We took a 4 hour train ride from Maribor, Slovenia to Vienna, Austria. It was beautiful mountain scenery which does cause the train to have to go a little slower. I was worried that there wouldn’t be significant room in our train car for my large suitcase but lucky for me I was able to keep it in the bike storage area. The train wasn’t very full so we had 4 seats to ourselves.
Arriving in Vienna is now easy since I’m familiar enough with the city to know how to work the subway system. The hardest part is you need to buy your ticket before getting on the subway because all of the public transportation is on the honor system. Naturally the machines just don’t take your money and give you change. You either need to pay the exact amount or you need to pay with your credit card and have a PIN. Since the US is behind on credit card technology, I needed to come up with exact change. I went and asked the nearest tobacco shop for change.
We had to take 2 subways, but really that was no big deal. Vienna has one of the easiest subway system to use. We have an apartment near the center of town. We are pretty much across from the Opera house which is one of my favorite places to enter the center of the city. Now I must go out and explore one of my favorite cities in the world.
