asked surrounding passengers, at which point I learnt that a man has jumped in front of the train to commit suicide. She explained that we now had to wait for the coroner. For this reason, our train was stopped in the same place for over 2 hours. We were allowed to get off the train and stretch our legs or in Austrian terms ‘smoke’. The 2 hours seemed to drag on forever and we were stopped in the middle of nowhere. There was a field, a couple houses and a whole lot of nothing. There were a few upsides though. I got to talk to a few more passengers and meet some Austrians. And we also discovered that our mobile phone reception was German. On an inspection of a map, we speculated that we might actually be in Germany. This assumption was later confirmed when we passed a ‘Welcome to Austria’ sign. Hence, we involuntarily visited Germany.
We arrived in Innsbruck over 2 hours late, but it was well worth the wait. It is the most beautiful place I have ever seen. The city is surrounded by mountains. The weather was beautiful so we could clearly see all of the snow topped peaks. When I first saw the mountain behind a building, I thought it looked so fake and like a big picture behind it, after all I had only ever seen pictures of such places before. We paid 25 euro (around AU$50) to ride all the way to the top on 3 different cable cars, but it was well worth the price. That is the highest I have ever been in my life, I saw the most snow that I have ever seen and I saw my first and many mountains. I cannot do the view justice with mere words (see the photos). It was amazing. The cable car ride was a little scary, the car actually swayed from side to side. The entire experience left me looking around in awe. I loved it. The city itself was also really pretty. It had cute archways, cobble stoned streets and old buildings.
That night was my first stay in a youth hostel and when we first arrived it was most unsettling. We walked into the lobby and there were like 50 guys standing around loudly talking. We move through into other rooms and all we see are more guys. In all I saw maybe 4 other girls and the other 100 or more guests were male. I’m not sure why it was like that, but it was strange and intimidating. We had bought a pizza from the supermarket anticipating a poorly equipped kitchen. Instead we found an abundance of dishes and no oven! So we made our really dodgy pizza in a frying pan, but at least it was a cheap meal. We stayed in a room with 6 beds. The room was very small but we each had a locker which was big enough to fit all of our things in, so that was very handy and secure. The real negative of staying in the hostel was that only one other person was in the room with us and she was an extremely rude German. We were in the dorm when she first came in and I tried to be nice to her and talk to her in German but she just did not want to know about it. She wanted to sleep at 9.30pm in a youth hostel – seems like a silly thing to try and do to me – and she would yell at us for entering and leaving the room, even though we were not making any noise. She yelled at Steph to repeatedly close the door, even though the door was already closed. She would mutter nasty things in German and she continually yelled at us. Even though we were being very considerate and keeping noise to a minimum. We went out and came back later that night and once more she was yelling at us. Then I woke up coughing during the night and she said ‘ugh, you’re keeping everyone awake! Go outside!’ It’s 3am in the morning and she wants me to go outside? Basically, she was extremely unreasonable. Otherwise the youth hostel was as dodgy as I expected, but it was cheap and had everything I needed.
The next morning we planned to leave early and see some more sights in Innsbruck before heading to Liechtenstein, however, after a late night out, this did not go to plan. Instead we left quite late and asked the lady in the tourism office how to get to the castle. She gave directions in English to catch a bus. At this point we ran into two Canadians from our university so we all decided to go to the castle together. Unfortunately, this did not eventuate. Instead the bus we were directed to took us through the dodgiest parts of the city. It was run down and dirty. We were on this bus for 30 mins and it just bought us back to where we started. So we went back to the tourist lady who confirmed that it was the right bus. I asked her what stop we should get off at, and she replied ‘I don’t know.’ The lady at the tourist office did not even know how to get to the main tourist attraction! I could not believe it. Schloss (castle) in Innsbruck – not found, that is the first for the weekend…
So having wasted half a day and having achieved nothing. We decided to cut our losses and catch a train to Liechtenstein. After 2.5 hours of travelling through the mountains which was just stunning, we arrived in Buchs. There is no train in Liechtenstein (the 6th smallest country in the world) so we knew we had to get a bus from Buchs. Once we arrived I decided I needed to use the bathroom so I went in only to discover you have to pay to use it (this is quite common throughout Europe). It was only 20c and we had been on the train for a long time so I thought it was worth it. However, as I attempted to put the 20c in the slot, I discovered it was too big and did not fit. And this is how we discovered we were in Switzerland! (Our second involuntary country visit for the weekend).
We exchanged Euros for Swiss francs, which I would describe as 70s money because it’s so bright and colourful. I was extremely excited by this. We caught the bus to Liechtenstein and discovered that the capital city of the 6th smallest country in the world only took 1 hour to explore. It was extremely cool though. I loved it. The city was full of character. Our main interest in coming here was because we had learnt a fair amount about the country so we had our own little jokes to explore. For instance, the royal family there is worth approximately €300billion so we hoped to meet one of the princes there. Sadly, we discovered that the only single prince was 10 years old. Nevertheless, I had a great time just looking around the city. We stayed for 2 hours and then went back to Buchs to catch the train back. We had to wait one hour in Buchs and it was 6pm so we decided to eat tea there. However, Buchs is just a small town on the border and the only food we could find was a pizza shop, where we paid 13 euros each for a pizza. Everything’s more expensive in Switzerland!
Finally, on Monday we visited both Salzburg and Linz on our way back to Vienna. Salzburg was disappointing. It was an overcast day and started raining so we didn’t stay very long. We decided to look at the Fortress and Castle there. The Fortress was pretty cool (it’s the biggest one in Europe), but the castle was not a castle by my standards. We walked straight past it without noticing it. We ended up having to ask people for directions to the castle. Eventually we discovered that this so called castle looked just like any other building and was in fact full of offices. It was a big disappointment. Schloss 2 – rejected. The highlight in Salzburg was an extremely friendly German selling giant pretzels which we enjoyed for a snack. I’m sure Salzburg has a lot more to offer in the summer because it has a lot of nature, but on the day we visited, it was quite gloomy.
Our final stop on our epic weekend was Linz. In contrast, to Salzburg, Linz was stunning despite the rain. The streets and buildings are just so full of character. I really liked it there. Once again we attempted to find the Schloss. We caught the bus up the hill to the schloss and were greeted with beautiful views of the city and river. Even though it was raining, the city looked beautiful. We explored the entire hill area and discovered many beautiful buildings, alleyways, something which could possibly have been a moat, but nothing really screamed schloss. In fact, we were unable to identify which structure was the schloss. Our solution was to just take photos of everything to ensure that somehow we had captured the schloss. Schloss 3 – not found.
That sums up the main events of our weekend. It was a lot of fun and I have discovered that travelling really appeals to me so I am very excited about April where I will be travelling the whole month. It was great to have this short trip before the long one to be able to figure out the train system a bit more. Also, I spoke a lot of German in those 3 days – asking for directions, help and instructions. I feel like my German is definitely improving and more importantly I’m gaining confidence in my ability to use the language every day. I hope that when I come home in July I will be able to wow you all with my linguistic skills.
Eli! you never cease to amaze me!!!!!!!!
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