October 2008 I went on a backpacking train-tour of Austria and Slovakia with my girlfriend. We started in Bratislava, in a very nice cheap youth hostel called hostel blues: http://www.hostelblues.sk/They had double bunk beds, which means it was extremely cheap for us as a couple (just 13 Euro per night for both of us!)
Bratislava is a beautiful city, but it is very small. One day was really enough, because we had walked around the entire city. It has quite an impressive castle on the tallest hill (unfortunately closed for renovation when we were there), a spinning restaurant shaped like a UFO, and some interesting bronze statues dotted around.
From Bratislava we took the train all the way to Salzburg, on the west side of Austria. We left early in the morning, and got to Salzburg by mid afternoon. We took the fairly long walk from the station to the town centre, and then looked around for a suitable hostel or hotel, comparing a few places before settling on a nice hostel in a church. Seperate dorms, but quite a beautiful building to stay in. There was a a group of college students living in this church too. As an example of extreme Austrian organisation, in the kitchen for these students, there was a seperate, lockable small fridge door for each person.
Salzburg was very pretty, and they had some lovely traditions. As pictured right, for christmas decorations, instead of the usual gaudy plastic type, here they sold boxes of intricately decorated egggshells. There were all sorts of patterns available, and you could walk around the shop with an egg box, picking the types you wanted. I was tempted to get some for my Mum for christmas, but they would never have survided the long trip home.We stayed in Salzburg for two nights, taking in the usual tourist attractions, such as the castle and various museums, walking up some steep hills to get great views over the city.
From Salzburg, we took a short train journey to Innsbruck. Here we would stay with a nice girl called Veronika, who we contacted through couchsurfing. She would only be around in the evening, so we put our bags in a locker at the train station to explore the city. It was a beautiful place to spend the day walking around.In the evening, we headed out again to try and walk to the castle, but this turned out to be much too far away.
In the morning, we caught the train back across the country to Vienna, stopping halfway to take a few hours of walk around Graz. Here we bought some slices of cake, which we were able to eat on the train thanks to Chen-yi's 'Emergency Spoon'.
In Vienna, we couchsurfed with a very nice girl called Jennifer Frosch, who lived in a studio apartment full of all sorts of frogs (frog slippers, frog cups, frog fridge magnets, frog postcards...) Frosch of course is Frog in German. She took us out to a film festival, and for a quick drink with her friends the night we got there.
Then we spent time looking around art gallerys (including an exhibition of Gustav Klimt), churches and the town in general, with it's incredible imperial architecture, based on her excellent recommendations.
We had some excellent austrian cakes and coffee in Vienna, and we also had one of the best kebabs I have ever tasted, and a giant hotdog that was mouthachingly spicy!
