Planes, Trains & Automobiles: Austria Part 1

Long story short - Anne and I were off to Austria, with her brother & his wife to join her sister and her husband and his brother and wife (still following?) for 10 days. Her sister has an apartment out there, and well, why not.... walking, beer, food, good company, mountains....

Descent into Frankfurt - it was all going so well....

We drove to Birmingham the night before our flight as Anne's sister lives near Solihull and it was an easy overnighter for a 6am taxi call to the airport. The flight from Birmingham to Salzburg enquired a change at Frankfurt, and though the transit time at Frankfurt was very tight (50 mins), the fact that the Lufthansa web site had offered that combination, suggested all would be ok.

The taxi arrived early at 5.50am and the four of us were soon at Birmingham airport. Bag drop was quick but the security queue was very long as there were many flights going around the same time. Still we managed to get through ok and get some breakfast before boarding. We took off more or less on time (efficient Germans)and settled in with our complimentary bottle of water and chocolate bar for the 90 minute flight to Frankfurt.

We were on time descending into Frankfurt (from the air you get a sense of the scale of this Lufthansa hub airport -it's huge! Landing on time, it became quickly apparent that we were at the far end of terminal 1 and being on the apron meant we were going to have to bus it to the terminal. A sense of doom descended as our 50 minute turnaround was immediately being eaten into and suddenly looked at best marginal and realistically, unlikely.  The bus collected us from near gate A60, and announced "a few minutes to the terminal" - it took about five, and duly dumped us near gate A1 - the gate for our connecting flight was way back at A64! Following the signs for connecting flights we turned a corner and hit the (big) queue for border control! Of course, biometric EU passports could sneak through the self reader gates and there was no queue for this, but you know, Brexit....

At this point, we'd resigned ourselves to missing our connecting flight, but along with many others apparently in the same predicament, we shoved our way to the front of the queue and eventually after answering the "why are you here?", "where are you going?", "how long for?" questions had our passports stamped and hastily legged it towards gate A64. 

Alas, we were inevitably too late - arriving puffed out in a staggered formation, the lady on the gate gave us the bad news and offered us all she could - standby tickets on a later flight (the only direct one to Salzburg that evening) which was full, so no guarantee of even one, let alone four seats.

Gathering our breath we considered our options, and decided they were 1) get a train, or 2) get a flight to Munich (our brother in law who was due to pick us up from Salzburg, would have collected us from Munich, but it would mean a two hour trip (four round trip for him) rather than the one hour trip to the apartment from Salzburg Airport.

Then the thought occurred to us - in either scenario, where was our checked baggage? The lady at the gate usefully advised us that if we weren't on the plane, then our cases weren't. Beyond that, they were somewhere in Frankfurt airport. Thanks.

So we walked back from A64 to beyond A1 to the Service Centre to try and locate our bags and make a decision on next steps. There was a queue at the Service Centre, inevitably, but there were only about 10 people in from of us and four kiosks open. Still, it took us an hour to get to the front of the queue. The person on the desk advised us that all flights to Munich that evening were full. Bah.

That left us with the train option. The only problem being that obviously we'd have to pay for the tickets, and it was a SIX hour journey! But it realistically was our only option if we wanted to get to Salzburg that evening. She managed to correctly identify that we had two suitcases floating about in the ether and advised us where they would be delivered "in about 30-40 minutes". When we left the service centre, the queue had grown to about 50 people - thank God we got there when we did!

We located the baggage hall and carousels, and sure enough after about 50 minutes our cases turned up. We then legged it to the adjacent train station (isn't it great when airports have train stations - Cardiff are you listening?).

Using a ticket machine we tried booking tickets to Salzburg but it wasn't coming up as a destination. A kindly passer by pointed out we are using a red regional ticket machine and needed to use a blue national one. Having located one, we got as far as being ready to confirm payment, before the machine threw a wobbly and sent us back to the beginning. Spying an information centre we went over and were informed there was a ticket office next door. Phew. We bought four tickets to Salzburg (about €430, requiring one change at Munich (with a 15 minute window). The platform was adjacent and we got a coffee and some food and sat waiting for the train, due in about half an hour. About three minutes before the train arrived there was a message (in German obviously) and people started moving - the platform had changed!!!! Luckily it was to the next one only. The train arrived on time, and we managed to get four seats together. For the first ten minutes it went fairly slowly, stopping at a couple of stations, before coming to a grinding halt. It transpired this was due to a signal fault, and lasted about ten minutes, eating into our precious 15 minute window at Munich. Luckily, soon after we got going again, and with fewer stops, the train really picked up speed as it rolled through the German countryside, at one point topping 240kph, about 154mph!

Fastest train I've ever been on!

At those speeds, we quickly made up time, unlike First Great Western back home, and we rolled into Munich a couple of minutes ahead of time, and managed to find our way to our next train with plenty of time to spare. It turns out that the reason so many flights to Munich was full, was probably because that day was the start of Oktoberfest, and Munich station was heaving with plenty of merry people wearing lederhosen!

The second train was a little more rustic than the ICE from Frankfurt, but equally full but still made good time, as it stopped half a dozen or so times en route to Salzburg, rolling into Salzburg at 9.40pm.

We managed to locate Anne's brother in law quickly, and were quickly in the car for the hour or so rainy drive to our destination, Rauris, in the Eastern Alps, getting to the apartment, at around 11.30pm, in time for a quick beer before turning in.

It had been a fairly frazzled day of travelling, but at least we'd got to our destination. 

Next instalment: Snow in September!

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