bretzelitos

The last day of our European INTERRAIL discovery trip has come – and we have to say: It was absolutely great. Today, we took the direct TGV train from Zurich HB to Paris Gare de Lyon at 13:34 just after lunch.

In the morning, we took another walk through the city, having a look if we can buy some souvenirs or anything crazy from Switzerland – but no… no chance, not even a millimeter, just forget about it!

August 1st is Nationalfeiertag in Switzerland – the national public holiday. Hence all shops remained closed and only some coffeehouses or restaurants remained open.

Nevertheless, we took our small round across the city prior to checking out and walking towards the Central station – where we took our lunch before boarding the train.

The TGV ride via Basel, Mulhouse and Dijon towards Paris took four hours – inspite of partially using two independent LGV tracks between Mulhouse and Dijon and Dijon and Paris. Maximum observed speed was 318 kmh or close to 200 mph.

In Paris, we were nearly overrun by tourists on their way to the south of France as August 1st is a traditional day of starting French holidays. Hence we decided to take a taxi back to Rambouillet (120 Euros) from Gare de Lyon just to escape from these masses of people who did not respect at all the distancing rules. Coming home, you can imaging how happy our two cats Luna and Nera were to see us again back at home – by seeing the photos you can guess which one has which name.

Tomorrow, I will conclude the INTERRAIL 2020 blog session with a summary – like I did it two years ago.

It is great to travel and see the world – but it is also great to be back at home. 🙂

The crossing over Arlberg pass presented the highest altitude point in our 15 days round trip at 1260 meters above sea level. We had a very enjoyable ride in ÖBB’s railjet in business class – passing through three different independent European countries today, namely Austria, Liechtenstein and Schwitzerland.

In Liechtenstein, one of the smallest countries worldwide, we took the whole amount of available public railroad kilometres in one go – without stopping even once between Feldkirch in Austria and Buchs in Switzerland.

The passing of the Arlberg area was impressive again as the Inn valley became narrower and narrower and the mountains around higher and higher. The summit is passed inside a tunnel – which also marks an European watershed between the Danube (Black Sea) and the Rhine (North Sea).

In Switzerland, we passed by two large alpine lakes, Walensee and Zurisee, prior to arriving in Zurich after close to 3:40h travel time.

In Zurich, we had our hotel around 800 meters away from the Central station, mainly due to budget reasons as Switzerland is pretty expensive in comparison with Germany, Czech Republic or Austria. Our hotel room was great and we enjoyed it. However, be aware that Zurich is not really a calm city at night, so you need to choose your hotel carefully.

In the afternoon, we went for a walk along Zurisee and had dinner in the traditional restaurant “Zeughauskeller” – with local beer and excellent swiss local food.

After a glass in a small bar in Zurich’s center area, we returned to Hotel Scheuble just after sunset.

Tomorrow, we have our last ride inside our 15 days continious INTERRAIL journey this year – the return to Paris.

TRANSALPIN – the name of our Eurocity train was the program for today. We took lovely seats in the panorama coach of SBB in our direct train from Graz to Innsbruck.

Six hours of passing through high mountains culminate always an impressive ride – loads of things to see as the mountainous world outside of us changed quickly. We passed by many towns and villages that are very well known for their beauty in the summer for swimming, hiking and calm holidays and their full scale alpine or nordic wintersports activities in the colder half of the year.

The most important ones are:

• Schladming
• Hochfilzen
• Bischofshofen
• Kitzbühel
• Zell am See

The two most important passes we have crossed are Schoberpass at 849 meters and Grießenpass at 975 meters, prior to descending to the Inn valley via Brixental. The area around Zell am See with its lake surrounded by high mountains is absolutely remarkable.

In Innsbruck, we had a very lovely hotel room with a view in the aDLERS hotel close to Central station. In the late afternoon, we decided to have a massage treatment in the hotel spa followed by a dinner with a view while the sun was setting out on the terrace (12th floor) with a magnificent view over the tyrolian alps.

The weather was absolutely fine, 30 degrees centigrade and no jacket needed until midnight when we rited to our hotel room.

Tomorrow – the next step through the mountains… via Arlberg Pass to Zurich in Switzerland.

Today, we had a rather short trip by train, but a very remarkable one. We went over the Semmeringbahn and Südbahn with a Railjet by Ceske Drahy from Vienna to Graz in just 2:40 hours.

The Semmeringbahn is recognised as World Heritage by UNESCO due to its immense importance in railway engineering in the 19th century – as it was not seen as possible to build a train through this mountainous area based on friction traction at all. The way how the tracks are build into the hills and mountains of Semmering using viaducts and tunnels is absolutely impressive.

From the height of the Donau valley in Vienna at around 160 meters above sea level to Semmering pass summit, the railjet needed to climb 730 meters, prior to decending down to Graz at around 340 meters.

In Graz, we had a room in the IBIS hotel at the central station, hence it was absolutely easy to reach.

After checking in, we went immediately for a walk through the city as we had a thunderstorm warning for the evening hours. We visited the Schlossberg and took a nice walk through the city center of Graz prior to returning to the Hauptbahnhof area – just prior to the big rain falls.

We had a traditional “Kaffee und Kuchen” session in the Aida coffee house – with Eiskaffee and Sachertorte.

Due to the rain, we skipped going out in the evening – other than just jumping into the Italian restaurant close by to the hotel.

Tomorrow, we will have the big Alps crossing to Innsbruck!