Sheep Guarding Llama

We got onto the night train in Vienna (this is actually last night, the evening of the third) at twenty until nine.  We got settled in after a while.  The two person cabin was extremely tight for the four of us, especially with Luciana attempting to put herself to bed the moment that we got on to the train.  Liesl sat with her on the bench seat while Dominica was crammed into the room attempting to get our stuff unpacked and set up for the night.  She had a “train bag” prepared with all of the stuff that we would need while on the train so that the main luggage would not need to be opened and sorted through in the tight space.

The space over the main hallway is accessible from the cabin and we were able to put the big luggage pieces up there, even the bumblebee backpack with the girls’ toys in it.  So we were doing well  from a “keeping the cabin empty” standpoint.  The stroller even fit under the bench.  They really make these things efficient.

There were a lot of Americans on this train.  In the cabin next to us were two girls from San Diego over to Austria for a wedding.  Way down the way was a couple from New Orleans and Baton Rouge who had been in Hungary for a wedding as well.  Nearer to us was a couple, David and Stacy, with their ten month old daughter Caroline who were heading to Venice without any particular travel plans – just seeing where the wind would take them.  I probably talked with David for more than an hour.

Pretty soon we had the room switched over to the bed, rather than the bench, configuration.  This actually provides tons more room and I am not convinced that having the room be convertible even makes sense.  If they made it always be two beds I think that they could shave even more space and make it even better.  The bench mode is pretty much useless.  Maybe if you really only had two people it would not be so bad, but I saw people attempting to use it that way and it wasn’t very good.

Liesl was pretty excited about getting to sleep on the train.  This was a cool treat for her.  We pretty much went to bed as soon as we were able to orchestrate it.  I did not look at the clock but I am guessing that it was around ten in the evening.

The setup was Liesl sleeping with me on the top bunk and Dominica and Luciana snuggling on the bottom bunk.  Liesl and I had to have the upper berth for safety reasons.  Pretty much there was no danger to anyone but me and the fall for me is quite a bit less, percentage wise, than for anyone else.  And I am larger so very likely to catch one of the safety harnesses before actually hitting the floor.  Liesl and I slept with our heads towards the window.  Luciana also slept by the window but Dominica slept backward with her head at the cabin door so that should would fit better with Luciana there.

We opened the window in our cabin.  For some reason whenever we get a cabin or a couchette in Europe someone seems to have left the heat on full blast so it is unbearable in there when we first get into it and we have to get it cooled way down to be able to use it.  We are very thankful that the window opened so that we were able to get some fresh air in there.  Even with the window open it was warmer than we would have liked, but it was cool enough that it would not be a problem once we settled down and relaxed for a bit.

I had originally thought that I would likely write on the train for a while but the reality of the cramped quarters meant that it was straight off to sleep.

Liesl, Luciana and I all drifted off to sleep pretty quickly.  I probably lay awake, or partially awake, for up to an hour after we went to bed.  The stops at the rail stations makes it hard to drift off initially and at one point I noticed that it had started raining but it really wasn’t raining in so we just kept the window open anyway.  That probably made it a bit nicer, in fact.  Dominica did not fall asleep at all, or hardly so, all night.  She used the iPad without Internet access and tried to sleep but the regular stops kept her awake.

I slept soundly all night.  I think that the train motion and noise kept me very much asleep.  I did not wake up until seven in the morning.  So that was probably around nine hours of sleep.  Both girls were still asleep still and stayed asleep for about another hour.  Our breakfast arrived shortly after I woke up.  I love room service on the train – this is pretty neat.  We got a welcome kit last night too that included water, wine, washcloth, soap and some other stuff.

When I first woke up I thought that it was dark out.  That threw me off for some time.  In reality it was dark because in Italy the trains are nearly always in tunnels.  That was the south-eastern Alps, likely in the Sudtirol, where we were in tunnels so much that I did not know that the sun was actually climbing into the sky.  Once we cleared the tunnels we were met by sudden, bright sunlight.

It took a bit of work to get everyone up, dressed, everything packed back up and ready to get off of the train.  We stopped in Venice just after eight forty.  The train ride on the overnight is not actually all that fast taking almost exactly twelve hours to do the journey that the day time Railjet can do in around seven. Dominica said that during the night it stopped for several hours in Salzburg which probably explains it.

We got off of the train and we are now in Italy.  Venice to be exact, out in and among the canals.  After all of these months discussing Italy it is rather surreal to actually be here.  Although this is just Venice which is not the same as the rest of Italy so this is still in the “not there yet” category.

Our plan for this morning is just to see enough of Venice to be satisfied and to get back onto a train and on to Tuscany to our hotel.  We were very thankful thank Venice does not use the locker system for storing luggage but instead has luggage handlers who do it so no issues with running out of space.  So we took our luggage straight there and dropped it off.  It is five Euros per back for five hours which is not cheap at all compared to the Vienna lockers which, for us, would have been somewhere around three Euros and fifty cents for all day storage, if it had been available.  Still probably the cheapest way to see Venice, though.  No complaints here.

Then it was straight out from the train station to the canal where we bought ourselves twelve hour passes to ride anything, anywhere in town including the new Grand Canal tour that we figured would be perfect for us on our crazy, limited schedule.

We took the regular taxi service out to San Marco and got off and walked around for just a little bit.  We checked out the square and saw the insane masses of early morning tourists already filling every nook and cranny.  We did not stay long, there is no way to do anything in Venice without being in a massive tourist queue.

We walked along the Grand Canal checking out the long line of junk sellers (literally an entire street of people selling junk) and stopped by the Royal Gardens for a nice, but extremely short, walk there.  Then we decided that there was almost nothing to see with little kids in tow so we got onto the tour boat and rode it for the entire length going out to the eastern-most point of the tour and then riding it all of the way back to the train station – roughly a thirty five minute boat ride from the farthest point back in.  So nearly fifty minutes on it for us.

The tour boat worked out well since we were about the only passengers and for half of the time we were actually the only passengers.  It gave us a chance to really see everything along the Grand Canal.  We were able to ride outside and I took tons of pictures and some good video too.

We got back to the train station and booked the first train for Florence which departed just about thirty or forty minutes after we got off of our tour boat.

