Austria and Germany: Autumn 2008
This autumn, Rita and me went to Austria and Germany, first to visit Rita's family in Ravelsbach, near Vienna, then to have a bit of a holiday in Upper Austria (mountains!). We then went on to Garmisch-Partenkirchen in Bavaria (more mountains!) where Rita had a meeting to attend, and I had nothing to do except run around outside, climbing said mountains and eating inordinate amounts of cake. This is the story of that cake.
We took lots of photos, but not every day (didn't want to waste too much valuable cake-eating time), so for some days there are just words here.
At the bottom, I've added a little table showing our travel costs and times for the various legs of our trip. You'll see that it was really pretty cheap!
September 30 – October 1
We travelled to Austria by train, as usual, taking the Eurostar from London to Paris, where we spent a couple of hours visiting an old haunt of mine, the Au General Lafayette, a bar near where I used to work. We had a couple of beers and some dinner here, then got on a sleeper train for Munich. We shared a compartment with a couple of Brits heading for the Oktoberfest, which all sounded rather unpleasant!
We arrived early in Munich, took advantage of the rather enormous selection of eating options in the station, then got on a train for Vienna, arriving there just in time to drop off our bags and head to Naschmarkt for lunch! We ate lunch in a little park near the market and bimbled around town for a bit before getting the train to Ravelsbach.
October 2 – October 5
We spent the next few days in Ravelsbach, where highlights included:
- Changing the price tags on all the cat food in Rita's parents' shop one lunchtime (rock and roll!).
- Circuit training in the little park.
- Picking raspberries in Rita's aunt's garden and stuffing our faces with them for breakfast two days in a row.
On the Saturday night though, there was a bit more excitement, as it was the Lange Nacht des Museen across Austria, which meant that all of the museums were open until late (very very late, like one in the morning) and there was reduced entry everywhere. We drove off in Rita's parents' shiney new van to visit some of the local museums, the best of which was the Handwerksmuseum in St. Leonhard, where there were demonstrations of all sorts of traditional handicrafts, all with very knowledgeable people to explain them. Very cool. We went on to a couple of other museums, including a quite interesting historical museum in Eggenburg, and a really appalling vintage car and tat museum, also in Eggenburg. A good evening!
October 6
On the following Monday, we headed back to Vienna, to spend the day doing things in the city, then to meet up with Rita's friend Renate, then her brothers, Manfred and Roland, her cousin Harald and friend Thomas in the evening. We spent much of the afternoon at Schöbrunn, lazing in the sun then looking around the Palmenhaus, which has a very nice collection of orchids.
In the evening, we first went to a bar with Renate, for civilised discussions about science policy, then on to the old university buildings (which now host a couple of bars), to meet Rita's relatives and friends for beer, more talk and dinner. After that, we headed back to Thomas's place to spend the night before an early morning start to head to Upper Austria.
October 7
Our destination today was Obertraun, a small village lying in a valley at the foot of the Dachstein plateau (which has big mountains). This involved a slightly complicated sequence of multiple trains then a bus, since the train line to Obertraun was closed for engineering works. Pretty serious engineering works too – from the replacement bus service, we saw a crane taking a railway bridge to pieces, and we heard and saw maintenance trains running back and forth along the track through Obertraun every day.
When we arrived in Obertraun, we made our way to the Landhaus Osborne, the excellent place that Rita had booked us into. (Rita played Travel Fairy again on this trip, while I played Chief Pack Animal. It's a very good division of work from my point of view, as I get to avoid taking any responsibility for missing trains, and I get to complain about carrying the heavy bag all the time.) Anyway, this place is great. Run by Trevor and Judith, an Anglo-German couple, it really is a very sweet home-from-home. We had the apartment right up in the roof, which had great views on the mountains. Getting up there required a bit of care: “Make sure you start on these steps with your right foot”, said Trevor...
Our plan while here was to do as much walking as the weather permitted. We turned out to be lucky little mammals!
October 8
Next day, after a super (and enormous) breakfast brought up the precarious stairs by Trevor and Judith, we set out to climb a mountain called Sarstein. We did a long, long circular walk, starting off with a couple of hours along the lake, then a steep climb through the forest to a pass below Sarstein, a scramble up to the summit, a lovely ridge walk down to a hut above Obertraun, then a long steep descent through the forest back to the village. We had a fantastic day, hardly spoiled at all by getting benighted coming down through the forest (so doing the last kilometre or so on steep, rooty, rocky forest paths in the dark), the pizzeria being closed, and the food at the only restaurant we found open being a bit naff.
We saw lots of cool stuff: a little black snake sunning itself on a rock, three mountain goats, lots of dolines, beautiful autumn colours on the trees (very nice mixed forest all round here), some snow (!), some nice slushy little ponds up on the Sarstein ridge, just in between frozen and unfrozen, and lots and lots of moss in the forest. Oh, and mountains! Very very good day.
October 9
Since yesterday's walk turned out to be a bit of an epic (about 8 hours or so) and the descent a bit of a knee-destroyer, we decided on a much gentler day today. We spent some of the morning chilling out around the house, after going shopping for breakfast (and devouring cake sitting on some steps in the village), then went for a little walk around a nearby glacial lake, which has a splendid little stream nearby issuing from a spring at the foot of the Dachstein. All very pretty!
