Thu, 02 Oct 2003

author Liz	location Genève, Suisse
posted 20:03 CEST 09/10/2003	section Europe2002/Europe/Osterreich/Osterreich 3 ( all photos )

Quickly Through Österreich ( 7 photos )
(Continued from Deutschland 3)
Near Lindau, the train went alongside Bodensee (Lake Constance), which was really beautiful, especially with the huge mountains on the horizon, and the sun setting behind the mountains, making the lake and the sky so many different colours.
Our last part of the journey was in the dark. The train stopped at Feldkirch, and from there we caught a bus into Liechtenstein.

author Liz	location Interlaken, Schweiz
posted 20:05 CEST 06/10/2003	section Europe2002/Europe/Osterreich/Osterreich 2 ( all photos )

North into Deutschland ( 2 photos )
On Tuesday, we again had a lovely breakfast at the hostel, packed our bags and headed up to the train station.
Austrians are obviously much more efficent that Italians - the train arrived and left on time, and was even on the right platform.
The countryside was beautiful - huge forest-covered mountains, and little farms with cows and fruit-trees on the valley floor.
We crossed the border north into Deutschland.

author Liz	location Interlaken, Schweiz
posted 19:44 CEST 06/10/2003	section Europe2002/Europe/Osterreich/Osterreich 2 ( all photos )

Innsbruck ( 40 photos )
On Monday morning, we had a delicious buffet breakfast at the hostel and then we headed out to explore Innsbruck.
We crossed the River Inn and went into the old part of town. The tall and narrow houses looked beautiful and we saw the Goldenes Dachl (Golden Roof), a beautiful little building with a roof made of 2657 gilded copper tiles, which would have glinted beautifully had the sun been shining, but still looked very nice as we wandered along.
We looked through a few touristy shops and wandered around a lot of the small streets before heading out towards Markthalle, a large indoor market with lots of fresh fruit, vegetables, bread and meats. We bought some fruit and a pastry snack to eat during the day. From there we walked a short distance to an internet cafe to check our e-mails and so on.
After that we decided to see some of Innsbruck's past Olympic sites. Innsbruck hosted the Winter Olympics in 1964 and 1976, and the city is certainly in a great position for winter sports, with lots of snow during the cold months and mountains all around it.
We could see the Bergisel Stadion from where we stood, but it was at the edge of the city and it took us quite a while to walk to it. The last bit we had to walk up to get to the bottom of the Stadion was very steep, but then we were there, and the bottom of Bergisel Stadion, and Olympic ski jump stadium.
I had no idea how steep these things were, but I guess if you want to launch yourself into the air, you have to be going pretty fast downhill first.
We caught a little cable car to the lookout tower at the top, and even just going up in that made me dizzy! In the tower, we caught the lift to the very top and walked out onto a viewing platform where we could look down the length of the ski jump out over Innsbruck and across to the huge mountains opposite. We could see the big central train station, the line of the river, and we guessed the spot where we were staying, and saw the graveyard at the bottom of the jump where people who missed must end up. A rainbow even came out over Innsbruck and it all looked very pretty.
We caught the cable car back down, getting out about half way down for a bit more of a look around at the very bottom, Tim sat down and I climbed up to the other side to see a good view of the whole ski jump, and the place where the Olympic flame had been lit.
From the ski jump, we made our way back down the hill and walked to the old stadium, which turned out to be run-down and closed. Along the way, we stopped at a bell-makers and looked in the shop at the many different bells of all different shapes and sizes.
We stopped to have a bit of lunch and just sat and relaxed for a while. By now it was about 3pm, and Tim and I decided to phone the Italian garage to see how Rosie was going. We had phoned our insurance company the week before to see how it was all going, and were assured we would get a call when everything was ready, or if there where any problems. So when we called the garage in Italy on mondy afternoon to see how it was all going, we had a huge shock - they hadn't even ordered the part yet, let alone started the job!!! They said some rubbish about waiting for authorization from our insurance company which is crazy because they got authorization the day we were in Padova and approved the go-ahead for the repair.
So we had just spent a week and a half travelling around and waiting for nothing. Seeing everything we have seen has been great, but we were both very frustrated and angry about this, as we were hoping to get the van back at the end of the week. Also, the garage was now going to increase their fee from 2500 euro to maybe 3000 euro, maybe more, as well as taking weeks or months to repair it.
To cut a long story short, we contacted our insurance company and we phoned our contact in the Netherlands, and we have now decided not to go ahead with the repair in Italy, but for a much cheaper price to have the van towed from northern Italy to the Netherlands. Once in the Netherlands, the van will have a whole re-conditioned engine put in for about a third of the cost of half a brand-new Volkswagen dealership engine.
So at the end of Monday afternoon, we were feeling lots of emotions that we shouldn't be feeling when we are on holidays. But at least now it is all sorted out, we are saving heaps, and we can continue the last bit of our travels by train. The only unfortunate side is that because we were expecting to get back to the van after two weeks, all of our warm clothes, shoes and so on are in the van while we are here getting colder and colder. But still, we are very happy.
After that we went back to the hostel, had sandwiches for dinner and went to bed early.