Our takeaway for Venice is that it is pretty awful.  It is just a tourist trap.  Not like Paris or London or Rome, more like Universal Studios.  This is not a living city, this is a decaying, long dead city held together for the sole purpose of selling tickets to tourists to come look at the decay.  Some great history happened here.  Venice has a great past and played a major role in making Europe what it is today.  But the city that you take a boat ride through is not that city.  This city is just a facade, just a sad reminder that not everything lasts.  Nothing actually happens here.  There is no “real life” to find behind the tourists.  It is like a dirty, cheap and dangerous version of the worst bits of Disney World.  It lacks the good things about other cities in Europe.  It isn’t like a real city, just a fake one that gets turned on just for the tourists.

If you really take the time to hit the museums, tour the real back streets, really seek out the food, etc. I am sure that you can, with enough effort, turn Venice into something decent for a short stay.  But this is a city that requires a lot of money, patience and effort and I doubt that the returns for that are very big.  I wouldn’t avoid Venice, it is of such historic importance that it will always have a special place.  But I would definitely make it one of the very last places in Europe to go see.  Don’t go out of your way to see it.  Certainly don’t get excited about it.

We were happy to be on the next train although our seat reservations sucked so we didn’t even get to sit next to each other.  Instead we sat one in front of the other.  Pretty annoying.  The ride from Venice to Florence was actually very fast.  They seem like they must be much farther away from each other than they are although the screaming fast two hundred and fifty kilometer per hour train has a lot to do with it.  The Italian trains are crappy due to their cramped conditions and seat reservations but they are great from a luxury standpoint.

We got to Florence and quickly changed to the local “milk” train heading towards Viarregio.  Dominica had suggested maybe stopping in Florence too while we were there but I gave her that “you have absolutely lost your mind and the kids and I are abandoning you now and leaving you in Florence while we go on to the hotel” look and she decided that that was a bad idea indeed.

It was mid-afternoon when we arrived at the tiny little train station in the spa town of Montecatini-Terme that Dominica had found as a potential place to see real Tuscany without needing to get away from the train lines.  So we got off of the train, checked some maps and started walking.

Now we are in Italy.  This is real Italy.  Not just a city that was conquered by Italy and forced into the country but real, central, heartland Italy.  Old school Italy with real Italian food, Italian culture, Italian weather.  Now it is becoming real.  This is not a tourist town, or very little of one as everything in Tuscany is a tourist town to some degree, but a real small city where regular Italians live and work and play.

The walk to the hotel really was not bad at all.  Had we known exactly where to go and how to find it it would have been trivial.  Even so it wasn’t bad.

We got to our hotel and got checked in.  No Internet access in our hotel room but there is in the lobby.  This will do.  Only two days here then on to Piedmont where, and we checked this, we have Internet access everywhere for five days.  So two more days of going down to the lobby to do everything.  I can do it.  It is just getting really stressful being so disconnected and knowing that people need me to do things.

The hotel is pretty nice.  Our room is quite nice, second floor (that is the third floor to you Americans) on a corner with big windows that open for a cross breeze.  Dominica and I have a double bed, Liesl has a bunk bed and a pack and play was in the room all ready for Luciana who is quite thrilled.  This is our first bathroom in all of Europe to have a bidet.  We are surprised that we have not yet seen one having been expecting to see them, even if infrequently, all along after having left the United Kingdom.

We got settled in but it was not long before we decided to go out and get some dinner.  We had eaten on the train with food that we had picked up at the station in Venice but both the Venice and Florence train station really are completely different than the British, Belgian, French, German, Swiss and Austrian train stations that we have seen thus far in that all of the others use the train stations as a place to consolidate tons of ready made and grocery food items.  The Italians seem to offer nothing more then the most spartan and rudimentary food stuffs at their train stations.  It is very surprising.  We had thought that the Italians would take the food more seriously, not less.  I supposed that maybe Italians focus on making great meals be great and let the other meals go?  Certainly the food in most European train stations that we have experiences is incredible by American standards.  Not so in the Italian stations.  So we were very much ready to sample some real Italian cuisine, especially out here in smaller town Tuscany.

We asked at the desk and the hotel owner gave us some recommendations.  So we set off for a walk through town, although it was not far at all, for a serious Italian meal at a nearby hotel.

Italians order and eat meals in courses which is confusing for most Americans to order and we are pretty bad at it but we attempted to fumble through.  For our first course, which is often pasta, we went for the obvious.  Dominica got a raviolo but it was huge and really delicious.  I went for the pasta with pounded rocket and olive oil which was amazing.  Dominica agreed that I ordered best for the pasta course.  Truly excellent.  Liesl got pasta as well, spaghetti with a basic tomato sauce but it too was really good.  We kept stealing some from her because it was so tasty.

For the second course I got salted cod in a tomato sauce with chick peas in the Livorno style.  It was quite good.  Not a dish that I would likely order again as it was not really my style but it was very well done and quite impressive.  Dominica went for a squid dish which, I feel, was foolish for her as she is always grossed out by the way that squid are presented and she can never truly enjoy a squid meal even though she really loved squid.  I tried a little of hers (I just ate some tentacles since she just throws them away anyway) and it was quite good but I liked mine better.

Sadly we had neither the camera nor the phone tonight so this amazing meal (in both taste and appearance) is recorded in words alone for you.  We were both pretty upset that we had forgotten both devices tonight.

For dessert I do not even remember what Dominica got but I went for the local cookies with sweet wine that I have heard from a few sources including “Under the Tuscan Sun” as well as from Rick Steves is a local specialty.  The cookies are what we call biscotti back in the States but here that term is just the Italian form of the British word biscuit which is just a generic term for that entire range of cookies so is way too general.  What is done here, unlike in the US where biscotti is dipped in coffee (weak, watered down American coffee) it is dipped into the sweet wine.  This seems completely crazy and many people cannot adjust to it but I tried it and really liked it.  They served a lot of it too and I ate it all.

After dinner we walked back to the hotel and pretty much just called it a night.  We are completely impressed with the food we had tonight and the price was not bad either.  Fifty nine Euros for what would, I feel, have been an eighty to one hundred dollar meal back home pretty easily once you consider that we had two courses, food for the girls, I had wine (not the dessert wine), we each had dessert and we each got coffee!  And that price is after tax, not before like in the US.

The walk from the train station to the hotel is less than impressive and we were worried about this town a bit but now that we have seen more of the town we can see that it is really nice and has tons of restaurants, hotels, spas, cafes, etc.  We are looking forward to exploring it tomorrow.  This appears to be very promising.

