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Oct 30th: Flew to Switzerland
Oct 31st: Walked around Zurich, tried roasted chestnuts for the first time. Wasn't too sure how to eat them but soon figured it out, the warmth was definitely welcomed. Switzerland is expensive though, 1 Franc (a little over one Australian dollar) just to pee!
Nov 1st: Today I made plans for the rest of Switzerland/Austria. I spent so long fumbling my way around different ideas that I ended up staying in Zurich one more night. I made my plans though! I was going to visit Interlaken in Swizerland and then venture into the Austrian Alps via Innsbruck and Salzburg before continuing into Vienna.
Nov 2nd: I traveled from Zurich to Interlaken today, with a stoppover at the scenic Lucerne. I spent the dusk in Lucerne and was able to watch the transition from daylight to night, which was rather beautiful. Although this did mean reaching my hostel in Interlaken in the dark, which meant I had no idea what beautiful scenery would await me the next day...
Nov 3rd: I woke up in Interlaken, looked out the window and couldn't believe my eyes. I had walked through such beautiful scenery yesterday and hadn't even realised. The Swiss Alps surrounded us, and even the view from my hostel was amazing. I went up to Grindlewald and walked around there. As much as I would have liked to go hiking, I would have needed 3-6 hours and sadly I didn't have that many daylight hours remaining. At Grindlewald I did run into a fellow Japanese tourist and it's thanks to her that I have a picture of me on Facebook looking at those Swiss Alps. It was a beautiful, peaceful and genuinely fun experience.
Nov 4th: Did I mention Switzerland is horrendously expensive? For the previous night, my hostel wanted 39 Francs (that's more than 40 Australian dollars) just to sleep in a dormatory bed in a hostel. Breakfast included... it would damned want to be for that much!!! I decided to leave Switzerland today, and took the train to Innsbruck, through Lucerne. This means I got to take the train through a wonderfully scenic route, which I missed last time as I had previously traveled by night. Part of the trip was disrupted by track maintenance but I'm unsure if this made the trip worse or better as we were transported part of the way via bus instead, which went up into the mountains and over some glorious scenery I'm unsure we would have seen by train. Unfortunately I was sitting on the wrong side of the bus so although I saw some truely amazing sights (including a lake down below next to a town from high above in the mountains) I didn't get some excellent pictures.
I also discovered there's an entire country between Switzerland and Austria, a tiny place called Liechtenstein. I managed to rearrange my transport so I could swing by there and visit the capital, Varduz, on the way to Austria. Even got a stamp in my passport, not that it really mattered since for this purpose they are represented by Switzerland.
I arrived in Innsbruck and luckily had a Couchsurfer contact me with a place to stay. I met Andi (my host) and another Couchsurfer who arrived shortly after I did, a girl from Lithuania named Agne.
Nov 5th: Agne is actually going to be working in Innsbruck and is only Couchsurfing for a month until her job starts which will also provide her with accommodation. So she's familiar with the area and took me around for a day. I saw all the apparently touristy things, including the Old Town and the Golden Roof. Andi had work but before that he was going to "Go for a walk up the mountains and then, fly down."
Fly!?!?
Turns out he has his own glider and often goes gliding from the mountains. I forgot that of course various Alpine sports would be popular here. The concept of snow, too, is a common one. I have to start getting used to this idea. The walk around Innsbruck was nice, and this was where I got the picture of me hiding in a heap of leaves, if you saw that picture on Facebook. I've always wanted to have a huge pile of leaves to myself and being immersed in them was the closest I could get to that fantasy. I did burst out of that bubble afterwards and made a huge mess and it was fantastic. Ange and I also went up the mountains and saw a view of Innsbruck down below. She taught me some Lithuanian and laughed at my terrible pronunciation of Lithuanian words when she gave me a book to read out loud. Since she gave me this book for precisely this purpose, I guess I achieved my goal! I found Lithuanian incredibly difficult to read, at least intuitively anyway. And the basic words and phrases she taught me, I'm also going to have difficulty remembering. Like Slovakian (more on that later) it just wasn't natural.
We finished the day by walking back across the river during sunset. I find dusk is the best time of day for me. I'm awake and the settings are so consistently beautiful, and you see them in all their states; daylight, dusk and at night. It's just a shame that after night falls there's so little you can see or do, unless you are in Paris (which I think is even better at night) or you enjoy going out for a night on the town, which doesn't seem to be my thing.
Nov 6th: This morning I decided to take my leave. Unfortunately the cold Agnes had seemed to get its claws into me, which made the next few days not terribly fantastic, but not unbearable either. I was on the train, bound for Salzburg, tossing up whether or not to head to Munich instead. In the end, I decided to follow the train through to Vienna. I sat next to a girl on the train who not only allowed me to use her laptop to book my flight to Iceland (which was getting more expensive by the day), but she also taught me how the locals say Vienna (sounds more like 'Vin'), and where to go. I walked down the main shopping mall street, found myself behind Hoffburg palace without realising it, found a memorial for Mozart, and stupidly climbed St. Stephen's Cathedral while carrying all my belongings. I did it, but only barely. Again, I was able to watch from the tower as the city sank from daylight, to dusk, to night.
