Join us for a 9-day holiday trip by coach to Austria, staying at Schüttdorf, close to Zell-am-See, 12-20 August 2000. We'll be touring the sights and musical box chalets of both Austria and Germany as we venture into Bavaria and the Tyrol.
Each article can be accessed by clicking/tapping the fourteen photos below. A link on each page will bring you back here.
Saturday 19 August 2000. We have to say goodbye to Austria as the coach set off north for Belgium. We were to stay overnight in Belgium and then back to the UK the following day.
Gazing out of the coach window brought a few reminders of the scenery we had enjoyed during our few days in Austria.
At times it threatened to remind us of some of the weather we had sheltered from during our evening walks!
We said goodbye to the musical box chalets that had been almost the only shape of building we had seen for a week!
We had seen so many chalets and other buildings of the same basic design that I was actually looking forward to seeing a house without a balcony and with a four-sided roof! The Austrian-German border came and was crossed and we turned onto a road with markers every kilometre. We would stay on this one road for several hours and the first marker read 510 km.
The Germans were building a new high-speed railway and we saw construction works every now and then as the road weaved its way alongside, over and under the embankments and cuttings of the railway.
There were also the occasional castles to break the monotony of the flat landscape. I watched throughout the day as we stayed on this one road until a marker said 1 km and we reached the border with the Netherlands.
The following day, rain spattered the coach window as we left the hotel in Belgium. "Where's your camera?" demanded Janet! It didn't do very much though and we set off from Antwerp towards France and the ferry port of Calais. A stop at a Belgian chocolate factory found the factory already full of visitors but the same firm had an outlet at the wine cash & carry near Calais so no-one seemed unduly worried! The border posts on the Belgian/French border were still there but were now deserted for most of the time as Europe had opened its frontiers to other European countries.
Er... the white bits (top left) are the reflection of the coach windows on the opposite side of the coach and not - as they might at first appear - a ghostly washing line of Y-fronts...
The odd reminder that 2 world wars were fought over this land and several typical French farms and villages flashed by until we reached Calais. The ferry crossing was smooth and we transferred to our feeder coach, swapping news and views with the people we had travelled from Blackpool with 8 days before.
Friday 18 August 2000. Our early morning walk before the coach is a slightly longer one as it will be our last. [sniff!]
We are heading for Krimml in the Hohe Tauern National Park. On the way we pass an old steam locomotive by the side of the road.
Now, never mind bright copper kettles and warm woollen mittens, waterfalls are one of my favourite things! England has some extremely pretty ones but nothing on this scale. I'd been looking forward to this visit since we booked the holiday! Please note: we start at 1100m above sea level. There is some climbing to do...
Krimml has the longest waterfall drop in Europe. It drops in three stages and we have arrived at the bottom of the final stage. In total it drops 380 metres (1246.72 feet) with the top and bottom drops being 140m (459.32ft) and the middle drop being 100m (328.08ft). That's just the difference in height. From top to bottom (or bottom to top) you climb the path for 4.2km (2.6 miles).
Pete and Derek from the coach left their wives below and went storming off at a rate of knots, determined to reach the top. The path zig-zags steeply up the hillside and few people were running...
We've climbed 70 metres vertically so far up the winding path. That's somewhere just over halfway up Blackpool Tower... There was a fair bit further to go yet though - we were only just getting going! My head knew that... My feet and legs were beginning to think I'm an idiot... The path is steep. In places it is as steep as the stairs in your house!
This is the top of the bottom fall and the middle fall can be seen above it. The stream does a graceful zig-zag from the middle fall to the lower fall.
Then on reaching the top of the middle fall, a swiftly tumbling stream came into view, leading up to the higher fall glimpsed between the trees. Yikes... that looks another long way up!
A bridge crossed the stream before we reached the higher falls. Very picturesque and an excuse to stop for a bit of a breather!
Who was this handsome devil leaning against the the bridge parapet and trying not to look as though he's gasping for breath?
Time was getting on. We wondered whether to carry on higher or to turn to be able to both eat and look at the souvenirs on offer back at the bottom. I wanted a look at the higher falls. I zoomed off ahead at a snail's pace... This was as far as we got - 1,330 metres above sea level, 230 metres (754.59ft) higher than when we set off. That means we have climbed the equivalent of one and a half Blackpool Towers!!! We wanted time to eat and also to just sit and watch the water at the bottom. Heck, we just wanted to stop shaking...!
By mutual unspoken agreement (we couldn't talk by now...) we turned and retraced our steps. Not much further down was a restaurant on the way down and we ordered wiener schnitzel each, having been told not to miss the chance of trying it. It was excellent and we both enjoyed a really great dinner. We were the only ones there apart from the staff.
We had ordered in German and after a while a waiter came in and rattled something off that I didn't catch. Presuming it to be "Is everything ok with your meal?" I just answered casually, "Ja, danke!" upon which he beamed and nodded, opened the windows, turned the stereo down and left...
On the way up we had walked past most of the viewpoints in order to keep going upwards instead of detouring. So on the way down we went to have a closer look at the falls from the viewpoints at frequent intervals.