October 10
We started today with a bit of culture, getting a bus over to Hallstatt, the village on the other side of the lake, a UNESCO World Heritage site and former salt mining capital of central Europe. After going to an interesting exhibition of work from the students at the local technical college, which is a specialist college for interior design, cabinetmaking, sculpture, musical instrument making and lathework (how cool is that?), we went to the main town museum (some interesting stuff, but I was itching to get outside again), then the local charnel house (see the pictures...), before walking up a long switchbacky path to the salt works above the village to begin a circular walk that took us through some more nice forest and down the Waldbach gorge. Another nice day! The weather was preternaturally good all the time we were here, with warm sunny days and just a few friendly fluffy clouds.
October 11
Today was our last day in Obertraun, and we took an early cable car up to the Dachstein plateau to do another longer walk. Taking the cable car turned out to be an excellent idea, since it saves a 3-4 hour ascent and 3 hour descent, thus allowing you to spend more than five minutes on the high stuff. We had a fantastic walk out to the Simonyhütte hut, going out along a very rough and entertaining track called the Trägerweg, which had lots of limestone pavement, scree, snow and fantastic views. After a quick lunch at the hut, we raced back along an easier path to get one of the last cable cars back down to the valley. Another super day, including breakfast in shorts and T-shirt at 2000 metres, which is not something you normally get to do in the middle of October!
October 12
Trevor and Judith gave us a lift to Obertraun railway station this morning, where we got a bus (well, two buses) to Bad Ischl, then a train to Attnang-Puchheim (or something like that), then another train to Innsbruck, then (after a little wander around town and a drink by the river) another train to Garmisch-Partenkirchen, where we checked into our hotel and got an early night. Rita had an early start with her meeting in the morning, and I wanted to get an equally early start going out to play!
October 13
I had to go walking on my own today, since Rita was busy doing Science. This felt a bit weird at first, and I tromped along grumpily for the first hour or two. Things picked up a bit when I started climbing up a big hill though, as they usually do. Had a really good day out, didn't see too many people, except near the Schachen hut, and walked back to town down the Partnachklamm gorge, which is pretty spectacular (although not as spectacular as what I saw the next day!).
October 14
Another solo walk today, this time up the Höllentalklamm, a super spectacular gorge which makes the Partnachklamm look a bit tame. This was followed by some excellent ascending up towards Alpspitze, crossing a tiny tiny little pass between two imposing mountains on some outrageously steep and windy trails. I saved my knees today by getting the cable car down to the valley, the went back to the hotel to freshen up.
In the evening, we went out for dinner with the people from Rita's meeting, which was fun – very traditional Bavarian place, with the sounds of yodelling (at least I think it was yodelling rather than pig slaughtering) coming from the next room, wall-to-wall dirndls on the serving staff, some good beer and food and conversation, plus a little of the restaurant's own home-distilled schnapps to send us on our way.
October 15
Rita had a final morning of meeting to do, so I stayed at the hotel, packed our bags and did some admin. After leaving our luggage at the hotel, I got the bus to the institute where the meeting was and we both went for a little walk up to the Höllentalklamm. It didn't seem fair for Rita to have to hear about my mountain adventures while she was sitting in meetings all day, so we made an effort to do a little tourist trip before leaving. The gorge was just as spectacular as yesterday, and we had much more time to admire it than I had the day before, as I'd been moving faster because of the long climb ahead. Rita liked the gorge anyway!
After taking the Zugspitzbahn back to town (a little train that goes more or less all the way to the top of Germany's highest mountain, for the benefit of tourists!) and a quick change back at the hotel, we were ready to begin our journey home. This started with a train ride to Munich, where we got on the sleeper train to Paris. Unfortunately, we didn't have couchettes for this, but the train was luckily nearly empty, so we had a compartment to ourselves and could stretch out a bit.
October 16
An early morning arrival in Paris, and spirits falling slightly at the absence of anything even resembling a mountain. Not even a visit to a Parisian baker could lift the mood. Eurostar, Tube, British Rail, Bristol. And home.
Travel Costs
In the following, all costs are in pounds.
| From | To | Date | Depart | Arrive | Price |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Bristol | London | 30/9 | 11:30 | 13:15 | 13.50 |
| London | Paris | 30/9 | 15:30 | 18:56 | 29.50 |
| Paris | Munich | 30/9 | 21:45 | 08:58 | 41.00 |
| Munich | Vienna | 1/10 | 09:27 | 13:38 | 24.00 |
| Vienna | Obertraun | 7/10 | Total: | 4.5 hrs | 34.00 |
| Obertraun | Innsbruck | 12/10 | Total: | 5 hrs | 34.00 |
| Innsbruck | Garmisch | 12/10 | Total: | 1.5 hrs | 36.00 |
| Garmisch | Munich | 15/10 | Total: | 1.5 hrs | 8.00 |
| Munich | Paris | 15/10 | 20:53 | 06:46 | 22.90 |
| Paris | London | 16/10 | 09:07 | 10:36 | 29.50 |
| London | Bristol | 16/10 | 12:30 | 14:15 | 10.00 |
That makes a total cost of 282.40 per person. Not too bad for a three-site holiday...