author Tim	location the 10:34 Innsbruck to München Inter-City train
posted 11:44 CEST 30/09/2003	section Europe2002/Europe/Osterreich/Osterreich 2 ( all photos )

Into Innsbruck ( No photos )
(Continued from Italia)
At the border station Brenaro/Brenner, the train stopped for quite some time, with plenty of armed Austrian police wandering up and down the train. It turns out this was just routine, and also that the driver seems to get out and is replaced by an Austrian one. We had thought that maybe we would need to change trains, but this was not the case.
We travelled the remaining distance to Innsbruck in no time at all, arriving at the presently being upgraded Hauptbahnhof. Being a little more organised than usual, we had rung ahead from Italia to see if there were rooms available at one of the hostels on the other side of town (but still the closest in), Jugendherberge St Nikolaus.
Walking there, it became readily apparent that we were in another country - no vespas, taxis were Mercedes instead of FIATs, we crossed roads without fear of death, and everything was calm and serene. We were going to like Innsbruck, we could tell already.
We crossed the river Inn (since bridge in Deutsch is brücke, Innsbruck is named after the main bridge) at a small footbridge Inn Steg, finding our hostel/pub/restaurant combination just on the other side. It was a pleasant, lively place, filled to the brim with Aussies. Almost everyone was either going to or coming from Oktoberfest, thinking the same as us that this was quite a pleasant convenient place to stop over.
We were once again in separate dorms, which we don't really mind but all our stuff is packed into the one pack, which makes showering and finding clothes a little difficult. My dorm was the strangest yet I have seen. Picture a bunk bed, one up down. Got that? Now picture a double bunk bed, so that there is a double-sized bed on both the top and the bottom. Still with me? Well, this room was completely filled with a quintuple bunk bed - five up, five down. I was more than a little concered about finding myself sleeping next to a large blubbering drunk Aussie, but I needn't have worried. They cleverly fill up the positions with spaces in between, only filling the other ones when they are really full.

author Tim	location Gemona del Friuli, Friuli-Venezia Giulia, Italia
posted 09:15 CEST 13/09/2003	section Europe2002/Europe/Osterreich/Osterreich 1 ( all photos )

Into the Alps ( 12 photos )
On the road for what turned out to be a mostly driving, exploring day, we headed back to the motorway the across east towards a couple of mountain roads which we had heard were very spectacular.
We wanted to go up and/or down the Großglocknerstraße, one of the highest mountain roads in the area and supposedly full of spectacular scenery. I picked a different road to take us up north of there so we could drive back down it, heading generally to Italy. However, after winding our way up towards one of the towns on the road (Mallnitz, which was a beautiful little town in its own right nestled into the mountains under snowy peaks), it became apparent that the only way forward was to put Rosie on a train which ran through a tunnel under the mountain!
I'm not quite sure why it couldn't have just been a road tunnel like so many others around the place, but we decided the cost was a bit high and the wait was going to be too long.
So, aborting our first attempt to cross the Alps, we retreated south, then pushed further west, intending to go this time up Großglocknerstraße. It was a great climb up to the start of the pass, through yet more villages nestled around the place, one of which had a huge chicken advertising "Backhenfest", starting the next day. What a shame we wouldn't be around to see that.
Pushing Rosie higher and higher (to about 1500m if I remember correctly), we eventually came to the toll gate for the start of the pass proper. The van infront of us had to reverse out, we were not sure why. However, we had to do the same after asking the little man there if we required snow chains. "Ja" came the simple answer, couple with a bit of laughter at all the stupid tourists around today. A look at the sign up the road with tyres complete with chains should have also given it away!
So, figuring we had plenty of time for mountain passes complete with snow if really wanted to do that, we aborted Alps Crossing Attempt Number Two, grabbed some photos, and decided that the cold and rain were all bit depressing. What better way to cure that than to head south to Italy!
There are plenty of different passes from Österreich into Italy, so we chose the closest one, Plöcken Pass/Monte Croce Carnico (in Deutsch and Italiano respectively). To get across you have to cross two separate mountain ranges, both a part of the Dolomites. Singing the 1980s theme from Commonweath Bank's children's bank accounts, we drove out of our last "major" Deutsch-speaking town Oberdrauburg due south, heading for another country.
The interesting thing about Europe is that if we had have pushed about fifty kilometres east instead of south, we would have ended up in Slovenia, speaking yet another language, with different cultures, customs and food. But I don't have visas for there - perhaps next time.
We wound our way up the first ridge of mountains over Gailsbergsattel Pass (982m), then back down the other side into the road and tiny towns built between the two ranges. Still beyond us were the imposing peaks of the second range, jutting like huge sharp teeth into the sky. Slowly we chugged up more mountains, overtaken at speed by fast German-made cars, and increasingly Italian-registered Fiats.
I was reminded of the movie Italian Job by all the fantastic scenery - and interestingly, in a manner reminiscent of driving into and out of Wales, the weather looked far far better on the other side!
Coming out of one of the strange half-open tunnels which are so common here (perhaps just to keep snow off while still giving you a view?), we dodged a couple of sheep who had found their way in, and then we saw the huge EU-compliant "Italia" sign!
There were zero formalities as we pushed across into Italia.

