Straight Through Salzburg

After probably the best nights sleep I’ve had in a while, we awake to the fir-tree lined hills, mountains of Salzburg zipping by and Austria yet again, unusually bestows us with temperatures of 38º.

Solar powered chocolate box cottages nestle in the lush valleys, all we need is the mandatory yodelling goat herder dressed in lederhosen to complete the scene!

German efficiency took on a whole new meaning as we loaded the car last night in Dusseldorf onto the DBAutozug bound for Salzburg . After nearly succumbing to Germany’s stickler for the rules, a rather surly employee informed it was ‘just not correct’ to just have the confirmation booking open ready on your laptop, we boarded our sleeper car for the night.

If only Britain’s politicians spent less time trying to solve other country’s problems and tacked our own endemic problems we too could enjoy this level of ease when travelling long distance, easing traffic throughout the UK would be easy with services such as auto train travel.

Perhaps then, we too could benefit from the ease of travel that Holland, Germany, Austria and even France provide for their citizens and long distance travel would become more pleasurable than painful!

After a rapid offload, we restart our journey some 757 kilometres further on. Well rested and saving ourselves an additional 7 hours of driving and we head for our first port of call, the Slovakian capital city of Bratislava.