Alpine Eurail whirl

Making the most of two weeks by rail through the Alps and environs. Read more

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Trip start
May 10, 2025
Alpine Eurail whirl Traveler
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Looking for felafel
May 10, 2025 in Austria ⋅ 🌙 15 °C
There were two things I wanted to do on my first night in Vienna: see the reisenrad, the big wheel, that features in famous films including The Third Man, and have a felafel. Turns out the Prater funfair is zazzed up a bit since The Third Man, and it's a touristy / teens / kids fun spot and not the place for a decent felafel. Maybe spy killings still happen here.

Or so I thought. Ku'damm in the Pratersterne station was fresh, friendly and tasty.

The funfair, well, I'm not really in the market, but there looked to be good haunted houses and rollercoasters and it wasn't super crowded.Read more
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Before Sunrise locations, Vienna
May 11, 2025 in Austria ⋅ ⛅ 18 °C
Vienna is big on its imperial history, baroque moves me and I love Mozart (apols, Jewel), but my deepest cultural referent for Vienna is a film, not The Third Man with its noir scenes at the big wheel, but Before Sunrise. I rewatched it (again) just before this trip, and it still holds up; and I noted some of the locations to be the backbone of my day's walk through the city.

Thirty years ago – can you believe it!? – Linklater's film encapsulated all my early-twenties longings and it's good to reflect on how lucky I've been in those decades since.

Here are some of the shooting locations I came across, for the fans.Read more
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A walk around Vienna
May 11, 2025 in Austria ⋅ ⛅ 18 °C
With the Before Sunrise locations as the skeleton, I took a walk around Vienna on this sunny Sunday. The city felt calm and relaxed and full of interest. Plush shops, lots of music, cool playgrounds for apartment kids.Read more
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Last morning in Vienna
May 12, 2025 in Austria ⋅ ☀️ 16 °C
After some early-morning tutoring, I spent my last hours in Vienna having coffee and sachertorte in the Goldegg Café, which was a socialist holdout during the Nazi occupation. It was a good choice: great cake with sticky, nutty texture and good fruity jam, and strong coffee: first a double brauner, espresso with a splash of milk, then the Wiener mélange, a shortish, more serious cappuccino.

The problem with short, continental coffees, though, is that you can't nurse them like a mug of americano, so though I felt welcome to read my book and lounge with the early-drinking arty locals and tourists, I wandered off.

And ambled past the Belvedere palace and gardens, to the Vienna University botanical gardens, which had peaceful trees and meadow fields and greenhouses and a section of alpine plants (which are hard to grow in Vienna's dryer, warmer climate).

My only mistake of the morning was -- in the hope of being healthy and fresh -- buying a terrible felafel bowl (stale, dry, over-salted, over-mayoed, so much for healthy) from The Fat Monk. Shows that Google reviews can't always be trusted. No stars.

But I did enjoy another bottle of Almdudler. This one was a 'diversity edition', offering masculine and feminine endings: almdudler*in. A pasture yodeler can be both (or presumably any) gender. Gendered languages have extra technical challenges achieving inclusion, but the effort is usually visible. As the bottle says, 'Sprache schafft wahrnehmen', language creates perception.

One main takeaway from Vienna: people don't jaywalk. Even if the road is tumbleweed-empty and the red light is like five hours long, they will stand and wait. They are more patient than I.Read more
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Semmering Pass
May 12, 2025 in Austria ⋅ ☁️ 14 °C
You hit the mountains soon out of Vienna and snaking up the Semmering Pass is serene and beautiful. I'm impressed by the how big the mountains and forests are already, and how, er, alpine the vistas.

Many of the place names are evocative to me because of the alpine skiing world cup circuit I watch at home for an exotic view of pretty winters. Semmering is the first World Cup resort I'm passing through on the train. Gorjes.Read more
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Graz
May 12, 2025 in Austria ⋅ ☁️ 16 °C
I knew nothing about Graz (apart from the name of their football team, Sturm Graz) before seeing it as a city on my route. It turns out, it's very pretty, interesting and kinda significant. It's the second-largest city in Austria, has four universities, loads of students and a hearty communist tendency. It's also quite Adriatic, with Italian and Balkan influences, a long history of Slovene natives, and terra cotta roof tiles and a mix of Lombardic and Renaissance architecture and a rare Gothic cathedral.