author Tim	location Camping Weisses, Schiefling-am-See, Karnten, Österreich
posted 08:59 CEST 12/09/2003	section Europe2002/Europe/Osterreich/Osterreich 1 ( all photos )

Graz, Pushing West ( 29 photos )
Waking in the mist and fog of the forested caravan park, we ended up driving over to the amenities block to do our washing up as the rain was so heavy. We paid the guy - the downside to knowing a little German is that people assume you know a lot and can understand it rapidly. It is certainly a good exercise in learning how people who can't speak your language must find it difficult to get by.
We headed south through the mountains, the wind and rain un-ceasing. There were some great views despite this, as we wound our way first up and then down one of the three mountain ranges which run from east-to-west across Österreich.
We stopped for some morning tea in a little bus stop perched on the edge of a cliff overlooking a valley. We could see our road wind all the way down and then off into the distance.
However pretty this way of travelling is, it is quite slow, so eventually we re-joined the motorway and followed it into Graz. This is one of the towns which are interesting here and there around the place, but which we don't really have days and days to explore. We set ourselves the general task of exploring the World Heritage listed old town and finding the one place Lonely Planet mentioned which tickled our fancy.
We parked in the town (surrounded by plenty of roadworks) next to a tramline, paid a reasonable parking fee and then walked into the old town across the river Mur. Plenty of narrow streets fired out in all directions from the central Rathaus square, and we followed some of these, Murgasse then Hofgasse as the worked their way up hill. There were refreshingly few touristy shops, which for once was not what we wanted - we are yet to procure a fridge magnet from Österreich and will leave for Italy soon!
At the top of the hill, we found the city had approved, as many have, a weird modern art installation. In this case, a carpark had huge mirrors on walls all in it which we wandered in and around. This had the rather un-nerving effect of making the group of fifty Japanese tourists look more like five hundered, all taking their own photos in the mirrors. We did the same, however, but then hastilly headed off further up the road to our main target. In the Burg complex there is a double-winding staircase which plays tricks with your mind. We had it all to ourselves for a while, running around and generally being confused. However, we heard the Japanese tourist group approaching, covering the only way out. Even if there was only fifty of them, we still needed to get out somehow!
After that battle, we picked another random street to head back down into town. There were quite a lot of buildings and parks of interest, but not really enough to compete with Wien, a city far more worthy of your time.
We wandered up towards the entrances to Schlossberg, the castle on the hill. It is famous as the symbol of Graz for having the hour and minute hands reversed on its clock. You can get up there either by the attractive stairway, funicular railway or lift straight through the rock. We chose none of these options, all castled out recently and needing to get back before our parking ran out.
After a quick photocopying session to claim our insurance from the work on the van (which seems to have worked wonders, as it happens), we tried about four exits from the town before we found one with a signpost to the motorway, or indeed a signpost at all. Some towns really need to send their civil engineers on a tourism course - when you travel all over the place, good signs are important!
Eventually on the A2 motorway, the views were pretty amazing when we weren't in the tunnels along past Klagenfurt, through the outskirts of Villach then Velden to eventually find our selected caravan park (Camping Weisses) on the south side of the Wörther See. This pretty piece of the world is far enough from the motorway to be reasonably quiet, and is quite pretty with an accompanying high price tag (seems to be a very popular tourist destination).
As we drove in there was plenty of mist coming off the See - the weather is changing here fairly rapidly.
There's plenty of snow on the mountain tops around the place now, and it is quite cold overnight and in the mornings. It's only about two weeks out of summer!

