St. Moritz to Salzburg

Hello again everyone!

So I'm writing from our hostel in Salzburg, Austria. I'm in the lobby right now (the internet is strongest here) with a Belgian guy and a Japanese guy who I've been talking to, who are both tattoo artists.  A bit random but ok.

So I'm still fuming with Blogger...it fucked up my last post so badly. Hopefully this one will go better!

This hostel is the last of our trip! For everything we're doing in Austria, we're using Salzburg as a base and then travelling around to the surrounding areas. So that's kind of exciting.

I MUST get to bed at a reasonable time tonight...last night I had less than 2 hours sleep and I did not sleep at all during the day. In general I've had pretty poor amounts of sleep, so if I can try and finish this early then I'll be a lot more awake tomorrow.

So I'll get started right now and let's see how this goes!

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So when I left you last, we were in our amazing hostel in St. Moritz.

We set our alarms for 7am, seeing as this was when breakfast started. Also, the trains that we could catch from St. Moritz were every hour, but we wanted to get one as early as possible seeing as the journey as a whole to Salzburg (we had to make two changes) was quite long.

We woke up at 8am.

Oops.

Our first port of call was the canteen for our all-you-can-eat breakfast. We really needed to take advantage of it so that we would spend as little money as possible on food.

I managed to cram in two bowls of cereal, two bowls of yoghurt and 3 slices of toast. In terms of what was available for breakfast, it was nowhere near as comprehensive as what was available for dinner yesterday, but it did the job.

Sam was absolutely stuffed, and actually had to give me some of his food (that's a first). That's how much we wanted to make the most of the included breakfast!

Once we were finished, we checked the bus times for the bus from the hostel to the train station, and then went to our rooms and sorted our stuff out. I had a shower (Sam didn't feel he had enough time to have one too) and then we finished packing.

We were going to get the bus at about 9.05am, giving us plenty of time at the train station for our train at 10.02am. We also wanted to double-check that our InterRail tickets (without any reservations) were valid for the whole of our journey, so this gave us time to do that.

We didn't have enough time to get this bus in the end, so we had to get one at about 9.35am, which was cutting it a bit fine. Typical us, doing it the hard way.

We got to the train station at about 9.50am and headed straight for the ticket office. Fortunately, the lady there told us that our InterRail tickets alone would be enough for the whole journey from St. Moritz to Salzburg, which was a relief. 

Before moving on to the train journey, I'll just explain what we had to do.

Firstly, we had to get a train from St. Moritz to Chur, which, as you will know if you read the last post, was one of the stops on the Glacier Express. From Chur, we had to get a train to Sargans, a small Swiss town near the Austrian border, and then from Sargans there was a train direct to Salzburg.

Here's a map to show you the overall route:

So we actually went through Germany and skirted around Liechtenstein!

So, for our first train to Chur, we weren't actually travelling on the Glacier Express, but we were on a train which had windows that opened very very wide, which was perfect for taking pictures of the landscapes we were passing.

Not only that, but the weather was very good this morning, so we could see more of the peaks of mountains and everything generally appeared a lot nicer. So we took plenty of photos throughout the 2-hour train ride!

Here is a selection of them:

Look how big the windows were! You could easily jump out if you wanted to.

The sgraffito wall decor in one of the settlements. Sgraffito involves scratching on the walls to produce the desired image.

The train!

The train going over the huge Landwasser viaduct.

A very thin and pointy church; typical of the area.

As soon as we got off the train at Chur, we started looking for trains to Sargans.

By some amazing luck (or so we thought...), a train to Sargans was in the platform next to ours and was leaving within 5 minutes. We made sure that it was definitely going to where we wanted to go, and hopped on.

We didn't even need to show our tickets. The journey only took about 10 or 15 minutes.

So it was the same procedure again - look for trains to Salzburg as soon as possible.

However, we couldn't find any.

I'd checked on the internet before we left the hostel everything to do with the journey, and I knew for a fact that trains leave Sargans to go to Salzburg.

So we went to the ticket office and asked when the next train to Salzburg was. He didn't question our destination, which was a good start, and then told us that the next train was at 3.37pm.

Cool, so we were sorted.