The city is picturesque and looks well-funded, with fresh paint and plush boutiques in cobbled courtyards.

The Schlossberg is a major draw. Why take the lift when you can take the 300-odd steps to the top via lovely viewpoints over the city to the hills (of about 500-700 meters) beyond?

The Mur river rushes through Graz at a dangerous pace, and there is a groovy sci-fi beetle-like modern art museum in the middle that isn't overbearing.

I found a great beer pub in a nook and thought to try out some Styrian specialties for supper. The crispy fried chicken was fresh n crispy (but not as tasty as down the road from home!) and the Styrian salad was nice, with local red runner beans and grated horseradish.Read more
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Maribor
May 13, 2025 in Slovenia ⋅ ⛅ 17 °C
Maribor is another city I knew mostly from football and the ski circuit (although they last hosted a World Cup event in 2019, due to lack of snow).

It's the second biggest city in Slovenia and its Museum of National Liberation tells of Slovenia's painful times in the 20th century, first becoming independent from the Austrian empire, then annexation by the Nazis, Allied bombings, the failures of the Soviet dream and of global capitalism. It also had a more conceptual exhibition on modern technology and society. When I went in to the museum, the woman at the desk had to run upstairs and switch on all the lights!

From my three-hour expert vantage, the city currently seems a mix of upbeat and youthful and long memories, with quite a plush, exclusive centre and distressed and worn around the edges.

I also saw the oldest productive noble grapevine in the world, clocking in at 400 years, and might have had a glass of local wine but needed to keep my wits about me for my next connection.

It was a happy relief a) that the next train is running (because a previous one had been cancelled) and b) to be able to retrieve all my belongings from the locker in a particularly quiet Maribor station.Read more
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Maribor to Ljubljana
May 13, 2025 in Slovenia ⋅ ☀️ 17 °C
Another surprisingly scenic route, this one takes us alongside the milky-teal beginnings of the Sava River, which flows through three capital cities: Ljubljana, Zagreb and Belgrade, getting more poisoned as it goes along.

Here in Slovenia, it's bounded by steep wooded hills that were beautifully green and gold in the afternoon sun. There are rustic farms and small towns... And the astounding flue gas stack of the Trboveljski power station that burned lignite, the most polluting soft peat coal, from 1966, then gas, and, since 2014, nothing. Now it's a sports climbing relic. It's 360 metres high, Europe's tallest chimney, plonked for the advancement of Man in the genteel valley.

Along the way, I read up more about the complex enmities in the Balkans and perhaps part of Slovenia's (current) forward-lookingness is the fact that it escaped much of the harm from the 90s Balkan wars because there weren't that many Serbs here for Milosevic to want to get involved in Slovenia's independence.Read more
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Ljubljana
May 14, 2025 in Slovenia ⋅ ☀️ 19 °C
After more morning coffee suboptimality and a bout of tutoring, I headed out to see Ljubljana. I'd booked an online self-guided scavenger hunt with cryptic clues to show me around the main sites and give me some background information. It was mildly entertaining and I wandered off course a few times. I got a nerdish 91 for the puzzles.

In a flat spot between the Adriatic, the Julian Alps and north-central Europe, Ljubljana has a long and complicated history involving ancient river pile dwellers, Romans, Jason and the Argonauts, dragons, Hapsburgs, expelled Jews, bunches of Christians, Communists, etc. There seem to be cycles of identity invention and reinvention, and the most evident of these in the centre are the baroque churches, the grand cosmopolitan Vienna Secession public works of Joze Plečnik, and several startling modern public sculptures by Jakob Brdar.

The small old town (the city has only 300,000 inhabitants) is plushly redeveloped with well-heeled locals and tourists hanging out by the Ljubljanice River (the Sava runs to the north). The residential outskirts are mainly communist-era blocks but seem lively and friendly. Lots of greenery and pet dogs and young children looking happy enough. There are many art and theatre shows being advertised, and plenty of students.

Apart from the cryptic stroll, I took a walk up to the castle (big and strong but less pleasant views than from Graz) and took a very relaxing river tour, sitting in a hammock chair and eating grapes and cherries from the market.

In the main square, there's an impressive trio of pedestrian-friendly bridges and a monument to the national poet, France Prešeren, who seemed sadly haunted by his career choice and his muse, but did write the Slovene national anthem.

