We headed out from Vienna, mere hours ahead of the throngs of Papal visitors. Our next stop: Salzburg, 3 hours by train from Vienna. The train was very pleasant and efficient. They even have 230V plugs (for a laptop, etc.) at the seats (but I wasn’t willing to unpack my suitcase to get my laptop power adapter & European plug converter). I’m not quite sure why, but train travel seems to pass much more quickly than airplane travel. Then again, if the public transportation & rail system in the US was anywhere near as efficient as most of Europe, I’d probably have little use for my car.
Our hotel in Salzburg was about ¼ mile from the train station, but our directions indicated it was more like ¾ mile. Since it was raining (yet again), we opted to take a taxi. The driver was a bit confused, but was willing to take our 4 Euros to drive us about 2 blocks. After settling in, we set off to find the modern art museum (where there was supposedly a great view of the city and fortress on the hill). We set off on what we thought was the correct bus & had real trouble figuring out where we were (on the less than ideal map). We tried another bus, only to find out we really weren’t where we thought we were. A kind local gentleman helped us & before long, we had navigated the correct series of buses & arrived at the museum’s lift. The cashier took advantage of my rusty German, telling me that the cost of the lift was 1.7 million Euros (actually, it was 2.90 Euros). It was funny, especially when he said it was a joke (as I was having real trouble figuring out what he was saying).
I must say that speaking & understanding some German came in very handy several times in the past few days. It actually makes me wish that I had the opportunity & motivation to get fluent in German (or perhaps another language). It’s just a great feeling to be able to converse in something other than English.
After we took several million pictures from the Museum terrace, we set off walking towards the hilltop fortress. It’s a very scenic walk along the hilltop. We saw a good number of locals out walking (many with their seemingly all-well-behaved dogs). We had a very nice conversation with a woman (who spoke only German) & her very photogenic dog.
At the base of the fortress, Charlie opted to head back to the hotel. I trudged on up the hill & surveyed the fortress. I took the funicular back down the hill and walked around the old town area. I’m surprised how much of this looks familiar, yet I can’t really remember much about the details about my first trip here (back in 1978, with my mother & father). After taking another few dozen photographs, I braved getting on a bus to return to the hotel. It didn’t take me too long to figure out the bus wasn’t quite heading where I wanted to go. I hopped off that bus & found a bus that appeared to be heading my way. Thankfully, this calculation was correct and I ended up at the main station.
Charlie and I later set out for dinner at what could be described as a shopping center across the street from the hotel. After enjoying some decent Chinese food, we decided to take a random loop trip on the buses. Most of the bus routes pass through this main station (usually on something like a figure 8 loop). We jumped on a bus & saw some new places on the east side of the river. We stayed on the bus & it looped down to the southern part of Salzburg. The bus was heading back from this area, when got to a stop & the driver announced, “All out. End of the line.” It appears that we misread the schedule & the buses that would normally run afterwards did not run on Sunday.
So here we were, about 3-4 miles from the downtown area in a decent-enough, but far from touristy area of town. We saw a few taxis pass by, but all had passengers. We found some help from an attendant in a mini-mart, but he wasn’t able to make the outside call for a cab. We were walking towards the infamous American Embassy (McDonalds), when we successfully flagged down a passing cab. About 13 minutes and 13 euros later, we were back at our hotel. Being dropped off in the middle o not much was pretty disconcerting, but we managed to pull through.
Returning to the subject of public transportation…while I’m sure most of our bus woes in Salzburg could be attributed to “tourist error”, I must say we seemed to have more trouble on each bus segment here, than we had in Budapest and Vienna combined. So I guess I’m not quite ready to trade in my car just yet.
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