October 2023

We got home yesterday after nearly 6000km of train travel over almost three weeks away.  The sleeper worked fine in both directions, although you don't get a very good night's sleep.  Most places were interesting to visit. One place, Ljubljana, deserves a second because since it rained all the sort time we were there so we didn't see much.  The Danes still insist on waking everyone up to check passports despite being a part of the Schengen area.  The interrail summary excludes one country which we passed through, Denmark. It also leaves out a few trains that we paid for, like the last one from Stockholm to Västerås.   

We arrived in Berlin after a rather less than perfect day. We started off in Plzen with a train that started off a bit late and got worse! We had to get off a station early because of the problems with the train and catch a local one to Regensburg. That wasn't a problem because we had nearly two hours expected wait there. When we got onto our (full) ICE from there to Berlin we sat next to two Swedish people, who basically took a lot of space and hardly spoke to us until we arrived.  It was late when we got to our hotel and we were a little pessimistic about finding anywhere to eat. As it turns out Margie found a very nice place, a short walk from our hotel. On Thursday morning we took the hop-on-hop-off bus nearest to our hotel, but there seem to be several companies serving Berlin. Our one had relatively frequent busses, but rather poor commentaries, so we had to listen to a lot of their muzak! We saw a lot of police, and heard plenty of sirens all day. Not sure if these were part

It's been an interesting day here in Plzen (pronounced Pilsen). This morning we thought we'd have to take a tour of the Pilsner Urquel brewery in either Czech or German and use an app to get some sort of commentary. But it turned out that there was an English language tour at 16.30, so we booked ourselves on that while we were there in the morning.  We bought some stuff in the gift shop and then went to the puppet museum, which was more interesting than I expected!  The brewery tour was good, particularly ending as it did with a glass of their unfiltered beer straight from an enormous barrel.  A Liquid lunch Inside the cathedral in the town square The highlight of the tour a glass of the product!  Tomorrow we heard for Berlin for our last day before travelling back to Sweden on the sleeper leaving on Thursday afternoon.  

A journey through three countries today. Starting in Austria after an early breakfast, we spent most of the day traveling through Germany.  The DB app showed that the train we'd planned on taking would be delayed by att last 10m because of border controls entering Germany.  Because of this we took a train operated by a private Austrian company that left 21 minutes earlier, and so should have arrived in time for our connection in Munich. However the delay grew from about 10 minutes at start to exactly enough to just miss our connection. The border police probably actually took 5 minutes, but they took the blame for the whole delay.  We don't like this private company because they made us travel in 2nd class even though we have first class interrail cards! Even though they have the right to do this we haven't come across any other company that has, and they cost us our connection!  Quite a backdrop for a station.  The second train today was run by a Czech company and while th

  Yesterday (Saturday) we chose to do a 'churches of Salzburg' walk with a view to see if there were any performances we could visit.  And sure enough Mozart was on offer in one of them! I was surprised to find that I've never heard Misse Brevis before. The only cost, which was actually a bit of a bonus because it put it on context, was that it was part of a full Catholic mass.  This is the view from our breakfast!  This afternoon we are going to a paid concert. Tomorrow we're off to Plzen, to learn about beer! 

We left Trieste for Ljubljana on the morning train this morning. As we approached the Slovenian border the conductor came round and told us that we would have to change trains. This wasn't obvious when we got on, but it wasn't a problem. The Slovenian train was in fact a bit better than the Italian one, and we were soon on our way.  We suspect the views would have been wonderful, but mist looks much the same wherever you see it! All a bit gray and boring.  Ljubljana didn't get a proper look round either because of the, at times, very heavy rain.  But we did have a very nice meal in a good restaurant not far from our hotel, and we are just hoping for a break in the rain for the walk back to the station in the morning.  Tomorrow we travel to Salzburg  where we'll stay for a few nights. 

Yesterday after having ridden round Trieste on a hop on hop off bus and then lunch, we walked to a nice flat for an evening's course in pasta making and tiramisu. There were two other students (both Americans) of a similar age to us. Our hosts were a couple where the host was the cook and the hostess could speak English. The cook did however use Google translate to tell us what he was doing.  This was arranged through TripAdvisor so I suppose it shouldn't be surprising that Americans would be heavily represented. Our two were very nice, and we had a very enjoyable evening. This was a very pleasant birthday present from Margaret, who just might get an electric pasta machine for Christmas!