author Tim	location St. Sebastian, Steiermark, Österreich
posted 10:07 CEST 11/09/2003	section Europe2002/Europe/Osterreich/Osterreich 1 ( all photos )

Wien Again, Wachau, South up the Mountains ( 22 photos )
Remembering this time to take my camera, we set into town once again for a bit more of wander. Our time was limited as we had to leave the caravan park.
First was a walk around the north-section of the Ring, starting at Schottenring U-Bahn and walking anti-clockwise past various attractive buildings. This took in Schottentor, then down the most interesting Western section. All the way the incessant rain didn't leave us, but the city still looked passable.
We walked past the University, then the Rathaus and its accompanying leafy Rathasplatz. On from there to the huge Parliament buildnig with statues and flags waving proudly. Perhaps the most pretty part was suprisingly the Museum of Fine Arts and its grounds with sculptured rounded trees, known as Maria Theresien Platz.
We walked around the grounds of the Hofburg before re-tracing some our steps from the previous day for photographs. We had hoped the weather would be a bit better but no matter - some of the best parts were undercover, while others a bit of juggling the umbrella, guidebooks and camera gave the desired results. Yes, we look totally like tourists wherever we go.
Back through Michaelerplatz, into Stephensplatz and then it was time to get back. Wien is a city we could have spent a month in, but that is not to be this trip. There's so much more to see, and you seem to have to have quite a lot of money to spend to do the big things such as Vienna Boys Choir or classical music performances.
Getting on the road, we found our way back out of the city, heading around the A21 and then along the A1. Despite the horrible weather, we decided to detour up one of the most popular sections of the Danube in the Wachau valley between Melk and Krems. We have plans to get back to some sections of Österreich at a later date (notably Saltzburg), but this would be a bit far and the weather most probably would not be much better anyway.
The drive was nice if not amazingly spectacular (it's going to be tough to match Norway's fjords), and at the end after a little asking around, we found our Holy Grail - a Campingaz 907 cylinder!! For so long we have eaten out, cooked barbeques in silly places, but generally spent too much money, and now we could be self-sufficient again! The excitement was such that Liz was actually jumping up and down in the van when I returned triumphant. We didn't even care that it cost significantly more than it really should have.
Back down the otherside, we were on a much smaller road, all lined with vineards, grape vines and fruit trees everywhere. The tiny villages were all along the banks of the river, bringing the 100km/h traffic down to 30km/h through tiny little gaps in the houses we just fit through.
Not being one to be boring, I picked us a path well and truly off the motorways through to our next target - Graz. Of course this meant much slower going, but we really didn't mind. We heard on the weather report (BBC World Service gets through here and there) that there was going to be snow above 1700 metres, and although we didn't get quite that high, we certainly burrowed through clouds as we wound up and up along the backroads of the 25, 28, 20 and then no number at all roads.
This journey didn't get us far at all towards Graz, but we didn't care - the scenery was amazing with lots of little villages with their old buildings and spires all surrounded by mist and fog. We got thoroughly stared at in a place called St. Anthony - perhaps the locals thought we were lost as they surely don't get much passing trade. Most people are sane and boring and take the motorways.
Probably the best stop was at a village called Puchenstuben, perched atop a ridge, overlooking the misty valley. Magical.
We ended up stopping for the night north of Mariazella at Camping Erlaufsee, in St. Sebastian. The place is surrounded by forest, quite a way even off our un-beaten track we were following. After a fight with the gas fittings (the regulator valve screw fitting was giving me grief), we had a working stove once again!
Dinner followed swiftly, strangely happy to cook boring pasta and sauce which went down well after the long day. I'm sure the novely will wear off pretty quickly.

author Tim	location St. Sebastian, Steiermark, Österreich
posted 09:19 CEST 11/09/2003	section Europe2002/Europe/Osterreich/Osterreich 1 ( all photos )

