Hilarity on the Autobahn

Easter Monday morning and it was quite chilly when Hanspeter (HP) took us to the railway station where the icy wind blew over the open platforms as we waited for our train to Basle to pick up our hire car. It is a 3 door Renault Twingo (it’s a baby Meganne if that is possible) - looks like an egg cup - and just about takes our reduced luggage for the trip around western Europe. We enquired about the toll roads in Austria and the Avis rep told us that you just pay at toll booths! After familiarising ourselves with the dashboard & controls HP wished us well and waved us off. Lucky for us there was hardly any traffic and we soon found our way on to the roads pointing for Liechtenstein. I soon found out that 110/kh was almost beyond the car’s capability or I should write, beyond ours. Any speed over this and the car screamed like a pack of hungry kittens, over 125 and it became unstable. We were already doomed to drive the inner lanes at lower speed and speed up only when overtaking was necessary. Anyway, on with the story. We did have a cool change over Easter and we drove in rain and/or drizzle as we headed toward Vaduz (the capital). To say that Switzerland roads are mainly made up of tunnels would almost be an understatement. It is law there to drive with lights on at all times especially so that you can see and be seen in tunnels. The tunnels can run for 15/30 kms or more and are pretty flash.

We spent only a short time walking around Vaduz as it was still closed for Easter and quite boring - a bit of a shopping hub for tourists and the well heeled though there are plenty of private banks. The Vaduz castle was perched high above us, virtually on the cliff edge, but we weren’t in the mood for a climb. Howard took the wheel from here and back on the Autobahn. We paid a toll of €8.50 which at the time we thought was fair for all the tunnel work we were going through. The Autobahn took a U-bend through Southern Germany and into the Tirol where we drove through sleet and snow for about an hour. Each time we went through a tunnel we hoped we would come out the other side into sunshine. Eventually we entered a valley and more or less left the immediate Alps as we headed into Innsbruck where Howard had a little panic and took a turnoff too soon in contradiction to my instructions, but we puzzled our way in the right direction. Thanks once again to Google Maps, we then had no idea where we were and passed our hotel turnoff at least once that we remembered. After a quick driver change and several stops for questioning strangers, Howard spotted an A4 sign stuck to a telegraph pole with an arrow pointing uphill to Pension Paula! Bingo! That would be us and a minute later we were there. After checking in we decided on a walk into town (15 minutes downhill). We now walked past the road works that had blocked off our turnoff, not that we would have seen any signs. It turns out that Austria, in addition to numerous confusing road (mostly in blue and white) signs which are not necessarily large enough to see, or obvious, also has descriptive messages on those or independent (green and yellow) signs. We wouldn’t quickly be able to work out if we were turning into our road, a town, shopping district, meat works or art museum! At least in England we could read off half the signs while driving past. Here is where Howard and I have rare disagreements, I will not stop in the middle of the road to figure out where we are, while he will insist that this is what we must do. It does not help that here, like England, there are no places to just pull over, well, here in Austria there are, occasionally verges wide enough to pull over on.

It was nearly dark as we walked into town. Innsbruck old town is lovely and we walked around for about an hour while looking for the tourist information office, which we never found. We did find a little restaurant and had a nice meal but while walking back through the old town were accosted by a young man (well dressed but off his face) asking for money. Howard in his usual unaffected style just said that he had no German whereupon this guy started to mouth off about foreigners finishing with “We don’t need you here”, so we crossed the road and headed off for the walk back to our hotel. Next morning the view from our room was almost as dramatic as in Grindelwald but the mountains were far more distant. We were here to visit the Hintertux Glacier ice caves, on which we’d seen a write up in a weekend paper, travel section, back home. Needless to say, we didn’t find our way to the Autobahn but took a district road in the right direction and finally pulled in to a petrol station for advice when we thought we were getting close to our turnoff. It turned out that we had accidentally stumbled onto the right road and off we went again through the glorious Zillertal Valley, gradually climbing higher. The sun was shining, you could see fresh snow on the mountains and as we climbed, fresh snow on the pine trees. Once through Meyerhof the road turned narrow and did a 17km steady winding climb! Holy cow, even in this small car I felt as if we would fall off the edge and each bus or truck coming down seemed to be met on a tight corner, on both sides of the road. Several times I pulled over to let a short string of Audis, Volvos and BMWs etc overtake and roar off into the distance. Once we did reach Hintertux and pull into the car park, we were able to take full stock of the beauty and rugged mountainous surrounds. We rode three hair-raising cable cars to get to the top and found the ice cave office (a container) just in time for the next tour. The wind up there bit into the skin and the sun had no effect! Soon we’d had our introductory talk with a shortened version in English and down the ice cold steel ladders we went. It was all spooky and exhilarating and I think I was just moments away from panic the whole time, keeping in mind that there were about 15 other people around me doing the same thing. We were led around crystal stalagmites, stalactites, fissures and ice walls and then minutes before we were to climb out again the light went off and we were pitched into complete darkness. This was an unplanned addition and we were eventually led out by mobile phone torches and our guide who made light of it all, leading a few people at a time with her LED torch. I guess you could say that we certainly had our money’s worth!

We went down to the second station where the sun had more effect, to have our lunch and found some seats at a table on a sundeck. By now we were tiring of being pushed around by skiers. On the cable car rides they would push past you to get to the gondola doors as if their lives depended on it and here at the sundeck (and restaurant) the same with their ski boots destabilizing them, then sitting down and the first thing most seem to do is pull out a packet of cigarettes!

