Categories: germany, postcards
Date: 30 October 2007 22:16:31
At the risk of becoming geeky about trains, here is another postcard on that subject. This was the part of the journey I was most interested in discovering as on previous occasions I had always travelled this route by night and had no idea what it looked like.
So from Nuremberg to Regensburg it was very rural, gently rolling hills and a field of solar panels. On to Plattling - where it was rural and fairly flat with hills to the east. From Plattling to Passau we travelled along side the Danube which we crossed right after Passau following it along the valley. It wasn't the beautiful blue Danube here - more of a milky green. Passau is the German/Austrian border and I had been expecting something in the way of hillyness but we continued on our way to Wels (fairly flat) and onto Linz where there was a castle or church up on a distant hill but it was still not as I had imagined it to be. At this point the weather became very grim - it was so grey it was almost dark. We arrived at St Pölten where a sign announced that we were 275m above sea level. (The name Sankt Pölten is derived from Hippolytus of Rome. The city was renamed to Sankt Hippolyt, then Sankt Polyt and finally Sankt Pölten.) After Sankt Pölten, the view was somewhat restricted by noise barrier fences (no graffiti) but on the approach to Vienna there was lots of forest - and a fine, but brief, glimpse of the Palace of Schönbrunn in the final few minutes of the journey. I was glad to fill in this gap in my knowledge of the journey - but will not be aching to do it again.