Off to bed a bit on the early side.  We were the first people into the restaurant this evening as we went out so early but I am tired overall and Dominica got almost no sleep last night so we need to make an early night of it.

For those who don’t know where to find them: Our YouTube Unedited Travel Channel and our 2012 European Adventure Flickr Set are here.  All of the videos are in 1080p so watching them on your television would be ideal.  They are unedited so mostly just really short clips but they can be entertaining.  We’ve currently uploaded around sixty videos and nearly one thousand pictures!  We’ve been busy.

We are in Vienna again this morning.  Today is our first day of having “no hotel” which is a bit stressful because we have to deal with the luggage.  We are taking the night train from Vienna to Venice tonight so want the girls to get as much relaxing time in the hotel as possible before we set out for a day of being vagabonds.

I got up early-ish, around six, and checked in on the laptop.  It had remained kind-of connected to the wireless throughout the night and fortunately YouTube is really good at handling bad connections and several of our videos had managed to upload through the night.  Flickr couldn’t handle picture uploads so those just have to wait and most of the videos did not make it but some did so people are at least getting something.

I went down to the lobby at six thirty and sat in the hallway as the doors were locked until seven.  Down there, at least, I had solid Internet access, even if it was slow, so that I was able to get a handful of pictures up to Flickr at a minimum and to do some posting.   I wasn’t there for long before the cleaning lady took pity on my and let me into the lobby so that I could sit at a table instead of camping out on the floor.  That was very nice.

After not too long Dominica emailed me (she keeps the phone so that she can send me emails) to come back up and get her and the girls so that we could come down for breakfast as a family.  That was probably around eight thirty.  So I went upstairs, gathered them up and we all came down to eat.

Breakfast here was pretty spartan.  We’ve gotten used to the standard central European breakfast of rolls, bread, cheese, cold meats, butter, cream cheese or other soft cheese spread, jams, juice and coffee.  Some places have müsli, yoghurt, cereals and fruits but those are more fancy.  This was pretty bare, but it was fine and very cheap, just three Euros.  So we ate with the laptop on the table uploading while we did.

The girls were pretty restless this morning so we were unable to stay in the breakfast area for very long.  At most we might have gotten half an hour.  Liesl was pretty good but Luciana was just out of control needing to walk everywhere and screaming if she could not.  The moment that we would set her down she would be out of the breakfast room, through the lobby and trying to figure out how to get outside.  Very exhausting.

So Dominica took Luciana back up to the hotel room and Liesl stayed with me long enough for the current upload to wrap up and for me to finish my cup of coffee then Liesl and I went up as well.

We stayed in the hotel room until eleven, which was the checkout time.  That, at least, let Dominica do her packing today, in daylight, rather than last night in the dark.  We had time for showers and to get ready much more slowly than usual.  I found a place in the hallway where I could set the laptop on its side and the connection was slightly better than in the window so a few more videos made it up.  I don’t think that anyone really appreciates just how much work goes into all of this media uploaded and all of these posts written.  This is serious work.  Doing this stuff from home is easy.  Doing it on the road is nearly impossible.  Staying in small “one off” hotels, bed and breakfasts and hostels makes it much more challenging as we have to learn everything anew every two days.

So we left our giant hotel room and walked to Keplerplatz to catch the U-bahn U1 from there running back to the Westbahnhof where we are planning to stow our luggage in the lockers there and then head out for a day of seeing the city.

Getting to the train station wasn’t bad.  We are figuring out the U-bahn system and have the process down pretty well.  We look mostly like locals now for that.

We got to Westbahnhof and went to the lockers on Track One which we had seen the other day. There was one, medium sized open locker so we went for that.  If we took everything apart we could just squeeze everything into the locker.  It was a lot of work but Dominica is an expert at this stuff so managed to get all of it in.  Then we tried to close the locker.  We could close the door but the locker would not lock.  Uh oh.  Maybe that it why it was available.  There is no sign saying that it would not close.  Great, the only locker around and it is broken.  This is not good at all.  No wonder there are tons of people circling the lockers like vultures – no one can find a locker.  We thought that we had just gotten lucky or just needed a different size than everyone else and had not realized initially that no one else was finding any either but thought that they were finding them further down.

A walk to the information booth was clearly in order. Maybe there are more lockers.  That bank of lockers only had maybe one hundred lockers in total, probably many fewer, which is woefully inadequate for the main train station in Vienna, a city of two million and a major tourist destination.  There much be more.  Tons more.

The clearly annoyed and poorly informed information booth worker (who did a terrible job representing his employer OBB) said that there were just the lockers outside and some lockers one floor down that we could check out.  So we ran for those lockers.  Apparently everyone else had this idea too.  Not a single available locker, of any size, with a continuous crowd of people appearing, looking for a locker and leaving.  This is it, no lockers anywhere.  The whole station can’t have more than one hundred and fifty lockers and judging from the rate of people coming down to look for them they need at least another one thousand (new locker needed every one to two minutes) just to meet the locker demand on a very slow, sleeping Sunday morning in a city that absolutely shuts down on Sundays.

Using railway lockers is one of those Rick Steves tips that we thought would make today really easy.  Nope.  I can’t imagine how anyone can get a railway station locker if it is like this.  At least ninety percent of the people who need them cannot get them.  This is a disaster. Now we have all of our luggage, no hotel room, no locker and nothing that we can do!

We tried going to the OBB lounge and they were incredibly rude.  We couldn’t stay there nor would they even discuss with us if there was anything that we could do about our luggage.  We have first class OBB tickets and are taking their overnight train and they treated us like dirt.  I am not impressed at all.  The Austrian Rail seems to do a great job as long as nothing goes wrong but the moment that they have a problem they fall apart and get really pissed off at us for calling attention to the fact that they are not doing their jobs well.  Being snobby when you are not providing a good service is just sad.  Being snobby when you are doing a good job is rude but at least you have some degree of justification.  But acting that way when you are incompetent is pathetic.

So we are furious with OBB and are quite unhappy with Vienna in general.  Any chance that we would move to this area is out of the question as having a good, clean, nice, reliable train station to use is absolutely critical to us for the long term.  We use the trains constantly and if we have to put up with issues like this all of the time and can’t trust OBB to have any ability to do anything then they ruled themselves out.  We cannot be dependent on Vienna as our transportation hub.  Hard to believe that the Austrian government isn’t keeping a close eye on the impression that Vienna gives to travelers as an inability to deal with issues in Vienna means that businesses need to carefully consider having bases or operations in the city because these types of problems can make the costs skyrocket.