I ate excellent ice cream and tasty stuffed pepper and the local Union brew at a cool and inviting Slovenian eatery before taking the bus back to my hotel on a more commercial strip, near a significant cultural centre.Read more
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Last morning in Ljubljana
May 15, 2025 in Slovenia ⋅ ☁️ 20 °C
I had what I thought was just a couple of hours to fill this morning. First quest was to the mall next door for coffee but nice though the mall was, I didn't want to hang about there for hours so I wandered across to the Tivoli park, which is a large forested area with well-used but natural paths. The birds are familiar: blackcaps, tits, blackbirds, thrushes, chiffchaffs, sparrows and the like, but jolly and peaceful.

On the way, I went through a very nice residential area, with some plain concrete buildings, and some lower terraced ones. The roads are green and pedestrianised and the buildings have coffee shops and hair salons and book-and-toy shops and local olds and youngs gathered peaceably. The kids at the schools I passed looked relaxed in their civvies.

The next train is delayed but it's a slow day, so lurking on the platform with fresh pastries and zero-alcohol Union radler and updating you is a good way to pass the time.Read more
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Ljubljana to Trieste, the slow way
May 15, 2025 in Italy ⋅ 🌧 16 °C
When you can get to Trieste in an hour and a half by bus, only tourists take the three-hour crawler. And add another 90-minute delay and we get there slower than Jason and the Argonauts took to carry their ship to Trieste.

But it was a peaceful journey, the Slovenian wooded hills gradually adding a few more fig trees and cedars and terra cotta tiles and armed police at the Italian border. And then, after a little nap and a few chapters of My Brilliant Friend... il mare!Read more
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Trieste
May 16, 2025 in Italy ⋅ ☀️ 16 °C
Trieste is a crossroads city, built on sea trade, and still keeps itself super plush. It's got Roman roots and Baltic and Hapsburg influences, big synagogue and Serbian orthodox church as well as the Catholic cathedral. It was made Italian only after the first World War. Until then, it didn't really have a dogmatic identity and I think that appealed to James Joyce, who lived here for fifteen-odd years, and Italo Svevo. Struggling mongrel writers, yeah.

The city's grand vistas in bright sunshine don't make the best pics on a small phone and my favourite activities of the day were stopping at bars for excellent, cheap coffee and wandering through a few interesting and just-about deserted museums: the Trieste ship museum at the old dock; the small literary museum with displays on Joyce and Svevo and a great film showing clips from films adapted from books set in Trieste; and the Revoltella museum half in the mansion of a trade baron (with revoltella Trump-like taste in furnishing), who helped finance the Suez Canal, and the other half in a contemporary annexe showing Italian and a bit of Austrian art from the 19th century to now. I'm going to have to post art highlights in a separate post. The Penguins think they can limit me to twenty pics per footprint? Mwahahaha!Read more
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Trieste extra: details from the gallery
May 16, 2025 in Italy ⋅ 🌙 15 °C
Things my eye lit on in the Revoltella Gallery. For the fans.
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Venice
May 17, 2025 in Italy ⋅ ⛅ 19 °C
I'd planned just to change trains at Mestre, the new part of Venice. I'd intended to avoid the tourist trap and a city that didn't really need or want me. But I was literally ten minutes away so I took a detour in.

And I'm glad I did. Tbh, it's increds. Everywhere else wants to be the Venice of the north, the Venice of the south, the Venice of Joburg, etc. but Venice is the Venice of Venice, the ur-Venice. It's all for tourists now, but for good reason and the €10 entry ticket is well worth it. It was a thrill to step out of the station and think, wow, I'm really in this famous place. And there was definitely no need to pretend not to be a tourist, wandering through the town with all my stuff on my back, like many others. I didn't make it as far as San Marco, but had a super little whirl.

And despite the tourism, it wasn't too tacky. Of course, the usual curios etc, but also some good coffee and quiet corners and stylish shops and classic vistas. And not too much of a rip-off. I'm glad I went but also glad I'm not staying.Read more
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In fair Verona
May 18, 2025 in Italy ⋅ ☀️ 21 °C
After a pretty train ride through the Veneto, seeing big mountains on the northern horizon and exuberant families of carriagemates coming back from a Saturday outing to Venice on the smart and fast new Trenitalia regional train, I got to Verona.

