Hi Friends! This is one of the 3 posts that is submitted for the nomination of Best Photo Blog category by OMY Singapore Blog Awards. I must hereby THANK the panel of judges from OMY’s editorial team for selecting TravelerFolio.com as one of the top ten finalists in the Photo Blog category.

Please leave your comment in this post if you like it.

Rest and Relax day for us. We set out for our hiking at Untertal, a beautiful alpine path behind our resort that leads to the highest waterfall in the region.

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Around 6pm, we finally reached Feldkirch at the Austria border, after crossing Liechtenstein - the smallest German speaking country in the world.

We had planned to stay a night at Feldkirch to save a day of our Eurail Pass, since it was already late evening when we arrived Austria, and headed to Innsbruck the next morning. We would stay at Jugend Herberge hostel, but had no idea how to go there. It was getting dark. We walked and walked, with our heavy backpacks and empty stomachs, and we had walked more than 1km before we finally found the hostel. (Think if you ask me to do such “risky” thing again in a foreign land, I don’t think I have the guts now.)

The hostel was actually a very old cottage, more than 700 years old! The hostelkeeper reminded us that since it was an old cottage, we need to take care of it too! The rate was very cheap - only €14, and as the smaller rooms were occupied, the hostelkeeper was generous enough to let us stay in a big dorm for six persons!

Our only containers brought for the trip. The thick piece of luncheon meat was brought from home; it’s one of most delicious meat we had in Europe!! And the instant noodles tasted so good in a foreign land, yet we treat these instant noodles as MSG junk food at home!

To mention about the bathroom and toilet, they were fine in term of cleanliness, except with a touch of eeriness! The lights were timed to switch off automatically even I was still doing “small business” in the toilet. I had to call Jacky to open the toilet main door in order to turn on the lights. And for the bathroom, it was a big shower room with a few shower sprinklers and no partitions or shower curtains at all. Luckily I was the only one inside. I locked the main bathroom door and Jacky guarding outside. I felt eerie bathing in such a big bathroom too, with scary thought of shower sprinklers turning on by themselves! Eee… In fact, the whole floor where the bathroom and toilet were located was very dark, as it was all about energy conservation again.

Innsbruck with the enchanting Alps!

Early in the morning, we left for Innsbruck, a capital city of Tyrol in Western Austria, and an internationally renowned winter sports centre that hosted the Winter Olympic twice.

This is one of my favourite photos with Alps in the background.

Risking our lives while standing on the tram track just to take a nice picture.

The famous Golden Roof is an attraction in Innsbruck. When we spotted the Golden Roof, there were musicians playing under it.

Walking through the old streets, we saw many souvenir shops selling cuckoo clocks and cow bells too, and they were cheaper than those in Switzerland. Too bad, I had already bought those stuff as I thought the conversion rate was better in Swiss Franc than Euro, as SF1 = S$1.35 and €1 = S$1.98 and I was wrong! Still, Switzerland stuffs were more expensive.

Having meals in MacDonald’s were not any cheaper. They cost double of what we paid in Singapore after currency conversion, though sometimes hamburgers were having offer at €0.98 only (we grabbed such offer back in Versailles, Paris).

We had our lunch at a restaurant where the customer service was so bad that we were being ignored numerous times by the waiters and waitresses. The food was not nice too - very saltish chicken meat. This was the worst unwelcoming experience that I ever had in a restaurant.

The pretty alpine resort in Schladming!

We had booked a resort called The Alpine Club for a 7-day stay in Schladming, a small mining town in Styria. This was not the first choice resort that we wanted, but to book a timeshare resort, especially a popular one, it might need at least six months of advance booking (that’s why I terminated the membership). We managed to book this resort within three months of departure.

The resort overlooks a wonderful scenery, a beautiful town nestles in the alpine valley.

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A rest and relax day for us, after days of rushing for trains and tight schedules. We rented bicycles and bought groceries at the town which is about 1.5km away from the resort located on the mountain. Getting to the town was further than it seemed to be as we had to walk along a few bends on the road while descending from the mountain. We rented mountain bikes for half a day at €11 for each bike. We also bought some food to cook in our resort and the food was quite cheap. We thought we could put the bags of food on our bicycles and rode back to the resort, but it proved to be a stupid idea, when we had forgotten that our resort was high up on the mountain! We ended up exhausted ourselves and instead, apart from carrying the heavy bags of food, we had to push our bicycles up the slopes! Dog-tired!

After putting down the food in the resort, we rode around the alpine region, relaxing and getting rejuvenated in the alpine breeze.

Came across a stream. It was nature untouched!

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We woke up early in the morning freezing due the cold mountain air that had crept in through the windows that we had left ajar for ventilation, we thought. Shut the windows tightly and went back to sleep. The next morning, I found yellowish powder scattered all over our clothes that we hung out to dry in the open air at the balcony. We were puzzled and later we found out that the it was spring-summer pollen season. The yellowish powder was pollen.

To get to the nearest train station from our resort, we had to walk all the way down the mountain slope to the town at the valley, and by the time we reached the train station, we almost burnt out. We met a friendly English couple at the train station and had a small chat with them. They had been to Singapore before and found it interesting to see hawker centres selling many kind of food. They even asked what is our staple food which we said is rice. We asked them back this question and they replied, “We eat potatoes…”

Salzburg is famous for its baroque architecture. It is also the birthplace of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and the famous landmarks for The Sound of Music. We bought ourselves a Salzburg card each and it was worth the price we paid for, since we got free admission to all city’s attractions and free use of public transport throughout the city too. I would say it’s a must-to-have card to explore Salzburg. To pay an extra more, one can buy a Swatch “Access” wristwatch to keep and enjoy the same privileges too.

Here, we ate a very, very saltish pretzel, with big rough salt sprinkled on it. From the Hohensalzburg Fortress museum, you can see the great view of the well-preserved baroque city - a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

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We embarked on an exciting journey to the world largest limestone ice caves located in Werfen - The Eisriesenwelt (German: “World of the Ice Giants”).

We met two friendly English old couple from Yorkshire. They were leaving the resort and they offered us to get into their cab to the train station. It was snowing in Schladming.

But during our way to Werfen, we missed our friend as he hopped onto a train first and before we could board the train, a train officer shouted at us and warned us that the train was leaving. Then we also realised our friend was in the wrong train. A kind man told us that the train would terminate at the next station and we could meet our friend by taking the another train too.

When the next train came, Jacky asked another train officer if it was the right train , but the officer simply ignored us when his colleague went up and talked to him! They completely ignored us! Feeling helpless, we boarded the train and we thought it was the right train until Jacky asked a conductor and was told that the next train was the right one instead. Immediately, we got out of the train, so scared that the train would just go before we could get down, just like our friend who failed to do that!

So, the train to Werfen was late. We went to the ice caves without our friend as we had too many doubts about the train timing, plus unhelpful train officers.

Finally, we reached Werfen. To get up to the ice caves, we took the shuttle bus to the next bus-stop. From there, we had to walk for another 20mins upslope in the cold to the cable car station. The cable car took us to somewhere near the ice caves entrance, and we had to walk for at least another 20mins upslope in the cold again, while gasping for breathe in the thin mountain air. However, it was a lovely walk in the snow. In fact, it was snowing.

Despite the problems that we encountered on our way to the giant ice caves, it was a well worth visit. We had a German-speaking guided tour in the ice caves; we were given an English description of the ice caves instead.

At the giant ice caves entrance.

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