This week I was scheduled in to a couple of meetups, in Vienna and Munich. Flying is an inevitable part of travel since I also happen to like being home seeing my family and airplanes are usually the quickest way to make this happen. I don’t particularly enjoy flying, and there’s the environmental impact of it too—so when I realised that Vienna and Munich are relatively close to each other I looked at getting the train. In the UK trains are generally a few hours, and certainly not overnight (bar a couple of exceptions), so the novelty of getting a sleeper train appealed.
Would I do it again? Maybe. Here are my rough notes, to help others and to refresh my memory when I need it:
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🔻 I’d not factored in the fact that I would finish my meetup at ~21:00, and then have 2 hours with my backpack and case. I had never been to Vienna before so didn’t know where to head. Bits of it were just shops and tourists, some bits felt a bit dodgy. Many restaurants were closing. Ended up at McDonalds in the station 😕
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🔻 Didn’t realise that the train did not run straight through. It basically lays up in Salzburg for three hours. Didn’t sleep for the stop/start confusion, as well as general unfamiliarity of the environment.
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🔻 I’m now sat in Munich train station at 07:00, have been for 45 minutes already, and haven’t showered and feel tired and yucky. I have a meetup tonight and hotel booked, but can’t checkin until this afternoon. So I’m going to be coffee-shop surfing feeling rather grim and scruffy for a few hours.
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✔ I got a ‘private compartment’, which was totally worth it (200EUR, which was still cheaper than Vienna hotel plus VIE-MUC flight). Backpacking round Europe sharing a compartment with five strangers might be cost-effective, but no way I would be doing that now. Being able to open the blind when I wanted, leave my stuff out, etc etc made it all less stressful.
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✅ OMG sunrise and watching the German countryside go by at 05:00…quite possibly worth it all 😀
