Thursday, January 5, 2012

Christmas in Vienna -Part 1

Our first train trip together! I had ridden the local train myself as far as Munich, but Billy hadn't had a chance yet.  We were both very excited and wasn't sure what to expect.  Being novice train riders we had to just take a deep breath and jump aboard...hoping we'd be able to figure out what we were doing.
I had gone to the station a couple of days earlier to purchase the tickets.  The DB (The Deutsche Bahn railway company) clerk mapped out the whole trip with connections and layovers to get us to our destination. She even got us a special holiday price that was available. The round trip was about 180 Euros that included reserved seating on a fast train called the "Rail Jet."

 Here we are, leaving Burghausen. We had "hoofed" it to the station rolling/carrying our luggage the 2-3 mile trip down the town streets from our apartment. We really tried to pack lightly. We didn't even pack so much as an extra toothbrush because we knew we'd be changing trains and dragging the cases on and off, running for the U-bahn (subway) trains, and just plain ole walking down the streets to our hotel in Vienna and back again.
This is the pretty door of our first station stop.  As you will notice,...it is CLOSED. The station was totally desolate on Christmas Eve and we felt like we were at the end of the world standing in this little depot at 9:30 in the morning on the outskirts of the town.  The gravels getting kicked across the cobblestones as we paced around sounded eerily loud! We had a 40 minute layover in the gray & cold morning air.
 We peeked in the windows and noticed that there was a little restaurant and some snacks and drinks available...at least occasionally...but not to us at that time.
 Billy was worried that the train wasn't coming...
 But the wait paid off. These trains really do run on time and this one to Salzburg wasn't a second late.
I didn't get pictures of our train or the station in Salzburg because we were running like crazy people to get on the "Rail Jet" to Vienna...well, it didn't do us any good, 'cause we missed it. We ended up taking the next train that wasn't an express.  It took up 30 minutes longer and we lost our reserved seats, but it all was fine. (This is some of the Austrian scenery between Salzburg and Vienna) A little cart came by selling coffee and sandwiches and we shared a baggette with cheese and salami and some of the snacks we'd brought along.
It was a great ride and amazingly we were able to navigate the U-bahn system in Vienna to get to our hotel after arriving at the large train station. Billy was SO glad not to have to drive across Austria on strange roads and to find our way on complicated city streets when we got there. 

1 comment:

  1. Hey Deede, I appreciate the info you gave us when you spoke to us at Chattanooga State, but I am really interested in how the train system works there. I would love to see another blog post about trains, so would my children. Thanks again for the blog!

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