Verona's a lot busier than Trieste, with tourists in the old city and regular inhabitants in the newer parts. There were special events on as well, an opera festival at the Roman arena (which is in much better nick than the Colosseum, who knew? Not I.) and then a city marathon / fun run on Sunday morning.

I took a walk out on Saturday evening and Sunday, wandering through the streets without much direction, and managed to get caught in a crowded part of the fun run / death march trekking like Calvary up a narrow lane to the San Pietro castle, where at the top people collected waters and biscuits and did some dancing to the DJ before trekking back down the stairs. Good thing I'd had some coffee.

The rest of the morning, I snacked and drank my way through the sites and the tourist-busy Sunday market in the main square. Enjoyable all round.

Oh, yes, Romeo and Juliet! A massive queue to see Juliet's balcony and shops selling romantic treats and mementoes aplenty.Read more
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Brenner Pass
May 19, 2025 in Italy ⋅ ☁️ 14 °C
The train from Verona to Brenner follows Verona's tealy Adige river much of the way. Around Trento and Bolzano, there are gorgeous vineyards in a flat-bottomed valley between moody dolomite mountains. The train can speed along at quite a clip. Further in, you start seeing snow-capped peaks. It was fun to go on the regional train, which stops at various stations, and see the local highschoolers and students and locals commuting and notice how the language changes from Italian to German. Given that this region has changed hands over the centuries, depending on who's winning, every place has two different names: Alto Adige / Südtirol, Bolzano / Bozen, and Bressanone / Brixen, where I stopped off.

I had planned to have a frontier lunch and visit the pharmacy museum, which a Google review rated as 'surprisingly interesting', but the restaurant kitchens were closed between lunch and dinner, and the museum was closed Mondays. There were no baggage lockers at the station and the town was a bit self-conscious for my taste, so I did a walking drive-by shoot and found a tasty slice of fluffy pizza warmed up at a friendly baker. Given that there are more German-speakers, I could have switched, but I was reticent to leave my three-day-old Italian inanities behind.

Changing from the somewhat worn Italian locals to the plush Austrian Cityjet S-Bahn regional train at Brenner, I straddled the border that has been rather more contested in the past. Brenner itself hasn't got much to show for itself, just a big outlet store, a handful of cops and a history of some terrible men (and lots of normal people) passing through. The pass is relatively low, at about 1,300 m, but has been in use for thousands of years.

Cattle grazing in high pastures and clear streams and more serres of mountains on the horizon over the other side.

I see that they're busy on a long tunnel under Brenner, so most trains won't do this scenic route in a few years' time.Read more
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Innsbruck
May 21, 2025 in Austria ⋅ ☁️ 16 °C
I needn't have stopped at Brixen for mountain vibes after all. My end point, Innsbruck, offered the best mountain action of the whole route from Verona. It's gorgeous, surrounded by peaks, and what's best is it's a proper city, with real people and businesses and Tirol administration alongside the tourism and being a base for adventure sports in the region.

On Tuesday, I hauled myself out of bed early to get the first run of the Nordkettingbahn, a series of funicular and two cable cars up to the top of Hafelekarspitze. The top cable car station is at about 2,250 metres and you get a brilliant view over the other side of the North Chain above the Karwendel Nature Reserve. An easy stroll up a stone pathway -- useful for me and my non- snow-trekking footwear! -- from there takes you to the peak.

I was there first and had a quiet moment with the view before the next cars of visitors started coming along, so it was well worth getting up early.

I strolled back through the hofgarten park and the old town, which seemed like a tourist rip-off centre compared with the normal town. I spent most of the rest of the day sleeping off a fever in my lovely hotel, with its bird-filled garden and gorgeous rooftop terrace. A good prescription!

What I will *not* miss from Italy and Austria is the smoking in public places. You're sitting there on the platform, minding your own business, taking in the fresh air, when you're affronted by a sticky waft of tobacco smoke. Ugh.Read more
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Arlberg Pass and St Anton
May 21, 2025 in Austria ⋅ ☁️ 10 °C
The next route was over the Arlberg Pass, along the valley from Innsbruck. Big snow-topped mountains with cloudy drapery. I'm glad I had a clear day for the cable car yesterday.

I'd planned to stop at St Anton am Arlberg, a ski resort at the top of the pass at 1,300m, but the rain and the fact that I was not feeling super put me in two minds. But it was very pretty when we rolled up so I hopped off.

