Date of visit: June 2005
Post written by Laura
Throwback Thursday!
The Austrian town of Linz was the final destination of my first backpacking trip and I resume the previous 3 related posts now as I take the train ride from Vienna.
Chatting with the ‘apple strudel woman’ in the Schonbunn Palace in Vienna earlier that morning, she asked my friend and I if we had been to Graz, mentioning Graz is very pretty, like Salzburg. She was surprised we were heading off to Linz which she explained is industrial… this dulled my excitement somewhat as I now had an image of a grey depressing town full of 1950’s buildings and smoking chimney’s.
In addition, the weather in Vienna that morning had started off hot and sunny again but the sky grew darker and cloudier as the train made its way towards Linz. It soon began to rain which really helped to conjure up a lovely image of Linz. Grey, industrialised and raining!
We arrived in Linz exactly on time, but as feared, there was a power station, factories and everything looked dull and grey. And it was still raining.
We abandoned our ‘backpacker’ values and took a taxi to the pre-booked hostel. For 6 euros (approximately £4 at the time (when the exchange rate was much more in our favour)) as it seemed worth the taxi ride rather than trudging around in the rain trying to work out where the tram was, where to get a ticket etc. So we cheated!
We arrived at the hostel in a few minutes and had a pleasant surprise. We walked in and it immediately had a more ‘up-market’ feel. We were then ‘politely’ corrected by the receptionist that this is indeed a ‘hotel’ and not a ‘hostel’. The room was still fairly cheap at around £30 so this was quite a result.
We left our luggage in the room before obtaining some practical information from the receptionist on things like purchasing tram tickets and what to see and do in the city. The tram stop was just around the corner where I bought a 24 hour ticket ‘tram ticket’ from the ticket machine for 3 euros each.
Our tram station (which happened to be called Wifi) was on main lines 1 and 2 which took us straight to the main town centre, just a few stops away and a short journey of 10 minutes.
The tram arrived and we were quite shocked as it was ultra modern! A big contrast to the clapped out old trams of Bratislava.
It was still pouring with rain as we stepped off the tram into the main square of Linz. In the rain we set about looking for a camera shop in search of an extra memory card. Even though it was Saturday afternoon some of the shops had closed at midday.
Our first impression of the Hauptplatz, the main town square was one of pleasant surprise. The baroque buildings were grand and ornate and I could see green hills stretching in the distance although covered in mist and rain. We walked along the high street and found a large department store with a small shopping centre in the middle. The top floor was huge and dedicated to electrical and electronic equipment including a vast array of camera gear. The memory card was purchased and I noticed all of the devices were of a much lower cost than UK prices.
The rain had begun to ease off so it was time for a long walk. The banks of the Danube were fairly close to the main town square which was where we headed first.
We continued our walk towards a couple more specified sights as shown in the tourist map provided by the hotel receptionist. Near to the old church we found a small restaurant called ‘The Cave’ where we enjoyed a glass of wine. This was a sophisticated and rather expensive restaurant. I felt slightly out of place sitting in our casual backpacking clothes, although at this time it was still too early for most people to be dining.
We carried on and covered most of the main sights of Linz within a couple of hours on this very pleasant walk. Linz has several modern and contemporary buildings, one of which is the Lentos Art Museum which was opened in 2003. We didn’t visit but this museum contains a range of impressive modern art pieces.
I was delighted to find that Linz was turning out to be a lovely city, full of surprises. We ended up at the main town square again where we had a delicious but expensive meal in a Greek restaurant, again temporarily ditching our backpacking principles.
The following morning, our final day of the trip and we woke up to brighter weather. After a fairly basic breakfast we checked out of the hotel, left our luggage behind and took the tram again, this time disembarking at the stop after the main town square, just over the river Danube.
We changed to the Pöstlingberg Tram which was to take us to the small church at the top of the Pöstlingberg Hill.
We sat for about 15 minutes waiting to leave before finally setting off, slowly up the hill. Eventually we reached the top and had a panoramic view of Linz.
The weather at the top of Pöstlingberg Hill was a bit weird. At the top of the hill we could see for miles. We could see areas of rain over some places, whilst behind where we were standing was brilliant sunshine.
Pöstlingberg Church is a pilgrim church which was built in 1748 and from here you get amazing views of the city. A service was taking place so we stood quietly at the back for a short time.
We came out of the church and had one last look at the view of the city. There were a couple of claps of thunder, so we waited in anticipation of a great show of lightening but there wasn’t any – it was still sunny where we were too.
We walked back to the tram and fortunately one turned up almost immediately. Following the descent in the tram, we made our way back down to the town, walking over the long bridge across the Danube (as Danube is very wide at this point).
Back into the town square and a short 25 minute ride on the yellow tourist bus. This took us around the town, most of which we had already walked around the previous night. With a recorded English commentary it was quite informative and interesting to learn more about the city.
By 1.00 pm the tourist ride had finished, the weather had become bright and sunny and we completed our time in Linz with an ice-cream Sunday in the Glockenspeil café. This was a tourist attraction in itself with a set of bells at the top of the building which get chimed three times a day.
At 1.30 pm we caught a tram back to the hotel where we had left our backpacks that morning. There were no Sunday airport buses so we took a taxi to Linz airport.
Summary
Firstly, Linz was much more picturesque than I had anticipated and it was a lovely place to end a week of Austrian backpacking. The trains throughout the week were frequent and always punctual with comfy seats and opportunities to charge devices even back then. Staying in hostels was a great experience, each one was quite different and I never knew what to expect but overall I loved every minute of this brilliant trip.
A few weeks after this adventure, in July 2005, I spent a totally different week in Egypt on a Nile cruise. At the time, when reflecting back on both holidays I learned that as much fun and enjoyment can be had with a small hostel level budget as a luxury 5* cruise. Lack of money doesn’t necessarily mean lack of adventures!
From that first trip I later explored more of Europe, taking annual leave for short trips with a backpack:
July 2006: Riga * Tallinn * Helsinki
July 2008: Graz * Maribor * Zagreb * Opatija * Ljujliana * Venice
Finally, The best starting place for any train adventure would be the man in seat 61 which is extremely informative and has masses of train travel information (and wasn’t around back in 2005 for this trip).
frombluetogreen.com 