As we had no options whatsoever we settled into a booth at the station to sit for about ten hours which is how long we have until our train tonight.  The station is not air conditioned and is very warm.  So warm that Dominica was getting sick but there really was very little that we could do.  OBB does not keep their main station like other railways in Europe have, that we have seen.  Things are broken, there is not the abundance of good food and groceries stores, it is very hot and very poorly organized.  It is exactly the opposite of what I would expect in a German country.

We posted on Facebook how unhappy we were and how disgusted we are with Vienna in general and definitely with OBB and the Westbahnhof.  We don’t get to see Vienna today because of the OBB and, I assume, just about everyone in this train station is a tourist who wanted to see Vienna and cannot because they are stuck in the train station judging by the number of people unable to stow luggage here like they had planned.  Imagine all of the tourist revenue that this city throws away because the this.  We were lucky, Ramona’s friends Elizabeth and Roman, who live in Vienna and pretty nearby, posted to us on Facebook that we could come to their flat and drop off our luggage so that we could go out and see Vienna!

So we ate at the train station because Dominica was not feeling well and needed some nutrients.  That took a little while just because any logistics with the kids and luggage takes forever.  One of us has to sit with everything and everyone while the other one goes out foraging.  It is really cumbersome.

Dominica and Liesl ended up eating some rather poor Thai food from a place really close to our table.  I wanted to get falafel but they ended up having leftovers that they could not eat because they were disgusted by the food so I was stuck eating nasty leftovers.  Not adding to my impression for the day.

We got out of the train station and took the U-bahn back to the city towards where we had been last night.  Our second U-bahn broke down while we were on it but fortunately we were only stuck for five or ten minutes.  Just enough to panic and not enough to be a problem.  But many people got off and were starting to walk and we were really worried that we were going to have to do the same from a station with which we were not familiar heading somewhere that we did not know.  It could have been really bad.  But the train moved again, we sighed a huge sigh of relief and everything was alright.

We got off at the station and Elizabeth walked down to meet us there.  We have never met Elizabeth or Roman before but Elizabeth used to be Ramona’s roommate in Philadelphia until pretty recently.  She walked us back to their apartment and we dropped off our luggage there.  Liesl and Luciana were both asleep when we got there.

We hung out for a big just visiting.  Maybe for an hour.  Then we all decided to walk down to a cafe about twenty minutes away to get coffee in the park.  We are a really nice time just hanging out and relaxing and we were so glad not be in the train station.  Our day was already pretty short as we lost a few hours dealing with the station this morning and now with the extra trip to drop off the luggage and needing another one to go pick it up and all appropriate buffer time we had very little time to go see Vienna.  We had hoped today to go up and see the “real” downtown (the modern one where the big businesses are today) and to see the Danube and to see the big amusement park that is near there that would have been perfect for Liesl but those things were too far away now.

So instead we just opted for a quiet coffee and chatting.  We sad outside for a bit but it started to rain so we moved inside for a bit.  Then a walk in the park and off to find a playground so that Liesl and Luciana could burn off some of their excess energy.

There was a nice playground near the Karlsplatz so Roman and Elizabeth dropped us off there and they headed home because they had to get ready for a concert that they are attending this evening.  We stayed at the playground for probably an hour or more.  Liesl had a great time going up and down the slides, doing rope climbs, etc.  It was really good for her.  Luciana mostly just toddled around.  Some Viennese girls played with her a bit – older girls who would help her to do things and would pick her up and carry her around.  We made some friends too.  A little boy, two years old, and his father from Taiwan who are working in Bonn, Germany, for a while hung out with us and we talked for a while.

At six we decided that we needed to get a move on so that we would have an appropriate amount of cushion between all of our moves so that we could be at the train station in time.  Missing our train tonight would be a disaster as it is the overnight, night train that is both our transportation and our “hotel” for the night.  No flexibility on this one.

The walk back to the apartment took about twenty minutes.  Dominica was very impressed, again, with my ability to navigate in the city and we got there without any issue.  We got the luggage, used the facilities, filled up our water bottles, said goodbye and set off for the U-bahn station.

On the subway we ran into our new friends from Bonn, again.  Very weird running into people that you just met in such a large city.

We got back to the Westbahnhof without any issues and with plenty of time to settle in for about an hour and eat some dinner.  We got Turkish food and mine was fine.  Dominica got something hard in her’s (I’m pretty sure it was just a piece of a sterile cutting surface, nothing bad) but she was gun shy and sharing food with Luciana so couldn’t risk it.  So I ended up eating hers and she got sandwiches from a gourmet sandwich shop which did lots of small “sampler” sandwiches in the open-face style popular here.  She really liked those.

We got to our train plenty early.  No issues there.  This is a big OBB train going first to Salzburg and then down to Venice.  So we will arrive in Venice around eight thirty in the morning.  The train pulls out of Vienna at eight forty this evening.  We have a two bed bedroom on it.  This is our first time, with or without kids, taking an overnight train with a sleeper compartment.  We are really interested to see how it works out.  Could be great or it could be awful.  We are definitely scared of doing any more of them, though, based on the luggage problems that it created earlier today. Not having a solid hotel can be a significant problem, apparently.  We had not really been prepared for how awful that could be.

I’ll wrap up tonight’s post with us getting on to the train.  We are all down with the northern portion of our trip to Europe.  We have reached our farthest eastern point and as of today leave the German world and move on to the Mediterranean countries of Italy, Spain and Portugal.  Only three countries left, but that is still three new languages for this trip.  Six countries done.  Now we spend the next two weeks plus slowly moving west again until we return to the States.

Special thanks to Elizabeth and Roman who totally saved the day today!

We are really becoming the go to bed early, get up early family.  In bed by ten last night and up after “sleeping in” significantly this morning at seven.  And it is Liesl, of all of us, who is consistently up first.  Every morning she wakes up and slaps me until I get up.  Day after day.  It is exhausting.

It wasn’t raining when I went to bed last night but it had rained on and off yesterday.  Pretty early on in the night the rain started and it came down hard all night and was still going this morning.  It was a ton of rain but made for really nice sleep with our huge four foot by four foot window wide open.  No screen, of course, because this is Europe.  They don’t do screens here.  We were a bit damp but very glad to have finally had a cool night for a change.  It has been a while since we were not too warm to sleep well.

