For the second February in a row I jetted off to Europe for a holiday. Unlike last year this trip had a little more planning and was close to twice as long. Over the month of February I visited five countries and caught up with many friends.
To get to Europe I chose to fly on Etihad, whom I have flown to Europe with twice before. However, getting to Europe this time around was slightly different to previous trips, while I could take the usual Sydney to Abu Dhabi flight I chose instead to go first to Perth and then to Abu Dhabi. This allowed me three hours to stretch my legs in Perth and reduce the length of the ultra-long haul Australia to Abu Dhabi leg of the journey.
The trip got off to a bit of a nervous start though, when my first flight, from Sydney to Perth on a Virgin Australia codeshare, was delayed by an hour due to maintenance. The trip then got worse on the flight from Perth to Abu Dhabi as I had two pre-schoolers behind me who decided to yell at each other the entire 11 hour flight. Arriving in Abu Dhabi having had almost no sleep did not make me a very happy traveller, what’s worse is that Abu Dhabi airport has not improved from previous visits and is an extremely busy airport with dirty and congested passenger facilities – from security, to a lack of seating and toilets.
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The third leg of the trip from Abu Dhabi to Munich continued to be the never ending journey. I would try to sleep and think an hour had gone by, only to look at the time and realise it had been less than 15 minutes. Eventually I did make it to Europe just before 6am on a Tuesday morning.
I then had to wait until 7.30am for the Deutsche Bahn office to open and validate my EuRail pass before I began the next leg of my long commute. Once I had my EuRail pass in order I jumped on the S-Bahn into Munich’s Marienplatz from where I got my first breath of fresh air in over 24 hours while I walked to the Hauptbahnhof. I was a little disappointed that there was no snow in Munich on this trip, however, it was definitely still beanie weather – and unlike last year I was prepared with one.
After grabbing a hot chocolate for breakfast at Munich Hauptbahnhof and waiting 20 minutes for a delayed train I was then on the final leg of my journey to Innsbruck. As we travelled south from Munich I began to get quite excited as the Alps came into view, but disappointingly they also had no snow on them – it has been a very warm winter. During the next hour we headed into a valley between two ranges where around every turn as we got deeper into the valley we passed small village after small village with each one a little more hidden away in the morning mist. More excitingly snow started to appear on the ground, at first in small puddles and then whole fields were white.
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Just before midday I finally arrived in Innsbruck. Leaving the train station you could see the alps rising up in all directions around the city. After walking 20 minutes through to my accommodation I was allowed to check in early and take a much needed shower. After 40+ hours I was also extremely tired, but the weather and the mountains outside looked far too good, so instead of sleeping I decided to go up one…
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