Downside: IT WAS FUCKING 12.20PM.

We had over three hours to kill.

SHIT, I could have had another couple of hours sleep. Fuck.

I realised that I could use this time to work on the blog, which I did, while Sam went for a wander into town.

Apparently it was very small and there wasn't much around at all. So a great place to spend 3 hours of your time.

While I kept on working, Sam did some sketching and other things, but eventually it was time to head onto the platform.

As it was a train going to Innsbruck, Salzburg and Vienna, we expected it to be quite busy and maybe seats would be reserved, meaning we'd have to find unreserved seats.

It was a ghost train.

There were probably only 3 other people in our whole carriage at this point. Even throughout the journey, there were very few people on the train in total.

So the train left and we headed into the Austrian countryside, a 4-hour journey awaiting us.

The scenery was really impressive. Although similar to Switzerland, it seemed that the mountains were more spread out, with farmland in between

We only got a few photos from this journey (reflections on the glass were bad, I was writing my blog and we both wanted to relax as much as possible) but you can still see some pretty cool shit...

An amazing cloud formation around a mountain.

What you can see in the rock face is actually a waterfall.

We passed an area where EVERYTHING was covered in trees; nothing else.

Rocky mountains.

I finished writing the blog post after about two hours, and from then on me and Sam just listened to music the whole way. It was so nice just being able to relax and enjoy the scenery.

At one point in the journey, something VERY embarrassing happened to Sam. I couldn't believe it when he told me.

He'd just been to the toilet on the train, and walked to the bit where there was an automatic glass door to get back into the carriage.

It didn't open when he walked towards it. He waved his hands next to the sensor, jumped up and down, walked forwards and backwards, did a little dance maybe...but the door wouldn't open.

He then tried to pull open the door manually, but it kept pushing against him. What the hell was he doing?

It was only then when he noticed that the door he was attempting to pull from the side had a glass pane in it. Meaning...that THERE WAS NO GLASS DOOR IN FRONT OF HIM.

The door had been open THE WHOLE TIME.

People were staring at him wondering what the fuck this stupid fat person was doing, waving his arms around and moving forwards and backwards at an EMPTY SPACE.

Hooooooooollllllllyyyyyyyyy sssssssshhhhhhhhiiiiiiiiiitttttttt

It must have been the most awkward moment EVER when he just walked through the empty space after acting like a mime artist for the past 5 minutes.

I am NEVER going to let him forget this.

I wish I'd seen it - in the end his description of what happened between fits of laughter was the best I could get.

Anyway, the train got into Salzburg just before 8pm.

Sam had memorised the route to the hostel from the train station entrance, so we moved quickly, avoiding the large raindrops.

We got to the hostel and checked in as usual. We're in another 4-bed dorm - this time there are two Australian people with us who are also travelling around Europe, so that's pretty cool.

On the train we had to survive mostly on bread, but we had two packs of flavoured noodles with us, and this hostel has kitchen facilities. We also really needed laundry facilities and this hostel has them too. So conveniently, we mixed this all together, having dinner while our clothes were being washed and doing internet stuff too.

Unfortunately we didn't see much of Salzburg today, but there's plenty of time in the next couple of days to do that, and also the weather wasn't too great anyway. So that's something for you to look forward to in the next post!

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So today certainly hasn't been as exciting as the last few days, but it was necessary for us to get to Austria, and we also saw an awful lot during the train rides, so we've still had a good experience.

Luckily, stuff is MUCH MUCH MUCH cheaper here than in Switzerland, so we will actually be able to afford stuff. Our hostel does breakfast for 3 euros each, so we'll probably do that in the morning, but after that we're looking forward to having a good time in Salzburg and actually eating properly too. We can afford to, for once!

I AM FINALLY FINALLY INDISPUTABLY UP TO DATE!!!!!!!

And I don't think Blogger has fucked up this post!

I'll try and fix the last one when I can; it's difficult because it's such a hench post. I'll try my best.

But anyway, I must certainly get to bed now. Thank you for reading and I hope all this travelling through time hasn't been to hard to deal with.

So check back here tomorrow for stuff about Salzburg. Until then!


Jack - 22/6/12 - 03:31 in Salzburg, 02:31 in the UK