Nov 7th: Vienna, being so far East in Austria, is amazingly close to other countries. I decided to take advantage of that with a day trip to Bratislava, in Slovakia! I saw Schoenbrunn Palace in Vienna on the way to Bratislava, since it was conveniently right next to the Vienna train station. The trip to Bratislava took about two hours. Despite promising I would not get lost on their public transport, I proceeded to do exactly that, constantly and consistently. Nethertheless, I was able to keep hopping off and on trams or buses until they headed into an interesting direction. I reached Bratislava Castle and walked up to the top of it. Like in Innsbruck, I was high up on a hill with excellent views of the river, and this was where I spent my sunset. Afterwards, I stumbled my way through the public transport system again until I found a place to eat Slovakian food, and tried Bryndzové halušky (dumplings with goats cheese and meat on top), which was quite nice and had orgasmic pieces of bacon on top; bacon which is almost definitely not healthy for me :D The service was pretty awful though. There was visable sulking when I asked to move tables due to being sat right next to the smoking balcony, a request for me to repeat my order despite an earlier waitress taking it, my soft drink being served lukewarm and well, they didn't seem to be happy that I was there. And I'm supposed to tip???
I fumbled my way through the public transport yet again to make my way back to the main train station, where the next train to Vienna wasn't for another 105 minutes! It was dark and I had wanted to visit a Heurigen (place to try new wine, usually out in the suburbs). Waiting 105 minutes would have meant missing out on visiting one of those places as they would all be closed by the time I got back. I had read that there were trains to Vienna every hour, but the lady on the counter was no help in this regard. After consulting the transport website I discovered on my own that there was another train to Vienna departing from the other main train station in 20 minutes. Perfect! I waved down a taxi and off I went...
Damn taxis are expensive, even in Slovakia. The taxi meter went up incredibly quickly and before I knew it I had spent 20 euros. I did make the train though, and I got to experience two Heurigens just before they closed. Unfortunately that was a pretty disappointing experience, they really didn't seem welcoming and I felt bad just being there and spending my money. I'm not sure, but I also think wine makes me incredibly stressed and angry. Not sure, but for some reason the things around me which are usually mild irritants: people smoking, girls chattering with the constant use of the word "like", were this time making me incredibly angry and stressed on the inside. Could have also been the string of pretty poor service I'd had recently but I couldn't say for sure.
Nov 8th: I decided to move on from Vienna to Salzburg, using the morning in Vienna to see a few things I had so far missed, including the *front* of the Hoffburg Palace, and the Opera house. I messed up on the public transport system yet again but managed to worm my way to the main train station, loading myself up with various foods from chicken to weird sandwiches to icecream and G'spritzter (wine with mineral water, which I found undrinkable and threw away later, by the way), and off I went. A few hours later, I arrived at my hostel in Salzurg, birthplace of Mozart and filming place of The Sound of Music.
Nov 9th: I made a bit of a mistake today and spent most of my time on the internet until 2pm. In that time, I realised that most of the things I had wanted to do here were now out of the question. For the first time, the fact that I was traveling during low-peak tourist season was starting to bite. I wanted to go to the top of Untersburg, the mountain in the region, but the cable car to the top was finished for the season. I wanted to explore the ice caves, but they were reached by.... the cable car! Which had been shut down since the 27th of October. As a result, many tours also stopped on that day, although there was a bike tour around Salzburg I really wanted which included scenes from the Sound of Music, but that stopped in September -_-
Instead, I decided to take the train out to the small town of Oberndorf, the place where Silent Night Holy Night was first composed and performed. I walked along the river towards the Chapel and this was where I spent my dusk. Beautiful. Thusly, I found the chapel at night. It was a silent night. The information center was shut, the museum closed for the night, and the cafe was closed. Everything around was empty. No tourists, no storekeepers, no one expecting tourists. Just me and the chapel. It was poignant... stepping in. I sat for a while.
...It was nice.
I walked back along the river in the dark, stopping at a little cafe by the river. I ordered in German, but apparently it wasn't good enough because the waitress still asked me where I was from :P Turns out she spent several months on the Gold Coast and Melbourne, and we shared memories of Brisbane. She bought a beautiful dress at the South Bank markets and was sad because she couldn't wear it here... she loved how she could wear sun dresses in Brisbane and no one would bat an eyelid but if she wore the dress here everyone would stare at her. It made me realise, that as much as I love jackets and boots and I love Europe because it has plenty of these whereas Brisbane only has sandles andn thongs... I really love sun dresses too! And it would be really difficult to wear those in Europe! So that's one thing I'm looking forward to when I get back to Brisbane in the January heat... wearing sun dresses!!!
