Gang, I cannot ever impress upon you all just how many tour busses there are in Salzburg. Filled to the brim with Chinese, (roughly two to one of any other nationality) American, and European tourists and all of them appear to be over the age of sixty-five.

Now I know there are two people reading this who are over sixty-five, one who is exactly sixty-five, and one young tiger who hasn’t hit the mark there yet (we love you and you are all awesome) but I can’t tell you how happy I am to be making this trip at the very young age of 40 and not some point after Jim retires. Thanks to some careful T-accounting (on paper thankyouverymuch) some tough decisions and the fact my parents would rather we spend my inheritance rather than, you know, have an inheritance, we have been able to start what we hope will be many more such Adventures in Dragging Down the Average Age of All Around Us.

As promised the “Ignore All Things Mozart” tour continued today in the Salzkammergut, the Austrian Lake District. We drove out to a little town called St. Gilgen with the intent of taking the ferry along the Wolfgangsee (Wolfgang Lake) to St Wolfgang (do you see how hard it is to get away from Mozart?) and then take the steepest cog railway in Austria to the top of a big mountain. (Schafberg – the train was the SchafbergBahn)

When we told the lady at the ticket office (both the ferry and the cog rail were official public transit lines for the Austrian National Rail) we wanted the combination ticket for the ferry and the ride to the top of the mountain she looked at us and said:

“Are you sure?”

The weather, you see, was godawful. I could write whole epic poems on how wonderful Gore-Tex and waterproof Clark’s are, but that would be boring. But while we waited for the ferry to come and get us, it actually broke and we were treated to some of the most wonderful and awe-inspiring scenery, which I will let speak for itself.

The rail line is a cog rail, which is necessary due to the steep trek up the mountain which, at times exceeded 20 degrees (we used a horizon indicator app on Jim’s phone to see how steep it was). The cog rail uses coal powered steam to spin a toothed cog which then bites into a track, pulling the train up the mountain.

The train was still wet when we got on it, sorry about the drops on the window

We got to the top of the mountain and were treated to some stunning views of the lake below.

Pretty, right?

I wouldn’t actually know. This was our view:

Yep the mountain is more than a mile up, and we were way above the good weather. It was foggy and pouring the entire time we were up there. I took those pictures from some postcards I bought. Surely you all didn’t fall for that trick again!

So we paid €88 to go and see the absolute worst weather in Austria (it actually started to hail wile we were hiking up to the hotel and restaurant at the very top of the mountain) and we LOVED every second of it. It was like our very own Amazing Race and we half expected Phil Keoghan to be standing on a mat somewhere in the worst of the weather at the top.

We had some very good Austrian food at the top of the mountain and then took the train back down, and once we got below the weather, the scenery again became incredible.

I took too many pictures and I wish I could share them all. This is a magic place, and I count renting our little land yacht of a Skoda as one of the best things we could have ever done. The Tirol and the Salzkammergut are some of the most amazing things we’ve seen on the whole trip, and to do them ourselves, in our own way, and to not be at the mercy of those damnable tour busses was the very very best thing so far.

Tomorrow we are capitulating to the charms of Salzburg and after we return the car and take care of some business at the Hauptbahnhof relating to our change of venue to Budapest on Tuesday we are going to take a walking tour of the old city and then ride the funicular up to the fortress and see what’s what.

Just a week to go now, and one more city on the itinerary. More tomorrow from our last day in Austria (and the absolute end of being understood, even in my mangled German.)

Tschüss!

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