Originally Posted By dagobert Did you use the train in Austria to get from Vienna to Salzburg? I hope you didn't have any problems with it. In which hotels did you stay?
Originally Posted By FerretAfros I stayed in Val d'Europe, so I did make it out that way. I only went to the shopping center the first night (my flight from Munich got in around 5:00pm, so I went over there for dinner). It seemed nice, but similar to most American suburban malls. I was there on VE Day (I don't know what the name is in Europe, but the end of World War II), so it closed early; when I got there all of the shops were in the process of closing, and almost everybody was leaving. I walked to the far end where the restaurants were, and most of them were still open, so I was able to get dinner. I went to the Italian place, and it was good, but nothing remarkable. Other than the restaurants being on the opposite side of the shopping center from all of the hotels (it's a surprisingly long walk), I thought it was pretty nice. I stayed in the etap Hotel, which is definitely budget accomodations. It was fine for me, as a solo traveler, but it may not have worked if I had been traveling with more people. The room was pretty small, and the bed took up a lot of the space. It was a queen bed, with a lofted twin above it; I guess 3 people could theoretically share the room, but it would be very cozy. I also thought it was strange how the shower was connected directly to the bedroom, rather than having a separate bathroom (the toilet was in another compartment and the sink was in the main room). When I first got to the room, I heard a couple down the way enjoying eachother's company, which made we worried about how noisy it would be, but that was the only issue I had with noise. The room smelled funny (kind of like the bathrooms in the parks), but not too bad. Due to the weird ventilation in the building, I had a hard time keeping the window open (it would blow shut after a few minutes), but that wasn't a huge problem. Overall, it worked for my needs (a place to sleep at night that doesn't cost too much), but if you're looking for anything more than the basics, I'd go somewhere else. In Salzburg we stayed at the Altstadt Hotel, which was quite nice; in fact, much nicer than we were expecting! It was run by Radisson Blu, which I assumed to be similar to the Radisson chain in the US, but it was quite charming, and extremely well run. Our room was huge, had neat midieval wood beams in the ceiling, and had a great view down the street in front of the hotel. We could hear the bells from the Residenz in the morning, since our room faced that direction, was on one of the upper floors, and only about 100 meters away. It was definitely nice to have a little extra luxury to come back to after the race! In Vienna we stayed at the Hotel am Konzerthaus, which was right next to the Konzerthaus, between Schloss Belvedere and the Stadtpark. It was also very nice (though not quite as nice as the one in Salzburg), and in a pretty convenient location for a really good price. It was part of a chain of independent hotels called M Gallerie, so I'll definitely need to check them out in the future. We did take the train from Vienna to Salzburg (and again from Salzburg to Munich), and it worked perfectly. About halfway to Salzburg, a bachelorette party got on the train, so we switched seats so they could all sit together, and they gave us little bottles of schnapps for helping. We saw tons of bachelor/bachelorette parties in Salzburg, and it was really fun to see how they do it differently there (I saw a couple in Paris that looked similar). On the train from Salzburg to Munich, I "temporarily misplaced" my passport. I tried to get it out for when they came around to check tickets, but it wasn't in my backpack. Frantically, I went to the luggage rack, and pulled out my suitcase, and just as I was starting to open it, an undercover policeman came up to me and asked me for my passport. Luckily my friend suggested that I check my day bag that I had used the day before, and it was in there, so I found it quickly, but it was pretty terrifying. Nothing like getting asked by the secret police to show your passport, when you have no idea where it is, and you're crossing an international border! And when the train conductor finally came to look at tickets, she only wanted to see the credit card that I had used to buy them with. So if I had just waited for her to come around, I wouldn't have freaked out about it, the policeman never would have asked me for it, and it wouldn't have been an issue. But I got a pretty awesome travel story out of it!
