Thursday-Friday, 12/13th August 1982
No need for a map for the first part of today's travels. I'd planned to end my holiday with a few days in Vienna (Wien) to sample the delights of the Austrian capital. I left Graz at 09.12 on an "Eilzug" (semi-fast) to Bruck an der Mur, changing there onto the "Carinthia" express along the Sudbahn to Wien and arriving mid-morning.
Wien has a whole host of tourist attractions and I was determined to see them all: - the S-Bahn, the U-Bahn, the Lokalbahn, the Stadtbahn and the double-decker buses, which the city is one of few outside the UK to have.
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| Trams in Wien |
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| The S-Bahn at Wien Mitte |
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| The Wiener Lokalbahn - an interurban tramway |
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| Another view of the Lokalbahn |
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| The Stadtbahn (City Railway) |
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| A double-decker at the Sudbahnhof |
According to the diary I don't seem to have done anything else in Wien, although I must have had a bite to eat somewhere before joining the "Wien - Oostende Express" that was due to leave the Westbahnhof at 20.50, but was delayed by 20 minutes awaiting the through carriages from Budapest that were running late, despite having an hour's recovery time at Wien!
The "Wien-Oostende" was one of a huge number of international overnight trains that ran throughout Europe in those days. The advent of low-cost airlines put an end to most of them in the early part of this century, although in more recent years a revival has begun led by the Austrian State Railways.
Taken from a slightly earlier Thomas Cook timetable here (on page 468!) is the route and schedule of the Wien-Oostende Express:
As with all the international trains that terminated at Oostende, a casual glance at the timetable suggests a through train to London, with no mention of the need to change to a ferry between Oostende and Dover! I suppose that in those days it was a reasonable assumption that "everyone knew"! You also have to look closely to ascertain that the portion of the train that starts at Budapest goes only as far as Köln (Cologne) and that there is apparently no catering on board between the "light refreshments" car coming off at Passau and the Restaurant Car joining at Frankfurt. Presumably, some people would find it important to know that the through carriages and couchettes are "Austrian" rather than German or Belgian, although the nationality of the sleeping cars isn't divulged.
Brussels
The original plan was to take full advantage of the flexibility of rail travel to alight in Brussels at 1222, where Mark was going to come from London - on the Jetfoil - and join me for a pub crawl. But with the wisdom tooth troubling me, at some stage during the previous few days I had decided to cancel this arrangement and come straight home. Even though I was now feeling very little pain in my mouth I was too tired to change my plans again. Of the previous ten nights only one could be described as "a quiet night in" and I had done a lot of travelling. Instead I rode through to Oostende and joined the "Prins Albert" for a crossing that I noted as "fairly rough in poor weather" and with "the usual chaos in getting off the boat at Dover", which I think refers to the practice of requiring all foot passengers to leave the boat via a single gangway on to the quayside where priority was given to cars coming off the boat from the car decks.
Mark met me at Victoria, where I arrived seventeen minutes late (a three minute improvement on our departure from Wien!) and I stayed at his flat in Tooting that night, but only after "a pub crawl of the west end"!
THE END.
Except that tucked away at the back of the notebook is section on "the cost of the holiday"
The Austria Ticket, that I used for travel around the country cost £51.40
Train and Couchette tickets from Dover to Feldkirch and
Wien to Ostende came to £111.00
The coach from London to Dover was £3.50
and the return train was £7.00 showing that I didn't buy through tickets from London after all.
Travel Costs therefore came to £172.90
Seven nights in hotels in Jenbach, Salzburg, Graz and Linz cost a total of £65 (so not exactly 5-Star then!) making the cost of the holiday (excluding meals and, er..drinks) £237.90.
As I had been quoted £283 by the DER travel agency for putting together and booking a similar itinerary I was well pleased!
3 comments:
I once travelled on the Ostend-Vienna Express in the early-1980s en-route to Budapest. After a delay in Germany arrival at Wien (Westbf) was about an hour late, but the forward train had already departed. The next connection was late-afternoon so our couchette car, still full of passengers, was shunted into a siding for the day! I managed to climb-down and did some city sightseeing, but with no schillings to spend I went hungry. OeBB customer service was nil, but they seemed to dismiss the Magyars as mere communists!
Jim, Sadly I have no recollection of arranging to meet in Brussels, nor even of our West End pub-crawl. As ever, your memory is far superior. But I'm puzzled how you managed to alert me to the change of plan. Did you phone me from Austria before you set off? But how did you know I'd be in when you called? Maybe you rang my work number. It was a different world in those days! Mark
The question of how I contacted you has also puzzled me. I think that by 1982 it was possible to make international calls from telephone kiosks, at least in Austria. I probably rang you at work and would probably have made a note of the number just in case it was necessary to change the arrangements. I too have no memory of that pub crawl, but it's in the diary so we must have done it. After all, what else would we have done at 20.00 on a Friday night in London?!
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