Into Wien ( No photos )
(Continued from Ceska Republika (Czech Republic)).
Across no-mans land from Ceska, we slowed and stopped at the next border post, Drasenhofen, this one belonging to Österreich. We were expecting more grief about my Shengen visa status (I'm still all legal, my passport just doesn't quite look that way), but the guy on the desk was more interested in Liz.
We had to find first then produce her driver's licence (an example of which he had obviously never seen before), then the green card (rego papers) for the van. There were no problems in the end, and perhaps it was good that he had all this to distract him from me.
In the end, we waved Ceska goodbye, and stopped at the first service station. Similarly to Ceska and a lot of European countries, Österreich requires you to buy a vignette (windscreen sticker) if you want to use the motorways. So, we removed our Ceska one for safe-keeping and attached instead a shiny new one. It was quite strange to be back in a country where only 2km north I couldn't understand a word that was going on, but now we could communicate, even on a basic level.
The rain started hounding down, accompanied dramatically by wind as we pushed due south to Wien (Vienna), the capital city. In terms of our luck recently, finding Camping Neue Donau on the east side of town was a walk in the park - only about three wrong turns! Since our caravan club guide book is written mostly by elderly British caravaners who we can imagine probably bicker between themselves over whether they turned left or right to get there, we are not totally suprised when the directions end us up in totally the wrong place. So, Wien was a pleasant suprise.
The guy on the desk put us near two vans full of about eight kiwis - perhaps he thought "they're from your hemisphere, you put up with them". They had all sorts of kiwi slogans and icons painted all over their vans - I suspect their chances of selling the vans when they are finished travelling are somewhat reduced now.
We wasted little time getting organised and getting down to the bus stop for a bus to the U-bahn (underground train) into town. However, we missed the bus by ten seconds or so and had a half an hour wait. We used this time to read up and get ourselves oriented in the city. When the bus did arrive, the guy on-board wouldn't sell us a ticket. Wien has moved to the same system as the vast majority of European cities we have encountered - you need tickets before you get on, and they typically last for 24 hours.
Luckily, he just waved us past and we bought our tickets at the other end. The wait for the U-Bahn at Kaisermühlen (Vienna International Centre). This got us to Karlsplatz near the south of the centre, from where we walked down to Naschmarkt. This is an arrangement of little shops and markets in the middle of a wide street, from where we got what we intended to be a snack until we cooked dinner later, but turned out to be huge meals.
It was about here that I worked out I hadn't brought my camera in with me. First time I have forgotten that for a while, but no real matter as we had planned to come in again the next morning and could get some snaps then.
We wandered up Kärntner Straße into the centre of town at Stephansplatz, dominated by Stephansdom (St. Stephen's Cathedral). Not a vast open square like many others, this was instead surrounded by plenty of shops build tall and seeming to overhang. The whole time the rain was just annoying enough for us to need umbrellas, but not drenching.
From there we wandered out to Michaelerplatz, which fronts onto the Kaiserappartements and the famous Spanish Riding School. The latter Mum had suggested was worth a visit, however the one-month wait for tickets coupled with the huge sums of money they demanded meant this wasn't going to happen for us this trip.
We walked past some excavations of old buildings which existed here hundereds of years ago through the archways and found ourselves in Heldenplatz. This is surrounded by the massive Hofburg (Imperial Palace), which is so big it plays funny games with your eyes as you walk past it.
Onto Burgring and Opernring, two of the roads which combine to form a ring around the city (well, not quite a ring, but the Danau/Danube river fills the remaining part). We had heard about the famous Viennese coffee houses, and Lonely Planet recommended Café Sperl as one of the most un-spoilt. We whole-heartedly agree. The place had an amazing charm, complete with centuries old upholstered bench chairs, billiard tables and of course fantastic coffee. We were a little taken aback at the small size of our supposed großer (large) coffees, but this was a case of quality over quantity any day. The waitress even humoured our horrible attempts at Deutsch, and brought us a great mineral water which dissapeared rather quickly - it was hot in there.
Next was a trip back into the heart of the city to have a look at the interesting-sounding Haus Der Musik (Das Klangmuseum). This turned out to be a wonderful way to while away a few hours, with everything from the city's famous sons Mozart, Beethoven, Schönberg, etc. through to an interesting (for me anyway) network of computers which automatically made real-time compositions over the Internet. There were rooms where you could push buttons to mix together human voices in strange ways, explorations of the nature of sound, and plenty of ways to do very strange things with sounds.
Done there, it was time to think about "home" and dinner, so we re-traced our steps to the caravan park via the Stephensplatz U-Bahn station. This time a bus was only a couple of minutes wait away, returning us to the caravan park to cook in the kitchen there. It was strange to eat in the van again after so long.

(customised)