Alas, the station was being refurbished and there were no luggage lockers so I had to schlep my stuff with me. Not undaunted, I waited for the rain to slow and made off up the route through an alpine meadow and forest to the Stockibach waterfall, a short hike to some accessible alpine scenes. If not today, probably never! My city-walking Skechers held up well on the wet paths.

Trees, views, clean rushing water, cows, goats and birds, and off-season ski paraphernalia. Well worth the couple of hours' stop.Read more
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Bienne and Neuchatel
May 22, 2025 in Switzerland ⋅ ⛅ 13 °C
Today, after doing my tutoring in my little attic room in Zurich, I went off to Bienne/Biel to see my sister. Not before resentfully paying 6 francs for a coffee (oh, Italy, how I miss your €1.30 macchiatos!)

Kate took me to see her pretty flat with a gorgeous view of the hills before strolling through the old city, quiet because of the rain, and the new city and down the canal to the harbour to catch the lake boat to Neuchatel. Because it was a rainy weekday, the boat was lovely and empty and the sights were still gorgeous as the day gradually cheered up. We passed picturesque vineyard villages and water birds and Jean-Jacques Rousseau's island before ending at Neuchatel, a scenic city on the lake.

We loitered along the lakeside and through the old town, taking in the changing light and waiting for restaurant opening time, then found a hipster burger place in a cellar which made a quality burger.

Then it was off again to Zurich by some of the very fast routes across the country.Read more
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Moods of Zurich
May 23, 2025 in Switzerland ⋅ ☁️ 14 °C
Zurich felt a bit sombre and unfriendly the rainy, lurgy-affected evening I got there, but as I felt better, got some good sleep despite the neighbours' knockings in the garret, and the weather cleared, it showed me charming different faces. Last night, after seeing Kate, I had a minorly lost drift through the city, mostly shut-down and quiet, with the last few well-heeled straggling from wine bars and some youths chatting by the river. It was prettily lit and I could imagine how cosy it would be in winter, though snowfall in the city is apparently rare.

This morning, the sun was out and I took in the old city again and the commercial pleasures of Bahnhofstrasse and the chic shops around it. If you have plenty of cash and want to spend it on quality stuff, this is the city for you.

I enjoyed my first nursable-sized coffee of the trip and a bowl of berry bircher muesli (from the Lindt World of Chocolate deli, but it was reasonable enough and fresh and tasty). I calculated the space in my bag and budget, and maxed them before heading to the station.

The Zurich train station is huge and confusing but I'm delighted to have been able to store and retrieve my luggage and find my platform.Read more
Traveler Is this a free drink?
5/23/25Reply
Traveler The water's free 😂
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Basel
May 23, 2025 in Switzerland ⋅ ☁️ 12 °C
A quick pit stop in Basel, located on the three-pointed border with Germany and France. As you might have noticed, I've increasingly slacked in my research but, like Zurich, Basel has a gorgeous intact old town (helped, of course, for obvious reasons) and some of the oldest hostelries and restaurants in Europe. Regular people live in buildings that advertise being 800 years old.

Kinda glad I didn't try this last weekend, bashing into Eurovision! Things felt calm and slightly hung over.

The Rhine runs through Basel, and isn't as pretty and charming as the Limmat or Aare. It's a big, greyish working river but still affords hilly views from the bridge.

More windows to shop and a tasty felafel.Read more
TravelerLove your descriptions on the pics.
5/24/25Reply
Traveler😂 They are very informative
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Special times in France
May 24, 2025 in France ⋅ ☁️ 19 °C
Early start in Basel to catch the TGV to Paris. Which had an unscheduled stop for an hour and a half, waiting to clear a burning train that was blocking the line ahead of us. The TGV is cool when it cruises along at 320km/h, which it didn't do quite enough today. But still, pretty, rolling then flattening landscapes.

I had planned to find a bistrot lunch in my spare time but the delay put paid to that. Or so I thought.

Enter security incident at Eurostar and humongous queues. When I realised that the queue wasn't going anywhere, I stepped out for a quick croque monsieur and pression at a café opposite the station so I can legit count Paris as a footprint. There was more queuing to follow, but we made it onto the train.

Next stop (I hope), Blighty.Read more
TravelerLove Paris 😎
5/24/25Reply
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Trip end
May 24, 2025