If I’m honest, the main reasons for booking this journey were because it was nine hours long and on a train with a panoramic coach. I’d also looked at the cost of places to stay in Salzburg and, still reeling, was told by a student that Graz is a lovely much cheaper place.
This train was direct and popped up in the Interrail planner with a “panoramic coach” notifier. When I booked it with an early start in mind I hadn’t met the man in the room with the cake, nor had the foresight to account for the volume of what I can only describe politely as his problem of nocturnal resonance. I’m not entirely sure what an excited flatulent and potentially rutting baby hippo foraging for truffles actually sounds like, but I suspect that if you were to put me in the same darkened room with both of them at 3am I would have difficulty and probably no interest in telling them apart, except perhaps to determine which of the two would require the application of the bigger pillow.
I have no idea how long I lay there awake, in torment, wondering how in Noodles’ name it was possible that this person didn’t wake himself up, but when the other one in the other bed started emanating sympathetic vibrations I realised there was very little chance the Schnarchpolizei would let me get away with “silencing” both of them, so had to resort to a technological solution: the child-cancelling headphones. Of course! On the train to Strasbourg I had heard enough of the incessant Dacia adverts on Spotify, but with the noise cancelling on and lying very still so as not to break the seal, I managed a couple of hours’ sleep listening to a “sleep” playlist, despite the Dacia adverts and the only part of Goldfrapp’s Lovely Head anybody knows, until my alarm went off at six. I snoozed it and let it go off a few times more, quite a few times and quite deliberately, in fact, but having slept eight hours unpeturbed by their own noises, they were not to be roused in vengeance by something as banal as an alarm. Somewhere in the fever-dream, just as I was leaving, one of them found a very big truffle.
With plenty of time until I had to be at the station I decided to take a walk over the Rathausbrücke where market traders were setting up for their Saturday morning’s work. It reminded me a little of my early-morning stroll to the station in Trondheim to take the train to Bødo and although I had been quite significantly deprived of sleep to the point of wanting to stab someone but not having the strength, I found that there’s nothing that can’t be made right by a Butterbretzel and coffee on the station while the train you’re going to spend the next nine hours on is being prepared. Except that had I waited a few minutes I’d have learned that the dining car was being operated by the ÖBB and that I could’ve had a cooked breakfast of scrambed eggs and beans and stuff for the same price, but that is beside the point.
The EuroCity 163 Transalpin service left at 08:40 and embarked on a journey that takes nine hours and thirty-four minutes to cross the Alps and complete the journey between Zürich and Graz. I’d made a reservation in the Gottard Panorama Express (something of a misnomer) coach through the ÖBB web site because I couldn’t get the SBB site to do anything I wanted and was unable to choose the seats I wanted, although it did assign me a window seat. My heart sank slightly as I found my seat as l was not facing in the direction of travel as I’d hoped, but this was not to be a problem as the train changed direction twice along its route, in Buchs and Selzthal.
The views were stunning, but dampened a little by the fact that there won’t be proper snow until January so we weren’t sliding through a wintry wonderland but a variety of nearly-seasons, starting wintry as we left Zürich and then getting more spring-like as we climbed and getting full-on proper hot as the journey progressed. In some places there was a start contrast in landscape on either side of the train and it was strange to see lush green sun-bathed grass quickly turn to biscuit-barrel frosted trees and snow with occasional patches of mud as we snaked our way along the route. But, it transpires, it is possible to have too much of a good thing and by about two o’clock I was ready for a break on the basis that frankly once you’ve seen one Alp you’ve seen them all, and in any case I was starting to feel hungry.
The EuroCity trains replaced the Trans Europ Express, and for a train to carry the Eurocity moniker it must, among other things, travel through two or more countries and have food and beverages available on-board, preferably from a dining car. This one is one of just a few remaining services which comes with a full Austrian dining car with moveable leather chairs and table cloths so it was in a way a shame to discover it quite empty, but as I was having lunch slightly later in the day perhaps the rush had already been and gone. I deployed the train slippers.
I found myself at a well dressed table with a table cloth proper glasses and china, and as we pressed on through the Alps somewhere around Saalfelden I settled down to Bio Schwammergulasch mit Semmelknödel on a proper plate with a proper knife and fork, and a nice cold Gösser Märsen in a proper glass. By Schwarzach-St. Veit I’d made good headway on the Wiener Apfelstrudel auf Vanillesauce which was washed down nicely with a coffee. The cost of this was around 27€. This is an expensive way to eat (though not as expensive as if I’d tried it on a Swiss train) but you get hot food brought to your seat and a fabulous view to enjoy as you eat it.
After lunch I decided to abandon the panoramic coach and sought sanctuary in first where there were only handful of people. The panoramic coach is a good idea and is certainly a fabulous option when you absolutely have to see the scenery less mitigated by circumstance, but it did bring about an excitedness and lack of calm from those who sat in it, because of the massive windows which afforded fantastic viewing. The flip-side is that massive multiple-glazed windows let in a tremendous amount of light and heat which, as the journey progressed, turned the thing into a massive greenhouse on wheels and led to the inhabitants being boiled alive for most of the remaining journey.
In first on the other hand, the air-conditioning was not in a constant struggle with the windows and most people, one small family incursion with a small child excepted, were happy to watch the scenery slide past the windows without giving a continual running commentary.
Mindful of the fact that after eating you should rest or take a thousand steps, I waddled to the back of the train a couple of times to watch more pretty things. I saw a few people coyly admire my train slippers then look away hurriedly, immediately knowing their place. On one of the later visits, around Michaelerberg, we were tailed by a light aircraft coming in to land at the Skyclub Austria flying school, something I have never experienced before. As I still had a reserved seat in the panoramic coach I sat in it a couple of times more, but was back in first as the light started to fail and I struggled to keep myself entirely awake all the way to Graz. I have always struggled with staying awake on trains in the dark; it’s a peculiar feeling not knowing if you’re moving because there’s no fixed reference to look at and therefore not knowing quite what you’re supposed to do.
We arrived in Graz on the dot. I quickly located my hostel just a stone’s throw from the station, then after a power-nap found myself in a mini-Christmas market in a mini-square next to the Kunstshaus trying to find change because the Austrians apparently don’t do contactless. Or at least the one I was trying to procure Glühwein from didn’t. This then led to my slogging around the old town in Graz looking for a cash machine that wasn’t intent on charging me for withdrawing money; at least three wanted to charge me 7€ to withdraw a few tens of euros, although I eventually discovered one that only wanted 3,50€, so I used that. The upside of this was that I was able to explore some more of Graz, albeit with chagrin, until on the way back to my hostel once fesitivities ended at the prescibed 10pm, I discovered that Bawag gives fee-free withdrawals. This was academic because Wise then charged me for the cash withdrawal defeating the object of the exercise.
I tappy-tapped my card to obtain my falafelly goodness from the Europa Pizza Kebap at the top of Annenstraße.
It was lush.
