Day 30. The day we leave Slovenia.



Today should technically count as another itinerary failure. But not our fault this time. And the day did turn out quite well.

So what happened? Well, before Christmas, when we booked this trip from Ljubljana to Munich, the timetable said we had to change at Salzburg. OK, we thought, if that's the case, we won't have some silly connection time that you can't do anything with. We'll factor in a space of about two hours so that at least we can have a bit of a walk around Salzburg.

When we got to Ljubljana station this morning, however, we were surprised to discover that the train we were about to board to Salzburg in fact went all the way to Munich (and, indeed, onwards to Frankfurt). What??!

There's no way we would have deliberately chosen to get off a train that we could have stayed on. So we have two hypotheses: 1. they changed the configuration of this journey at some point after we'd booked it; or 2. because we booked with Deutsche Bahn, we had to have a Deutsche Bahn train in it somewhere (our train to Salzburg -- the one that could have taken us further -- was an Austrian train, whereas the train from Salzburg was German).

Don't know... Anyway, there was nothing we could do about it. We couldn't stay on the first train, because we wouldn't have had a valid ticket for the second sector. So we just stuck with the plan.

Today was First Class Day (because otherwise we wouldn't have used up the full value of the vouchers we were owed from 2020...). Our six-seat compartment started off with just one fellow-passenger, who went only as far as Jesenice. After that we were gloriously alone, free to picnic unimpeded, and jump up and down taking photographs without bothering anyone.


Your journey starts very scenically, following the Sava river valley. Then you disappear into a massive tunnel (the longest in Slovenia), and when you emerge, you're in Austria.




In Villach, they do lots of mysterious train rearranging. Through-passengers just stay on board, but you find yourself sailing off in one direction only to come back again, but at another platform, a little later. In the course of all this, they add a number of coaches.


From there you follow the Drava valley -- but you start to climb very dramatically up one side of it. At Spittal an der Drau, your route starts to follow the historic Tauernbahn, built in the opening years of the 20th century. You disappear into tunnels, and emerge in yet further valleys, on the way getting great views of snow-capped mountains, classic Alpine houses, ski slopes, dinky little churches perched on imposing rises, and swathes of field and forest.

It's a really awesome ride.





Burek formed part of the picnic lunch we'd picked up at Ljubljana station. Tasty and filling, this cheese-layered pastry is obviously a relative of Turkish borek and Bulgarian banitsa. (No photos because too busy photographing the scenery.)

Anyway, we arrived at Salzburg, and got off, saying goodbye to the train that we could have stayed on all the way to Munich...


At Salzburg station, we stowed our luggage in a locker (EUR 3.50, which was quite reasonable, we thought), and set out for a quick tiki tour of the city.


I'd not been here since 1979, when -- with Munich and Vienna -- it formed part of a little rail jaunt from my home in Erlangen, Germany. I didn't remember that much. (It was hot, though. This was where "Der G'spritzte" -- half white wine, half fizzy mineral water -- first entered my consciousness, and I remember "trick fountains", so I'm pretty sure Hellbrunn must have been on the agenda.) The basic layout of the city still seemed familiar (although I suppose we've all seen so many pictures of Salzburg that it does become artificially engraved on the memory).

Today's was a brief walk, but we had time to:

1. Meet some 17th-century gnomes in the Mirabell Gardens;





2. Do a bit of Mozart-worship;




3. Enjoy the scenery of the old town;



4. And try the absolutely indispensable Mozartkugeln.


At 1600 we were back on the train. Another first-class compartment completely to ourselves. Yay!


And the route continued to be superb, with those majestic snow-capped mountains keeping us company for many miles on the left-hand side (the picture at the top is also from this sector):





Once disembarked in Munich, we had just a short walk to the Hotel Ibis, where we're staying for three nights. We headed off to the nearest supermarket to acquire the kind of food that doesn't need preparation, and can be eaten in a small room where two glasses are the only food-and-drink-related equipment.

We drank to our first night in Germany with a wine made from Dornfelder grapes. Possibly this was the first German red I'd ever had... And it went well with some classic German cheese and sausage.


To Germany!