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.
Tuesday 15 August 2000. We are at Zell-am-See railway station where we are about to board the Gisela Express to Kitzbühel.
The train was one of the first electric trains in the world. Most of it dates from the 1930s but the original mail sorting room housed in a 1920s carriage is attached to the train.
The coach, with John driving, will meet us at Kitzbühel.
Keith is on his day off and so in civvies as he cheerfully waves us onto the train. He'll jump onto the Leger coach with John for the day.
We have a reserved carriage and get to know a few more people during the journey. The carriage is full, it's just that everyone else is crowded up to the windows! However, on the left, Barbara sticks her elbow out for the camera...
Once the train has got going lunch is served by costumed waitress service. Hot dog in a bun.
Well, nearly all in a bun as can be seen here! Barbara laughs as her hubby (whose name I didn't get, sorry!) wonders why the bun isn't bigger... The buns weren't cut in half, there was just a hole in them. People kept wandering down to the buffet car to see how it was done whilst everybody hoped it wasn't the same implement used to put holes in the doughnuts...
Lunch over, there was time to go out to view the mountains. The carriages were too old to be fully enclosed at the couplings and we had a great time standing on the footplates, taking photos of the scenery.
These little wooden bits of decking were safe enough for intelligent people. I have to wonder whether they would be considered so now after decades of people expecting to sue because they are too stupid to keep themselves safe without being told explicitly not to chop their own hand off with an axe... Common sense is pretty rare these days I find.
"I just wanted to see if I could stand on it..." Well, who could have guessed?
Meanwhile we are approaching a stop. This was to be a photo stop for people to take photos of the train and costumed staff and to have a look at the 1920s postal sorting office in the specialised carriage.
Here it is - dear me, there's not been a lot of mail to sort on this particular journey!
The guard and stewardesses pose outside the postal carriage.
The locomotive was an electric locomotive 1020.44 dating from 1945. The Giselabahn railway was opened in 1876 by Emperor Franz Joseph and was named after his second daughter with his wife, Empress of Austria and Queen of Hungary,Elizabeth, nicknamed Sisi. The opening of the railway made it possible to travel from London to Istanbul by train for the first time and it thus started the almost legendary Orient Express.
"Bo-o-o-o-a-rd!" It's time to take a last photo and get back onto the train as we carry on into Kitzbühel. We take our seats for a good minute or two before it's back to looking out of the windows and standing on the footplates. As we pull into the station at Kitzbühel we can see the coach waiting in the car park. We have a couple of hours free time to look around the town first though.
A series of articles about our one and only winter holiday actually hoping to see snow, as we head for the Austrian Tyrol for a nine day trip with Leger Coaches. Two days at each end will be spent travelling but we will try to fit in as much as possible on the other five days!
Clicking or tapping the photos below will take you to the articles for each day. A link on each page will bring you back here.