This morning we got up and went down to the breakfast that is included with our hotel.  I am liking how these European hotels do a dedicated table just for us and have the girls all set up before we get there.  It is a really nice touch.  We were the first ones to breakfast this morning and were concerned that we were there too early because no one else was there but I have a feeling that this is a “sleep in” kind of town.

After breakfast we hit the only grocery store in town which happens to be effectively next door to our hotel.  We picked up some essentials and took a gander at our first Austrian grocery store.  Nothing surprising after France and Germany but interesting, nonetheless.  We are getting good at foreign grocery stores.

Then returned to the room for about an hour and then headed out to hit the town.  Our first stop was a quick one into the sports store to see about buying hats.  With all of the rain it would be helpful to have nice travel hats.  Dominica and I found matching Jack Wolfskin lightweight hats that we liked so we each got one.  I found a jacket that I really liked but it was two hundred and fifty Euros so I decided against that.

Our most important stop was to do the Hallstatt Museum.  That was our one, family must-do activity and we got there before there were any crowds.  Actually, we think that there might never be any crowds.  The people descending on Hallstatt appear to be more of the souvenir and knick-knack crowd than anything else.

We enjoyed the museum and, most importantly, Liesl really enjoyed the museum.  It covers most the history of the Hallstatt region which, of course, is a really big deal as that is what is important about town.  But it has some displays on the local flora and fauna, artwork, politics, etc.  We were quite surprised that Liesl had such a good time.

About halfway through the museum we had a Liesl bathroom emergency and had to leave.  Liesl was terribly upset that we couldn’t finish the museum.  But we found her a restroom and the museum was kind enough to let us back in so we went and finished all of the displays.  We were really glad that we did the museum as there are not that many activities that really make Liesl happy.  She has been a great traveler but the bulk of the trip is her putting up with stuff that we want to do so this was a special treat that it turned out to be something for her too.  We all liked the museum and recommend it.

It was still raining when we left the museum.  The storm drains are backed up and there is standing water on top of them.  The lake appears to be several inches higher than it was yesterday and things that were above water yesterday are not today like some docks are now underwater.  I wonder how often this happens or if this is something really unusual.

We stopped by the bakery on the outskirts of the main part of town and grabbed sandwiches for lunch and some pastries.  The sandwiches, just tomato and cheese affairs, turned out to be amazing as did the cream filled pasty horns.  Liesl got a donut (with sprinkles, of course) which she devoured.  Luciana loved the sandwiches.  What a palette she has already.

We have been trying to figure out what to do about the salt mine tours because we cannot take the girls on them.  We were contemplating going separately, just Dominica while I watched the girls then just me while she did.  I tried to get Dominica to go but she wanted me to go first to see how it was.  So at around five till one I set out for the salt mine tour, which is the only attraction in town other than the museum, which is directly adjacent to our hotel.

The mine tour is twenty-two Euros with our hotel discount and starts with an excellent funicular ride up the mountain side with amazing views of town and the lake.  It runs every fifteen minutes so you don’t have to wait very long.  I rode up on the quarter after one load with maybe six other people.

Of course I failed to bring a spare camera battery and my Nikon battery died the instant that I passed the turnstyle!  Argh. So no good pictures from the salt mine trip.  I took a few with the phone but it is not the same.

At the top of the mountain (this is an Alpine peak, I am talking about) the funicular drops you off and you walk a trail that takes probably ten to fifteen minutes to complete.  Before you start the trail there is a restaurant with amazing views and a high scenic bridge built only to use to get an incredible view of the lake.  There are a few “stops” along the way where you read a little sign telling you some piece of the history that happened there.  The coolest part of the walk is when you walk through the high Alpine meadow where they believe five thousand early Hallstatt settlers from the pre-Roman era are buried.  Fifteen hundred of these have been discovered already and they believe thirty five hundred remain in the ground.

It was a nice walk high in the mountains in a forest with a soft rain coming down.  A good place to walk alone and contemplate the history that has happened right here under my feet.  Amazing stuff.  When Greece was just thinking about becoming important Halstatt was already important, rich and powerful.

I really enjoyed this part of the mine tour – but you can do this portion without actually doing the mine tour.  Which, in reality, is what I recommend doing.  Don’t miss this part with the funicular, the views and the history walk.  If you really want to save money, you can hike up the mountain for free and get some exercise, but for most people just pay for the funicular.

I got to the mine tour station and the next tour was at two.  That means waiting around for twenty five minutes with nothing to do.  They have a little snack shop and a gift shop up there and hope that you will spend a fortune while you are stuck waiting for a mine tour to begin as there is absolutely nothing else to do and your cell phone isn’t going to work up there either.

So from the time I got to the base of the mountain until the tour itself started took an entire hour.  That’s a long time to “wait in line.”  We had guessed that this entire tour would only be forty minutes so Dominica was already expecting me back at any moment.  Boy is she going to be surprised.

The tour started and the tour group, which was pretty large with sixty-six people in my group, started by getting suited up in protective gear and then going through a really tiny little museum thing that lead to the mine entrance.  Our tour guide, Lisa, got us started after about fifteen minutes.

The mine tour was interesting only because it gave you a chance to go into a real salt mine and because this is the world’s oldest salt mine and is believed to be in continuous operation for seven thousand years.  That’s pretty amazing.  The tour itself was boring and uninformative.  I understand that there isn’t that much to tell about salt mining on a tour but this was pretty lame which is pretty much what Rick Steves had said about it.

The tour does include two descents via slides which are kind of cool but take a long time with a big crows.  The longest one in 64 metres  long, if I remember correctly.  It is a long way to slide down on your butt, that is for sure.  It is fun but I can see it being pretty scary for a lot of people.  You can hit around thirty kilometres per hour on the slide.  I only did twenty but there were people going much faster than me.

Most of the tour was painfully boring and there is a lot of walking underground.  There are really slippery spots too and a good deal of the tour is very much in the dark so it is easy to fall in the darkness and the ground and walls are exceptionally hard.  There were a couple of awful videos during the tour which gave no new information that you don’t already know from just being in town.  At the end there is a pretend laser light show (as in, line drawings like a laser show but done using a normal projector – extra points for over the top lame there) by which time you really wish that you could just leave.  The entire underground portion takes around an hour and a half, maybe just a touch more.

