My Travel Diaries - Austria

It was a chilly winter morning. The time was not even 6 and I was waiting at the Bahnof. I can hardly remember the last time when I woke up so early. I was waiting for this day. I was in reddish maroon color full sleeves t-shirt, cream color jeans, a black leather jacket to shield myself from the chilly winter. I was standing at one of the shops to pamper myself with a hot chocolate. If it was not for the hot chocolate I wouldn’t dare to remove my gloves off my hand. Let me tell you -10 C is really cold…

Hardly 2 minutes to go I was still in my home. If I don’t catch this U-bahn (the local train) I wouldn’t make it to the Bahnof. It was 5:30 and I was running on the road with a heavy leather jacket over my shoulders and equally heavy woodland shoes which I was wearing……This was not my morning exercise….i was missing the train…..i ran and ran and was just in time……. This very thought put a 70 mm smile on my face with out even caring for my permission……while these thoughts were creeping my mind, my friends joined me one by one……and finally we were 26 of us waiting at the Stuttgart railway station (yaa Bahnof …you got it right) sipping hot chocolate and waiting for our TRAIN to Salzburg,Austria.

All of us pretty excited. All of us are infoscions…so I bet you can expect a rocking story ahead………. We wanted to board the train ASAP (let me use these jargons that I learned at Infy) to escape from the cold…….

We were in the train enjoying our croissants for breakfast……we started with one of our gang’s traditional game…..dumb charades…… thanks to the game I have learned about some all time classics like Howrah bridge pe lataktha hua laash…….

We got down at the BAHNOF and went to our hotel. It was like a college hostel. The only receptionist present at the hotel was totally confused seeing 26 members of us. After we got the rooms allocated, We just dropped our bags in the rooms and were out on the streets of salzburg. If you are a couple i would recommend radison which is 2 minutes walk from the main station. It was almost lunch time and we were hungry. We went to a thai restaurent called Indigo ( Food and smile). They served hot rice with thai curry. add some chilly flakes and it tasted great.

We went to the Mirabell garden which was just a minute walk from the restaurant. It was completely covered with snow. Salzburg is a place that must be visted atleast twice. Once in summer and once in winter. In summer the city is all green and in winter its all white.

The world famous movie sound of music was shot here in Salzburg. This movie is so popular that people come here to see the places where the movie was shot. Cashing on this business opportunity there are sound of music tours by different travels. This tour starts from 2:00 and lasts till 6:00. We have taken this tour. It was great. It covers some of the most picturesque locations, some of the wonderful lakes and beautiful locations. not to forget the wonderful guide we had in the bus. He was very enthusiastic, active and funny. This guy always asks a question and the winner gets a drink. The question happens to be the same. So when he asks to name the mountain ......before he completes his question you can shout the answer as unterturkiem. A drink awaits you absolutely free.

People say -'to walk on the waters of a lake you need to either know magic or be a god'. Salzburg creates this magic for you. The lakes in winter are absolutely frozen. We walked, we ran, we played over the lake. It was fabulous. In summer the same lake is full of clear blue waters. It looked beautiful either way. To add to the beauty there is a beautiful castle on the river bank. It is called the Leopoldskron castle.

After visiting couple of other locations we visted lake wolfgang. It was a breathtaking view of a beautiful lake hidden between alps on either side.

We were eager to try out hand on the local cuisine. So we tried out apple struddle with vanilla suace. It was definitely worth a try.

Our Sound of music tour was over. It was a wonderful experiance. I would recommend this to all of you. Thanks to the beautiful locations, great music, fantastic guide and a rocking group.

It was 7 pm in the night. It was christmas time and all of us went to chritsmas market. We disbursed into 2 groups and planned to meet at 8 pm at the Indian restaurent. It was very cold at salzburg. As per the weather reports from the weather man ( one of us. wouldn't name him) the temparature is -15 C. We can feel the cold every where in our body. The thermals, jackets, shoes nothing were sufficiant.

We had hot boiled potatoes with garlic sauce. It was perfect for the kind of weather we were in. It was like having a mirchi bajji on a rainy day. All of us loved it.

We went to an Indian restaurant to have our dinner. The main lobby had pictures of Salman and katrina. These pics were taken when they last visited their hotel at salzburg.

Beware!!!! this proud owner of our restaurent will tell you salmans story every time you look at him. We have ordered veg pakodas and we were served fish pakodas. Most of our friends are pure vegitarians. In fact we were lucky that the 1st guy who tasted them was a non vegetarian. So we have complained the same to the owner who said in a very innocent tone "its ok. I will charge you the price of veg pakoda and not fish pakodas".

Its ok...we tried explaining him that the issue is not about the cost of the pakodas but much bigger than that. But I guess making fish pakodas is easier than explaining him.

We were very tired by the time we reached the hotel. We wanted to go to bed as soon as we reach the hotel. But we had hand soccer game waiting for us. Most of us were playing this game for the 1st time. We played this game till midnight.

We had a round table conference as to decide the agenda for the next day. Girls were desperate to go to Insbruck where the famous factory for swaroski cystals is located. We managed to convince them that staying in salzburg was better as we only have 1 day left.

The next day we went to Unterturkiem. You remember this name right. This was the answer to our famous sound of music tour guides question. We went up the hill by a cable car. It was a great feeling to be over the top of the alps. we Were at such a great height that the clouds were under our feet. There was snow every where. we played with the snow,and over the snow rolling and skiing. We climbed over the mountain to reach the peak and PFB (Please find below) the picture as a proof our achivement.

I always had a knack to mimic the dance numbers of some popular stars. While we were waiting for the cable car to get down I told myself this is the right oppurtunity. I started mimicing the actors. There were only two choices for the others either watch me or jump from alps. Although both are equally dangerous people opted for the former.

We were heading back to stutgart by train. We can not keep ourselves idle. We split ourselves into two groups and played antakhsari. The game might be same but the rules are different here. One team should always sing in hindi and the other team will sing in telugu. Let me tell you its real fun. The trip costed 150 euros per head. The fun we had was price less.

FYI and A ( For your information and Action)