Even though we had marvelled at the falls on the way up, the views from some of the platforms built as viewpoints were superb. Spray from the roaring falls filled the air around us, brightening the mountainside with unexpected rainbows. We were still quite high up here and had yet to make our way down to the bottom of the falls. We were at the top of the lower of the three falls. The rapid clomp of feet came behind us - Pete and Derek on their way down. They had made it to the very top but reported that the rains of the previous two nights had washed part of the path away and they had been forced to tread on the brink of the drop!
The rocks at the bottom of the falls gave us a natural seat and grandstand view. The spray dampened and refreshed us and apparently the water has taken such a battering by falling so far, it is enriched with negative ions and is very refreshing and a restorative for asthmatics!
We had around a quarter of an hour before we were due back at the coach and stood by the river which tumbled away from the falls in a cascade of white water rapids.
The water, when I tested it with a hand, was icy cold betraying its glacial origins. The spray too was cold and refreshing and it was only when we started off towards the coach park that we realised we were soaking wet...
Back at the hotel, we walked once again down to the lake at Zell-am-See for one last look. This time the weather was a little more kind to us! As we walked back along the lake there came a shout. Sarah was swimming in the lake, also having a last fling. Tomorrow will be the long trip through Germany and Holland to our overnight stop in Belgium.
Thursday 17 August 2000. At the end of the previous episode we took the funicular railway up from the many squares and churches of Salzburg to the Hohensalzburg fortress.
It's an impressive chunk of masonry and design, far bigger than you would find most castles in the UK to be. In fact inside those formidable walls is an entire village.
It therefore gives an air of both calm beauty and impregnable mass.
It was never taken by force. Even when under siege during the Peasants' Revolt of 1525, with food running out, the defenders coloured their only bull a different shade every day and paraded it around the walls in view of the besiegers below, to convince them there was plenty of food left.
We spotted at least two wells within the confines of the fortress, so presumably water wasn't a problem.
We had gone up there thinking that we might spot a few locations from The Sound of Music, but not so much really. We've already seen that the courtyard seen in the film housing the von Trapp Family Singers competition was down in the city itself...
Just about the only reminder of the film was this. The puppet theatre that had provided the puppets (and no doubt the puppeteers) for the Lonely Goatherd scene. We didn't have time to watch a performance, but I bought a couple of postcards showing some of the puppets. The theatre began in 1913 when friends of sculptor Anton Aicher convinced him to turn his private hobby into public performances. The family by the time of our visit in 2000 had amassed some 2000 puppets.
An underground passage leads you out of the inner fortress to the path leading back down to the city. We had gone up by funicular railway but opted to walk back down.
The way down is steep. Boarding with slats across, like a ship's gangway, are laid down the street to help you keep your footing. In winter it must be almost impossible! The fortress is immensely popular with tourists. After the Schoenbrunn Palace in Vienna it is the most visited tourist attraction in Austria.
We came down and turned to visit the cemetry of the church of St Peter, one of Salzburg's gems. We found these intricate iron crosses set up on short gravestones. We had seen some similar ones in Kitzbühel.
Finally we get back down to the city level and in a grim reminder of the reality that was behind the fluff of The Sound of Music, passing through a small square we read a plaque on a wall that told us that Himmler's Gestapo had made their headquarters there during the war.
Not the best quality photo but in 2000, digital cameras were very new and not capable of the high-quality that we take for granted today. Even then, you would not have dreamed that they would be an add-on to a phone you could carry in your pocket! These are eggs. Blown and painted and displayed in their thousands in a shop that sells nothing else but painted eggs!
When I say in their thousands I'm not joking! Miss Franny restrained herself from buying any but then regretted it for the next couple of years until we visited again. On that as yet future trip she would be known for the rest of the week to the coach drivers as The Egg Lady...
It was getting time to return to the coach station. Just time to look at the river - well alright, so we got lost and found ourselves at the river... Anyway we had a look at the river, a look at the map and found we were not so far off track after all!
No need to catch a trolleybus then! Not been on one of those since the 1950s in Manchester...! And they weren't bendy in the middle then!
We got back to the hotel, had our evening meal and decided (gluttons for punishment that we are) to have another bash at walking into Zell-am-See after our meal. Tomorrow night, after all, will be our last night so we would be spending it packing and having a last night with our fellow passengers. So it was tonight or never.
This time we made it all the way! Well, perhaps we did catch the little train seen a few times previously... Asking for a ticket in an unknown language is quite something - especially on the return journey where we wanted to get off at Kitzteinhornstrasse...!!! Actually I must have done ok because the driver/conductor launched into a long spiel which I just about gathered was advice on buying a weekly ticket to save money. "Ja, danke, but wir ist der trundlink homevards zer day after morgen"...
You might have guessed how the weather changed once we got there... Ah, lovely.... lightning show over the lake anyone? We sheltered from the light rain to give it time to get really hard again, then dashed for the station, getting wet at the level crossing, waiting for a mainline train to go through then again after the train ride as we walked back to the hotel. "Been out taking pictures of the rain again?" came a cheerful voice...