At the end of the tour the highlight is mounting onto a real mining train and getting driven out of the mine.  That part was genuinely a lot of fun.  I really liked that part, it was something unique.

At the end of the tour they drop you back off in the gift shop and you have that ten to fifteen minute walk back again.  Then the funicular down the mountain.  If you take a while getting out of the gift shop, which is easy to happen as, at least for me, it was completely packed and I had to fight my way out, and if you walk slowly and don’t hit the funicular just right it can easily take you forty-five minutes to an hour to get back from the tour.

I fought my way out of the shop and walked very briskly and sometimes jogged to get back to the funicular which I did way ahead of the rest of the tour.  I was the only person riding down on my trip down the mountain.  I easily beat most everyone back by thirty minutes at least.

By the time that I made it back to the hotel (which was directly next to the tour – the building right next door) it was a full three hours.  Way too long for how uninteresting the tour was and how expensive it was.  Not something that I would recommend again and Dominica obviously decided that it was not for her.  She was glad that she sent me in as a Guinea pig on this one.

Dominica was ready to go out again after I had returned and the girls had had naps so we went back out again and hit the bakery one more time and got strudel to eat along the lake side.  Then we hit the rubber ducky and dirndl shop to rent a really cute dirndl for Liesl for an hour, from five until six.  Liesl was so adorable in the dirndl.  Unbelievable.

So we walked around town for an hour taking tons and tons of pictures of her in the costume.  She did so well.  She really put up with a lot.  An hour of modeling is a long time for a three year old and she was a trooper.  I can’t wait until we can get these uploaded.

Liesl was so adorable that some tourists even stopped and asked if they could get their picture taken with Liesl.  Liesl did a great job posing for them as well.

We dropped off Liesl’s dirndl, bought some cards with pictures from town on them for our walls at home and then headed off to dinner at one of the fancy places in town at the top of the square so that we could try out a real Halstatt fish dinner for which the town is so famous.

After dinner it was back to the hotel so that Dominica could pack and the girls could go to bed. Once Luciana was asleep and Liesl was happily watching Lady and the Tramp on the iPad I set off to find some Internet access so that we could get some updates posted and pictures uploaded.

We had tested earlier and there is free, public WiFi in the center of town at the tourist information center so, if necessary, I could sit outside on the steps and get some things done. It was cold even if the rain had stopped but the rain could potentially start again so I opted to instead make an attempt at the Heritage Hotel which, I had heard, offered free WiFi for people at the café.

The Heritage has a very nice café down by the water. I got there around nine and there was one couple left there and otherwise the place was deserted. Unbelievable that any town can have so many people and so few people out and about. This place is a ghost town.

I settled in for some coffee and got busy uploading updates and pictures and writing as much as I could. I put in nearly two hours at the Heritage, most of the time completely alone. They were really nice to let me stay for so long as the only customer and not a guest in the hotel. Eventually they needed me to move out to the lobby as they needed to shut down and clean the restaurant and café but they didn’t completely kick me out. They were great. I’d likely use them the next time that I come to Hallstatt. Seems like a really nice place.

I made good progress, getting all of the pics from Switzerland and Germany uploaded, two SGL updates and one Kidding Around Europe update uploaded. I went through three double espressos while sitting there.

I got back to our hotel on the far side of town a little after eleven. It was a very quiet and dark walk through town. Except for the street lights glowing along the lake road there were pretty much no lights anywhere. Even looking out across the lake at the other towns there was very little light. There were some crazy teenagers driving like maniacs through the streets still, however. Hallstatt is a very dangerous town lacking necessary traffic controls.

Tomorrow morning we are catching the ten thirty train headed to Vienna. We have enough time to relax a bit and get breakfast in the hotel before we leave. Hopefully it will not be too stressful of a travel day.

I was lucky this morning and woke up early, very early, at about five fifty. I decided to get up and get ready for the day – no need to go back to bed and we have a big day ahead of us and normally (on this trip) it is Dominica getting up early to get us ready so I knew that she would appreciate if I was up and ready before she even woke up. If I had time I planned to go down to the lobby and upload more pictures if there was time.

By a little after six, though, Dominica was awake and we decided that since we were awake that there would be no point in sticky to our original “lazy” plan of catching the nine thirty train our of Mϋnchen to Salzburg but we could rush and make the same train schedule but at seven thirty instead – the same train route runs every two hours which is really nice. So even if you miss your train the worst thing is that you have to sit in a nice train station for two hours having some coffee or gelato. Not too bad.

So we were running around like crazy trying to go from asleep to packed and ready to head out the door in about thirty minutes tops. We made it and were out the door at ten after seven which gave us very, very little time to make it to the train station and when we are fully loaded with children and luggage we do not move quickly. So it was a rough haul the eight hundred metres from the hostel to the train station. We were hot and soar by the time that we arrived and we made it by the skin of our teeth for the early train, but made it we did.

I grew up a bit of a train fanatic, my father got me into model railroading at a very young age and being into model railroading introduced me to European passenger rail long before I ever came to Europe for the first time. When I went to Germany in 2009 I was quite excited to be able to ride on DB which I had wanted to ride since I was probably ten years old. From my childhood there were three rail lines that I always wanted to ride: Germany’s DB, Switzerland’s SBB and Austria’s ӦBB. We’ve been riding DB for weeks now and we got to ride SBB, which was awesome, several times while passing through Switzerland. This morning I finally got to ride the last of my childhood fantasy train lines, Austria’s ӦBB.

Not only did we get to ride the Austrian line out of Mϋnchen but as this was the huge Mϋnchen to Vien (Vienna) to Budapest express line this was the ӦBB’s flagship, high end, ultra luxurious high speed RailJet. This is the be all, end all of European passenger lines and puts even the Swiss SBB lines to shame in comfort and style. There is no denying that I was excited when we boarded the RailJet and moved into First Class.

First Class means “at seat” dining, which is awesome. The prices were really good too. So Dominica and I both ordered breakfast since we hadn’t had time to even grab coffee at the train station. Dominica got a yoghurt with fruit and muesli and coffee. I went for the smoked salmon with horseradish, a delicious hot roll and a bottle of wine (only available to passengers sixteen and over, lol.) Breakfast was delicious and service at our seats was very nice. We were lucky enough to get a four seater spot with our own table which is the normal way that we travel if possible.

