That Time I Did a 28-Day European Bus Tour — Part 11 (Austrian Alps)
This article will cover Days 20–21 of the tour
Welcome back. Here is a link to Part 10 of my story, in case you haven’t read it:
Okay, so we’re getting closer to the end now. But we’ve still got a few destinations left. Specifically, the Austrian Alps, Prague, Berlin and Amsterdam, each of which I stayed for 2 nights before heading back to London. Not to mention the other places I went to on the way.
Which means I have a few articles left to write. Which I will get around to doing, when I’m not working or doing other things. So thank you for following my story. I have enjoyed reliving my time in Europe and it makes me wish I was there now.
I don’t think I have ever gone into this much detail about my trip to anyone else before. Because I wasn’t journaling or blogging about it at the time. And me talking about isn’t the same as actually being there.
So in this article, I will be covering the Austrian Alps. Not to be confused with the Australian Alps, which I live fairly close to. They are both nice in their own ways but they are very different. They wouldn’t have filmed The Sound of Music in the Australian Alps; it just wouldn’t have worked.
So, it’s the middle of Day 20. We’ve just left the beautiful Lake Bled and we’re now on our way to Austria. And once again, I don’t remember much about the journey but there most likely would have been a lot of lush, green scenery on the way.
That leg of the trip would have taken something like five hours (assuming light traffic) and I think we arrived at our destination in the late afternoon.
All I knew at the time was that we were staying in a region of the Austrian Alps called Tyrol. I didn’t plan the trip and I wasn’t driving or navigating, so I didn’t know where we were going.
But if I Google the name “Marliesenhof”, I can find out that it is located in a ski resort called Kirchdorf (so that’s the name of the village) which is in the Kitzbühel District of Tyrol (which doesn’t really mean a lot to me, just that it’s close to the German border, because that’s what Wikipedia tells me).
I remember having some goulash for dinner, which is traditional cuisine in this part of Europe. The traditional food in this part of Europe (and in most of Central and Eastern Europe) tends to be a bit on the hearty side. Red meat, bread and potatoes are all staples. Which I don’t mind but not everyone else feels the same way. But in Austria, Germany and the Czech Republic, this is the sort of food we’ll be eating. I really can’t remember if there were any vegetarians on the trip. There must have been somebody but I don’t remember hearing about it. And I’m sure they would have been catered to.
I remember there were at least a couple of people who didn’t eat bread much. And I remember there was at least one guy who didn’t drink (yes, it can be difficult on a trip like this, which is full of people aged 18–25 who want to party).
Another thing I remember from that night is that they served beer in large glass mugs called steins. Some of them were really large (much larger than the British pint, which is the largest of the standard beer sizes we have in Australia).
So once again, we socialised in the evening and then went to bed. I can’t remember who I shared my room with. Whoever I shared my room with varied from destination to destination and occasionally I got my own room. But they didn’t mix genders (unlike the Clink Hostel in London, which Topdeck had nothing to do with; they just used that a meeting point at the start and end of the tour).
I also remember finding out that the young woman who ran the place (Marliesenhof Hotel) was from Melbourne, Australia, and she had lived over there for five years. I guess if you’re looking for a fresh start in a foreign country, it’s not a bad place to move to. I have no idea who runs the place these days. But I have very positive memories of it.
On Day 21, we got up and had our usual catered breakfast. Some people were up early because they had a recreational activity to go to. Mine wasn’t until later in the morning, if I recall.
We had the option of doing skydiving, canyoning and/or paragliding. I choose to go paragliding. Which is basically like skydiving without the freefall part. I remember they took us up a mountain and (because it was tandem paragliding) I held on the other person and we jumped off a mountain and then glided down into the valley. It was actually really enjoyable. The scenery was spectacular and (while I was a bit nervous leading up to it) it wasn’t as scary as I thought it would be.
Would I ever do skydiving? Maybe. I don’t know. I had two opportunities to do it in Europe (Switzerland and Austria) and I wasn’t game to. It scares me. But those who did it seemed to recommend it.
For the rest of the day, I just enjoyed the scenery and enjoyed the rest of the day doing very little.
I remember the Canadian woman in my tour group (who had gone canyoning) dislocated her arm and had to be driven to the nearest hospital. Thankfully, that seemed to go well.
Once again, we had dinner and socialised in the evening, but I don’t remember too much about it.
Then on Day 22, we got up had breakfast, got back on the tour bus and then headed off to Prague… via the Mauthausen concentration camp, which I will go into in my next article.
To be continued…
