Becca Jane St Clair

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[Travel] Austrian Road Trip Summer 2016

austriaschedule We might be a little insane.

After we got back from our trip to Austria last October, we immediately began planning a trip back, but this time, we were going to take my mom along who had always wanted to visit Austria and who would be visiting us for part of the Summer. I spent many MANY nights researching all our options….flights, rental cars, trains (while Tim and I have his BR privs, Mom would not), etc. I finally worked out that it was actually going to be cheaper by nearly £1000 if we drove our car across and road tripped because flights for the three of us were coming in at nearly £500 and it was very expensive to rent a car for three weeks!

I used our Tesco club card points to book the Eurotunnel for the trip over, and I booked the cheapest ferry (DFDS) for the return trip. We knew we were going to have a stop to visit Neuschwanstein in Bavaria, and started making a rough idea of things we wanted to do and then picked regions to search for apartments as after renting apartments and self catering in October, we have decided that is the best way to go if you don’t want to tow your caravan or sleep in a tent as it gives you the freedom to be in charge of your meals. You can eat out if you want, but you have the options of staying in for all three meals. We usually had breakfast and dinner in our apartments and Lunch out.

We tried to add in some down time, but our first week was turning out to be VERY busy as we wanted to visit two railways (one of them twice) on specific days (due to their schedule) and day trip to Vienna. We also had my mom’s birthday while we were visiting, and I had decided to surprise her with the Sound of Music tour on her birthday, so we knew we had to be toward Salzburg by the 3rd. We also wanted to ride steam on the Pinz again, which had to be done on a Thursday, and the Zillertalbahn was only running steam Wednesday – Sunday. Tim also wanted to visit another line on one of the Saturdays, but after realising he would have to drive for 9 hours in the one day alone (as Mom and I would have taken the train to our next destination to get checked in on time) he decided against it and we decided to make a stop in Germany at the Chiemsee since we were cutting through it anyway.

Our schedule wound up looking like this:

Day .5 – Tim worked until 6pm, then we drove down to Ashford for the night in a Travelodge
Day 1 – Eurotunnel and driving. Originally it was going to be all the way to Schwangau, but we wound up stopping in Kempton instead.
Day 2 – Neuschwanstein and Schwangau and then driving to Weitra for our first apartment (Urlaubsnest)
Blog post for days .5, 1, and 2 can be found here
Review of Urlaubsnest can be found here
Day 3 – Waldviertelbahn and hopping across the Czech Border [Blog link]
Day 4 – Driving in the Czech Republic and JHMD
Day 5 – Vienna
Day 6 – Waldviertelbahn
Day 7 – Sound of Music Tour (Mom and I)/ Mondsee (Tim) and moved to Haus Reider in Pfarrwerfen
Blog post for Day 7 can be found here
Day 8 – Tim and I explored the area in car and on foot
Day 9 – Freilicht Museum (video)
Day 10 – Murtalbahn – Freight on the Murtalbahn
Day 11 – Pinzgauelokalbahn
Day 12 – Salzburg
Day 13 – Chiemsee and Drive to Mayrhofen (Gasthaus Zillertal)
Day 14 – Exploring the local area
Day 15 – Brenner
Day 16 – Innsbruck
Day 17 – Zillertalbahn
Day 18 – Too rainy for much, so we had a lazy day and went on a walk
Day 19 – Drive to Goe, Belgium (Yellow House)
Day 20 – Ferry and drive home

Other related blog posts & videos:
(video) Austrian Grocery stores
[Travel] Grocery Shopping

Or watch all the videos here:
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLDUaor7uXZQfPu6Un77YGHRkLMlPgKFp-

The countries we were in:
France*
Belgium
Luxembourg*
Germany
Austria
Czech Republic
Italy
Netherlands*

(*drove in only)

with the exception of 2 single overnights at the beginning and a single overnight at the end, we stayed in three apartments and spent about a week in each.

As I write blog posts and post videos, I’ll be revisiting this post to add links to everything….I’m hoping to blog it all. I was a little lax in blogging our October trip, so I’m hoping I will do better this time!

***
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Wir fahren nach Deutschland!

I’m so excited.

When I was 11 and I walked into my first quarter of German with Frau R (the district I went to divided the year into quarters and we took one quarter each of German, French, and Spanish to give us a “taste” to help us decide what foreign language to study), a GIANT poster of Neuschwanstein was hanging on the wall above the blackboard. I spent a good amount of time that quarter looking up at that poster – if there was a quiz and I needed to think, I’d glance up at it. If Frau R was talking to another student and it wasn’t relevant to German, I’d look up at it. I wound up picking German as my foreign language largely because I wanted to some day visit that castle and be able to speak the language.

When we moved on to HHS, I continued with German. I loved the language, loved the country, loved the food….I didn’t want to stop talking German. And guess what poster was once again, hanging up above the blackboard? Yep. Neuschwanstein. I studied German at HHS all four years, and even took the AP class/test testing myself out of 2 semesters of collegiate level German.

My Love for German didn’t end there. When I went away to college, it was harder to stick with German, as Penn State York didn’t have a German class at my level. But I still loved the language, and read my German books.

When I moved into a dormitory, my uncle gave me a poster that came with a puzzle of his. The puzzle? You guessed it. Neuschwanstein. That poster hung in all of my dorm rooms, reminding me of how much I loved German and wanted to go to Germany. At one point, I had even switched my major into International Business, with the intentions on doing IB/German so I could work in Germany. I didn’t stick with it, but only because once again, being at the “wrong” campus gave me no options for higher language courses, and it would have taken me an additional 2 years to complete my degree.

Tim has always known about my love for Germany, German, and Castles, particularly Neuschwanstein. He wanted to take me there for our honeymoon, but with all the other costs involved with the move (visa, shipping stuff, airfare) we decided to put it off and do it at a later point, hoping for Spring 2010 or even Fall 2010 to be for our anniversary.

When we got Tim’s schedule for 2010, he found out that his summer fortnight was actually in September. Our canal boating plans had to be put on hold until 2011, but we decided we are going to head to Germany instead!

We’re going to mostly be in Baden-Württemberg and Bayern (Bavaria). At this point, I don’t think we have any plans to go farther North, and we’ll have to plan a Northern Germany trip for another year, as there is a TON I want to see in Germany. Of course, a trip to Neuschwanstein is in our plans.

…..Now to brush up on my German, as I haven’t spoken it in…oh….10 years? Tim’s got audio CDs, and I found a book I’d like to order. Hopefully it will all come back!

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