RailJet also really shines at having great informational displays. I first saw this in Switzerland on the SBB but this was even better. The overhead displays on RailJet also give great information as to upcoming stops, planned and real times of arrival, different map displays showing the position of the train, current speed, etc. It makes travel much more interesting. The only thing that SBB did better in the display department was having a “follow along” Google Earth video going along with the train from time to time.

Getting into Salzburg was very smooth. The train was a few minutes late but our connecting train was the next train on the same track so we didn’t really have to worry about being late since the next train had to wait for us anyway.

The next train was not RailJet but still very nice. In this one we got a private cabin which is our favourite way to travel. A six seater couchette is totally the way to travel with kids. The first class cabins are great and unlike the older DB couchette that we took a few days ago that didn’t have any air conditioning this one had power at every seat, working and adjustable temperature controls per cabin, much more modern appointments and seats that convert into beds. Very cool.

One this that we learned today is that in Europe “first class” does not refer to the first class but is actually a term for second class and second class is what the third class is called. True first class is actually called “business class”. Very confusing. I would have thought that business class would have been an in-between level. Having something above first class makes no sense unless you are thinking of it as the zero class.

The second leg of our trip went without a hitch. This has been a great train travel day. We started early, we had great food, we’ve had awesome trains and the scenery has been just outstanding all day. One thing that we have really noticed is that when traveling in Germany, Switzerland and Austria that it is really noticeable that people really go out of their way to help you. Strangers will get up from their seats, pick up your luggage and help you off of the train – consistently. People hold doors for you. People even help moving luggage and children up and down large flights of stairs at train stations. It’s not that we’ve been anywhere were people were unfriendly, but it is really mentionable that there are places where the “go out of your way to help others” mentality is prevalent in everyday life.

We made our connection to our third and final train for the day, again without a problem. This time we transferred to a little local connector that would take us through all of the little towns on our way down to Hallstatt. While this train was not fancy or exciting as far as the train itself it didn’t need to be – this train took us through the best scenery ever. Words cannot describe how beautiful the Austrian Alps can be. Nothing that we have seen in Switzerland or Germany compared to this. These mountains were bigger and the Alpine lakes and little villages are just magical. This is truly the land of faery tales.

The train station for Hallstatt is really amazing. The train comes along this little tiny spot on the side of a hill and just drops you off on a little dirt path which you walk down and then go down a steep trail down to the boat dock where a little boat ferries you across the most breathtaking lake to the tiny village of Hallstatt.

Hallstatt is this tiny village sitting at the base of a tremendous mountain sitting on a pristine lake surrounded by massive Alpine peaks. There are a few villages on the lake with Hallstatt being the only famous one but the others being far more accessible. Even having seen many pictures of Hallstatt there was no way to do it justice. The town is just so beautiful. Both the town and the setting are so impressive. Either would be amazing on their own. Putting them together is just not fair.

The boat approach to Hallstatt is probably the best way to come in to town although the other option is driving by car through the tunnel in the mountain, parking in a parking lot at the top of a steep cliff overlooking town, getting a crazy view down onto town and then descending stairways down into the back alleys so that you meander through places where it feels like you don’t belong and that are lost in time just to pop out onto the main square. So both approaches have their merits. It is hard to say which is really better for the first timer but the boat approach is the traditional one that has been used for thousands of years so I like it best. It is something to think about all of the Romans and Celts before them catching a boat from the same location to go to Hallstatt thousands of years ago.
The town itself is highlighted by two churches. One with a tall spire sitting in the middle of the “ground floor” of town right off of the main square. The other is a less vertical but far more expansive complex sitting on a cliff above town and commanding a powerful view of the village. The main square is the only real open area in town and is quite small. Almost all of town itself consists of tiny alleys, tightly packed houses from the 1500s and later and steps leading heaven only knows where. Every inch of town is old, pristine and gorgeous.

Halstatt currently has a population of only one thousand people in a village that once upon a time had twice that many inhabitants. Now have of the space in town is dedicated to rentable rooms and the town is a purely tourist town but one of the few tourist towns really worth visiting. Even being completely driven by tourism and inhabited fifty-fifty residents to tourists the local culture seems to remain and thrive.

Hallstatt is a very little town but of immense historical importantance. Hallstatt is an UNESCO World Heritage site. As the locals like to say – before there was Rome, there was Hallstatt. Hallstatt was a thriving salt mining town by around 800 B.C. and has been so important a center in Celtic history that the Hallstatt Era is named for it (800 B.C. – 400 B.C.) Hallstatt was first Celtic, then Roman and finally a Germanic town. Almost three thousand years of known continuous inhabitation that is well known and around seven thousand years believed. One of the stores in town has a live archeological site with Roman and Celtic remains beneath it that you can see while shopping.

On our train ride to Hallstatt we met two sisters from Vermont who then rode the boat over with us (everyone from the bus had to ride the boat together – there is nothing else to do if you get off at Hallstatt) that we talked to a bit. We ended up running into them in town several times today which highlights just what a tiny little town this is. We quickly got to know several people like this that we would meet someplace and then see in town over and over again.

We went right to the main market which is quite small but really pretty. There are a few cafes and hotels on the market square. Hallstatt is really interesting because the town is what I like to call “three dimensional” as it is a vertical as well as horizontal city. You have to make your way to different layers to find everything.

We didn’t know where our hotel was so we did some exploring and found the tourist information office – it is pretty easy to find most everything as there is just one main road that is pretty obvious and it starts at the boat dock and winds past the main square and runs down by the lake going past nearly all of the businesses. There are some side roads and hidden alleys and such but mostly they are for the residents and not the tourists so there isn’t too much need to go into them while looking for food or a hotel.

We ended up getting simple directions from the tourist office and were able to walk right to the hotel. It only takes about ten minutes to walk the entire length of time. It is crazy how small this down is.

We got checked in. The hotel is quite nice – our room is huge and they had a baby bed already in the room and ready for Luciana. She is very happy about that. Going the last three nights without a baby bed has been really stressful for us. Luciana needs a baby bed, it really is not discretionary for us. Our room also has a giant window that completely opens and we have a great view of the mountains. Our hotel is directly adjacent to the salt mine museum entrance and our window looks straight out onto it so we can look out and gauge the crowds pretty easily.

