This morning off to Salzburg

We left our hotel by St-Stephen’s Cathedral and made our way towards to West Bahnhof of Vienna, the city has several train stations, all large, depending on your destination in Europe.

Since shops and businesses open around 10 am in Vienna, it was a rapid taxi ride to the train station about 15 minutes away from our hotel. The West Bahnhof is currently undergoing a complete rebuilding. We are on the Austrian Federal Railway train or OBB rail Jet which arrives from Budapest and stops 3 minutes in Vienna, just enough time for people to get on and off and now we are going towards Linz, then Salzburg our destination. The train itself will continue onwards to Munich. The trip is about 2:30 hours. The train is very clean and quiet, though again full of passengers. This being a long Pentecost weekend in Austria lots of people travel. We go through dark forests, little towns, we see valleys and hills, everywhere dark green the predominant colour and Alpine peaks, everything is very picturesque. The train is going 202 km per hour,
in first class, the seats are leather and there is lots of leg room, very comfortable with meal service at your seat or in the car restaurant, they have a wide menu of food and drinks. We go through several villages like Pukersdorf, Pressbaum, Eichgraben, Neulengbach, Böheimkirchen on our way to the first stop St-Pölten.
In the station in St-Pölten we see car loads of freshly cut pine wood logs . Here too the train station has been re-built and modernize but in keeping with the town Alpine look.
The infrastructure in general in Austria is very good and modern.

It reminds me that the Danube river in Germany and Austria has been canalized some decades ago with a series of locks, allowing ships to bypass the rapids and waterfalls of the river Danube, as it rushes down as a torrent from the mountains in southern Germany across europe and towards the Balkan. So the Danube that you see in Vienna proper is the old river, nowadays the canalized version open to shipping is on the outskirts by the Prater Garden.

Now on our way to Linz, we pass by Melk, there is a beautiful abbey and castle here, all done in Austrian Baroque, looks a lot like pastry and marzipan decoration with white icing and lots of gold leaf. More little villages, Golling an der Erlauf, Neumark an der Ybbs, Blidenmarkt, Amstetten, Aschbach Markt, St-Peter in der Au, St-Valentin. At this point we are in a wide valley and to our right is the border with Czech Republic further ahead is the border with Germany. All along since Vienna we have more or less followed the Danube river.

Now Linz on the Danube, the composer Anton Bruckner lived here. Otherwise it is an industrial centre, not much of a tourist spot.

We are now just one hour away from our destination. Arriving in Salzburg the multi-year total reconstruction of the railway station is only 60% complete, the new part is modern and quite beautiful, once completed it will be a spectacular port of entry to Salzburg.

The weather unfortunately is cold around 16C and cloudy, some rain tonite. We arrive at the Bristol Hotel, at our request the management gave us the same room as last year. We then go to Café Bazaar for lunch, love this place, good food and friendly service, has not changed since 1920, beautiful cherry wood paneling on the walls and bevelled glass windows overlooking the river.