Nov 10th: Really messed up today... I decided to over extend myself. Today, I was going to take the train two hours to Munich, then two hours to Fussen, so I could see the famous Nueschwanstein 'Disney' castle!!!! Easy, I thought. I'd wake up very early and make my way to the train station.
So I woke up early. I dashed around and bought some food at the market place, including some raclette (melted cheese, which I had on toast) and grapes, saw the gardens from the Sound of Music, and saw Mozart's birthplace. Then I jumped on a tram to the train station, saw the notification on the screen about the arrival of my train on platform three, then ran to platform three. My train arrived on the platform with 'Munich' written on the side of each carriage. I jumped on.
The train was 5 minutes late to leave. An hour later, I noticed we weren't anywhere near Munich. I was going to Innsbruck. I was on the wrong train.
As it turns out, the train that arrived on the platform was actually *two* trains joined together, and I had hopped on the second half. The trains split just after I embarked, and hadn't noticed. The train in front of me had indeed gone to Munich, but that wasn't the train I was on.
I did the math. Even if I hopped on the next possible train to Fussen (which is how you get to Neuschwanstein Castle), I would arrive well after the ticket office had closed. And although I may have caught a glimpse of the outside of the castle during daylight hours, apparently the inside was well worth seeing, and there was no point traveling back to the castle twice.
I ended up in Innsbruck. From there, I took the next train to Munich. The intention was to use the evening to regroup, get some information on Munich, and maybe even see a bit of Munich. Then make my way to Neuschwanstein Castle early the next morning, and then spend the afternoon/evening in Munich. That way, I get to have my cake and eat it too. Instead, when I arrived at Munich's train station, the page I had loaded on my phone went blank when I tried to open it, which was really bad, because it had my map and information on how to find my hostel. I ended up walking around until I found it (luckily, I remembered that it was somewhat close to the train station) and after being charged 16 euros for a bed which was being offered online for 11 euros (I got the money back later after raising this), I was given a voucher for one free 'beer, wine or soft drink'. After all that stress and my bad/cranky experiences with wine, I felt my arrival in Munich could use a beer. Unfortunately, upon going up to the bar and asking if I was able to use the free voucher, I was automatically handed a warm red wine. I tried explaining that I was hoping for a beer, but was brushed off and told that warm wine was traditional for the colder months. Then I went into my room and slept early... not quite sure what to attribute this to.
Nov 11th: I woke up early and caught the train to Neuschwanstein. I dashed ahead of the other tourists, and got in the line early, just in time for the ticket office to open at 10am. I got to the ticket counter, only to find that the first available English tour wasn't for two and a half hours!!! I considered dropping the tour and just seeing the castle from the outside, but again remembering the recommendation to see the tour, I decided to stay, and bought the ticket. Sadly, it was incredibly foggy so I didn't really get to see much at all. A saving grace is that you could say the fog added to the charm a little bit, but the sunny and clear weather of the previous day would have definitely been preferable. Another reason why I was upset about the previous day's plans going so arwy. Regardless, I waited for the tour time, surprising Japanese tourists by speaking their language in the meantime. The tour itself was short, but nice. Inside the castle is rather impressive, but most intriguing is Ludwig. I think the two of us would have gotten along rather well, or at least, I think I would have liked him. I'm definitely interested in the opera his bedroom was based on, I think it was Tristan und Isolde by Richard Wagner?
This day was also significant for two reasons. One, I got transported via horse and cart, and two, this was the first day where my breathing was consistently visible in the cold air. A sign of things to come.
Since the tour took so long to get started, by the time I got back to Munich it was night time. I only had an hour to see a street and the main town hall (which I admit was very beautiful) before I was on a train to Göttingen.
(that's all I'll write for now, it's time for dinner)
Nov 12th: Magic happened.
Nov 13th: Walking back home, I picked up a leaf, because all the leaves were sparkling, even in the night. The leaf had moisture on it, but the moisture had frozen! It was ICE!!!!! Outside!!! I scratched the leaf and ICE came off!!! And walking past the cars there was moisture on the roof and windows of the cars! And that was also ice!!! The way I'm writing now is the way I reacted!!! Ice!!!
I even tried licking the ice off the leaf but this was not met with approval.
Nov 14th: Went for a walk, in a most beautiful place. Poignant. And amazingly, the one time I'm in a place that means more to me than the whole trip so far, is the one time I leave my camera behind. I will never have a record of that moment, except for my memory. Even Google maps has no images of our walking path, except for one image taken quite a ways from the path. This was where I spent my sunset, followed by a walk in what I'm sure were more sub zero temperatures in an attempt to find a decent restaurant that was open on Monday.
More ice, amazing.
Nov 15th: Was going to go to Berlin today, but decided against it. Was rewarded with several hours to myself with a computer to do more research for the rest of my trip... I'm now registered to properly enter America!
Nov 16th: I suppose I go to Berlin!