The one really bad thing about our hotel is that there is no Internet access. We had been pretty sure that this was the case and it is not a tragedy but after being basically without any the last three days and none the two days before that we are getting a little edgy without it. It would be awfully nice to be able to, at the very least, update the pictures from Switzerland. We are now two countries behind on pictures and videos. I only got about half of the Luzern pictures posted before getting out of Mϋnchen.

After getting settled into the hotel we set out to return to town and get some food. We looked at the Rick Steves’ guide in The Best of Europe as Hallstatt is one of his big recommendations and he has done a lot to make the town famous but when we checked out some of his recommendations one was completely closed (forever, as far as I could tell) and one was apparently open but didn’t have any patrons or workers about so we looked around a bit and moved on to somewhere else.

Before we actually made it out of the hotel some storm clouds rolled up over the mountains and the bright, sunny day went quickly dark and we got to see an awesome Alpine rain shower. There was some slight, distant thunder but it was really just rain and it was beautiful. The temperature dropped dramatically too. This might be the best place every to watch rain – big mountains, glassy lake and lots of trees with those great rain textures of ancient buildings plus lots of little streams in town, the sound of a waterfall – all in one place.

We settled on a café on the main square and the rain had stopped just before we got there. We sat outside and ate, oh my mother would be so proud of me, asparagus strudel! Asparagus is like the official vegetable of the region. All through Germany, Switzerland and Austria asparagus is sold in quantities like nothing I have ever seen. In the US even seeing it in a grocery store is somewhat rare and seeing it on restaurant menus is not too common but here nearly every stand in every farmer’s market sells it, no food is more advertised, and nearly every restaurant sells a variety of asparagus dishes, often with them being highlighted. The strudel was excellent, we both really liked it. Liesl got the local variation on kase spӓtzle which is potato noodles actually made from cheese which she really liked.

After lunch the girls ended up at a knick-knack shop and Luciana convinced Dominica to buy her another stuffed lamb. Liesl then leveraged Luciana getting something into getting a package of eight small plastic frogs.

After lunch we did the Rick Steves’ walking tour of town which takes almost no time at all. He estimates fifteen minutes to see the sights and he isn’t kidding. For tomorrow we have a couple of things planned. The big one is seeing the local museum. The next big one is the salt mine museum which is going to be a challenge because both Dominica and I want to see it but kids under four are not permitted so we have to do it separately while the other one watches the kids for an hour or two. That is going to be a big undertaking. Then there is the ice museum or something like that that is supposed to be pretty cool (ha ha, get it?) If we can fit those three things in tomorrow, we will be all set for Hallstatt. Most people, we think, only do one night in Hallstatt so by doing two nights we really have some time to really get everything in without working too hard at it.

The tour done and our bellies full we walked back to the hotel. We were feeling good still so we walked on to see the part of town that is not historic and where most of the “real” people live. This is technically the next town over but it is all extremely close. We found the village park and took the girls there to play for a while. That worked out great. Liesl loves the sit on bouncing things that all of the parks here seem to have. These were popular in Letchworth State Park when I was very little but I haven’t seen many in the states in decades now. Liesl also had a lot of fun trying a long cable run and we got a great video of Dominica trying it as well.

Once the girls were tired it was back to the hotel. We hung out in the hotel for a while, maybe two hours. Then Dominica decided to send me out looking for food. Everything (and I do mean everything) in Hallstatt closes really early, normally by around five. So if you wait at all to get food there is nothing that you can do. I’m not sure how this is possible but no one seems ready to capitalize on the town full of tourists who are trapped with no activities and no access to food for nearly eighteen hours a day.

So the girls stayed in the room and I went out to forage. The rain had returned so I was under an umbrella most of the time but it was not that heavy and I do love a good rain. I searched high and low and did an extensive walking tour of town hitting all of the back streets, climbing all of the hidden stairways, etc. It was really cool and I found some outstanding viewpoints. I walked the cemetery in the church yard high on the hill, I found the village parking lot carved from the mountain side, I looked into the recently bored tunnels through the mountain – a little off the beaten path is really interesting here. I got some great pictures. Hopefully I get to upload them someday.

While I was out looking for food I stumbled on a shop that was amazingly still open that rents dirndls (the traditional trachten of Alpine and Bavarian girls) that has sizes that will fit Liesl. We have been talking since being in Bavaria that we might need to get a dirndl for Liesl so that we can take pictures of her in it. So this might just be ideal. I picked up the brochure. They also sell, of all things, Austrian themed rubber ducks which, of course, are one of Liesl’s favourites. So I bought her Franz, the lederhosen wearing rubber duck. She will love that. Talk about a weird shop and one that is so perfect just for Liesl. It should have been called the Liesl shop.

I finally found us some pizza from a back alley, up on a hillside pizza bar where it would seem only the locals hang out. I got that and walked it back across town for Dominica. I asked at the hotel lobby if there was anyplace still selling coffee and she said no. Nothing open past five. That is just crazy.

After we ate Dominica was still hungry so she sent me out again. No rain this time. There is a little street vendor not far from us that is surprisingly still open but it is really just a bar with like five food items. No “real” food for us there, but they did have desserts so I got a couple things and brought them back for Dominica. They had coffee there, actually, but no take away cups so no luck. Dominica tried getting coffee from the coffee dispenser in the hotel which is one Euro for a cup and when she used it it was out of cups and took her Euro and threw her coffee away – charging her and then mocking her for wanting coffee. That wasn’t very nice.

The girls played, rather rambunctiously, around the hotel room for about two hours before finally calming down and going to bed around nine thirty. It is easy to go to bed early in a town where we have no Internet access, there is effectively no television and everything in town is closed. It is rather like camping without the campfire.

I worked on SGL until ten but in a silent town it is nice to go to bed early. And there is a wide open window with the soft glow of an Alpine peak at night calling to me. I hope that we get more rain during the night.

Tomorrow we will be focused on the standard tourist activities in Hallstatt. Then we will be off to Vienna. Austria is our sixth country on this trip. Only three more to go after this. Tonight, according to my dad, is the halfway point of our trip. I can’t believe that our huge trip is halfway done. Time is flying by. It still feels like we just got here. I don’t ever want to have to leave. I just wish that Oreo could be here with us. It is terribly sad knowing that he is far away, missing us. Liesl mentioned him today and was very sad that he was not here too. She misses and worries about him.