TRAIN #43 – 20:10 Basel to Vienna (Continued)
The Americans arrived after midnight, just before the border. I was woken by a loud voice shouting “There’s some guys in here with empty spaces.” Then they all came crashing in. There were two men and a woman, all in their early twenties. “Can you guys move ? “We’re awfully sorry.”
When the three of them had finished invading our compartment and pushed us onto three seats, they proceeded to talk loudly for more than an hour. “Do you speak English?” We gave them the “We are English” response and made it specifically clear that we weren’t interesting conversing in our shared language at that particular moment.
The border came and went and still they couldn’t bloody sleep. “Is there a bar on this train?”, one of them asked impersonating a German accent and making a drinking sign as one of the train crew came through the corridor.
I noticed from the Zugbegleiter guide the train stopped in Innsbruck at 01:27 and that there was a connection there for the 01:42 which was bound for Florence. I wondered whether we should go back to the Italian plan after all. We discussed it, but decided to stay put.
I dozed a bit but I couldn’t really get back to sleep. I had assumed the Americans were all travelling together but I was happy when two of them got off at Linz. At St Polten we were joined by a nice quiet Austrian gentlemen. We reached Vienna Westbahnhof on time at 08:45. I was tired and irritated and, to make matters worse, it was raining quite hard.
VIENNA
I changed £10 to Austrian Schillings and we went off for a rather expensive coffee in the station buffet before depositing our rucksacks in the relatively expensive lockers. It was still raining but we decided to brave a trip by tram into the city.
We put 20 shillings into the tram vending machine but no ticket came out. We started to curse and then immediately felt awful as we were gifted two tickets by a young girl. The Viennese were a great and generous people, we quickly decided.
We got off the tram when it reached the Ring and went to the Natural History museum. We went across to the Royal Palace, walked past the queues outside the riding school, and got another tram to the Opera and then walked back down the pedestrianised Karntner Strasse. We looked in Saint Stephen’s Church and found it to be full of Americans and decided to pass.
We toured Mozart’s house, two or three rooms of maps and compositions, and then went back via the Graben, Main Street, to the old town, the old City Hall, Am Hof Square, the Bourse and back to the ring. It had been raining all the time but then it began to rain harder.
We sought refuge in Sigmund Freud’s house. It was a bit bizarre. We pressed the doorbell and had to speak in to the intercom machine. The door was eventually opened. The museum for which we each paid 10 schillings, was hardly worth it. We kept dry though, taking a lot of time to examine Freud’s birth certificate, a rug, two chairs and a table.
We went back into the rain. We walked past the French Gothic church, University, City Hall and Parliament and then back down to the Ring via the Royal Palace.
We bought bread, sausages and jam for later and then had lunch in McDonald’s. After we had paid we discovered we only had 35 Schillings left. We knew we needed 36 to get two tram tickets the following morning to cross the city to the Sudbahnhof on our way to Budapest. We discussed whether we wanted to change more money to Austrian or try to find a Schilling somewhere.
We decided to try at a bank. I tried to explain to the teller that I wanted to cash the £10 traveller’s cheque. I wanted to receive Hungarian florins but I needed one Austrian schilling as well. The guy looked at me as if he had not understood. He shook his head and then counted out the florins. I had already given up hope when finally, almost magically, he produced one schilling.
Happy, but with no Austrian money left to spend, we walked off in the direction of the Big Wheel. We crossed the Danube Canal, got up close to the wheel, photographed it and then sat on a park bench opposite a fun fair wondering what to do next. We didn’t want to walk much further but we had no funds for tram tickets.
We walked on in the direction of Stadt Park and then seeing a train crossing a bridge, I realised it was an S-Bahn and of course the Interrail pass meant we could go free on it. Elated, we walked to the nearest station and jumped on the next train.
We walked around the Belvedere Palace and then visited the Museum of the 20th century. It was unusual, modern and very arty but was free to enter. We took the S-Bahn out to another suburb and then walked again getting lost before asking some army cadets the way to the Schoenbrunn Palace. We walked through its massive grounds and admired the fountains.
As we went back to the station we passed a lot of steam engines in the backyard of the technical museum. We were very footsore indeed when we finally got back to Westbahnhof. We rewarded ourselves by adding purification tablets to the water from the station toilet, and making up sausage and jam sandwiches.
TRAIN # 44 – 20:00 Vienna Westbanhof to Salzburg
We were absolutely desperate for some sleep, but there were few good options available. In the end we had decided to go to Salzburg, come back overnight, get the tram to the Sudbahnhof and continue to Budapest. We boarded the 20:00 express heading west.
The train, operated by OBB (Austria’s state railway), was named ‘Mirabell‘ after the famous Salzburg gardens, and was hauled by one of OBB’s Class 1044 electric locomotives (first introduced in 1976). We got a quiet compartment in a Eurofirma carriage and settled down. We passed through Linz at 21:40 and afterwards I managed to doze just a bit.
We were into Salzburg by 23:15 but the best connection back to Vienna didn’t leave until 01:45. It was now raining really very hard. There was a British soldier in full uniform standing outside the waiting room. I wondered why but then figured we were only a short distance from the West German border.
We went inside the waiting room. One side of it was full of drunks. One of them was chasing a child around, we watched this spectacle for a few minutes until an old lady got up and hit the drunk pushing him backwards on to the floor.
We moved to the other side of the room. Here was a varied assortment of travellers; a couple of guys dressed as Hell’s Angels, three oriental tourists and a group of students from Canterbury University. We chatted briefly with the students, but when they told us they didn’t support the striking miners, we quietly took our leave. I then fell asleep sitting on one of the benches. I woke up having fallen sideways and banged my head on a heater. Salzburg, I decided, was an awful place.
Forty Years Later….
- Austria joined the EU in 1995.
- Physical border controls between Switzerland and Austria were removed in 2008 under the Schengen Agreement.
- After the full opening of the Hauptbahnhof in Vienna in 2015, Westbahnhof is now mainly a commuter station.
- Euro banknotes and coins replaced the Schilling on January 1, 2002.
- The 20th century museum moved to a new location in the MuseumsQuartier in 2001.
- The Class 1044 locomotives, subsequently reclassified 1144 are now being phased out.
- I have been back to Vienna a few times on business and for pleasure, I have visited Salzburg and found it to be the opposite of awful and, of course, I have met many wonderful Americans over the years !