On 1st May the EU has new laws coming into effect in Europe, covering smoking in public places and many business owners are frightened that they will loose customers. We just feel that Europe is so backward in this respect and it appears that the non smoking laws will be pretty weak. That clean air will be too late for us as by then we will be heading for New York.

On with the story, Howard took his turn driving back to Innsbruck and this time we found the Autobahn and were back before too long but had fun when we turned off into Innsbruck because unintentionally we found ourselves coming into the centre of town in peak hour and driving around in circles trying to get over the river onto our side of town which we of course did manage after seeing quite a bit more of the old town from it’s perimeters. We did take another walk into town for more sightseeing and a quick dinner. This night the old town was overrun with various groups of foreign students and we got to talking and laughing with some young English boys in the local supermarket - never did find out what brought them there but learned that their lodgings in the old winter Olympic village were falling apart and the young checkout chick was in a terribly foul mood I think, after having to contend with a lot of people talking in sign language and threw purchases about the counter. What a pout! No botox needed there!.

Wednesday morning Howard rushed into town to find a post office and ATM, as often the case was, that we had to pay in cash, then we were off to Vienna. Today the full traffic chaos was back on the road after Easter, meaning that the heavy transport had now joined the holiday makers and our little car had to do much more overtaking or be doomed to driving between 80/100kmh and so the rumble in our heads increased commensurate with the speed done. At the outskirts of Vienna we had strict instructions to turn right at the first lights! First problem, at the first lights there was no right turn so we turned right at the next and immediately found ourselves in a noodle of a traffic snarl. Howard found a quiet lane to turn into, a quick driver change, and I was the one to face oncoming traffic on the wrong side of the road in order to avoid turning right to get out onto the highway again. At the end of this quasi one way street I pulled over and pulled the phone out to ask instructions and our SERVAS host went red over the phone with apologies. Fritz had never made this mistake but, we were supposed to turn left. OK, after questioning and consultation about our true whereabouts, it was easy to get back out into the road, pull into the far lane and turn left. Only a few more miss-turns and then another call later and we did finally arrive in the foothills of the Vienna Woods, with our hosts’ little summer house, our lodgings for two nights, down the bottom of their garden, looking into same woods! We had a pleasant evening with Fritz and Ingrid talking a lot about various Australian experiences and spent a restful night in the loft bedroom. Thursday morning we received public transport instructions for a visit into Vienna and off we went with the bus virtually at the front door. One stop for a change onto the tram and we headed for Shönebrun Palace for a walk in the huge gardens, I’d toured before and neither of us were of a mind to look inside. Next we walked up the road to the underground for the trip into the centre and here we made a mistake. We had an 8 square/trip/day transport ticket and had the bus driver cancel out two days/trips (trips 1 & 2). we’d had it explained to us not to cancel out any more squares as one cancellation would last all day. Howard had a little fit of the dithers when he saw various people walk onto the platform and click tickets (all this without ticket barriers) so said to me “you’d better click our ticket” which I unquestioningly did at the exact moment that he realised we didn’t need to and instantaneously we’d exacted our revenge on Fritz by invalidating the 8 day/person/trip ticket up to the 6th square (because that was the end I shoved into the ticket machine). Vienna, and I take it Austrian public transport, runs on an honour system. You never seem to have to show your ticket anywhere, but I guessed that if you were caught without, the fines were heavy! And speaking of fines, Fritz had a little fit when we told him that we weren't sure of what Toll we'd paid. It seemed as if we'd only paid a tunnel toll the other day and we should have pulled over at a huge offroad/roadside toll station and bought a 10 day decal. Only thing was, there were no signs in English so we drove past still thinking we could pay tolls at each toll road! We'd not been pulled up, but who knows? we may have been filmed.

Yes, we walked our little legs off for a few hours, had lunch, gawped at the wonderful buildings and went to the Historishes Kunst Museum (Historical Art Museum). We arrived at the museum via a district of monumental buildings, most of which had been or still are, either a palace, parliament, any number of other government buildings and which is a mirror building, the other, a huge square away, housing a different museum. We successfully retraced our morning’s journey and arrived home at Fritz’s home unscathed.

We were treated to a special music and wine night just down the hill. I think the story goes something like this; some local wine growers have special nights to sell off their latest vintage in venues attached to local churches and the one we attended was in a 400 year old Keller. Luckily, the previous year new extraction systems were installed and we hardly noticed the chocking smoke! Anyway, we met friends and family, had a rollicking time, got to eat some typical light food and drank a fair bit (not their expensive varieties), while two folk bands (fiddles & one was an Oompa band) competed in the various cellar halls.

Friday morning, we took a bit of a walk in the woods, came to a forestry school building with a 31m tower, which we had to climb, but sadly, the weather was changing and with a temperature inversion, the sky over Vienna was misty, almost foggy so no outlook. We had lunch with Fritz (Ingrid was always going off to work - Fritz was on a year’s break from being a teacher) at a nearby Gasthaus then bade our farewells for our next friends would be waiting in St Peter in der Au. WE DID NOT GET LOST LEAVING VIENNA. We also pulled over at the first service station and bought a 10 day toll decal, pasted it on the windscreen and off we went again.

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