Day Trip to Melk, Wachau Valley & Krems

Happy Thanksgiving Canada!  There is so much to be grateful for!

This year for Thanksgiving, I took a solo train trip to the neighbouring towns of Melk and Krems, with a river cruise through the Wachau valley on the Danube river from one to the other (a summer combination ticket available from the local railway company until the end of October for 57 Euros (about $80 Cdn) ).  The ticket also includes entrance to the Melk Abbey.

I got the idea for a weekend day-trip on Thursday morning and headed to the nearest train station to ask where I could go.  Unfortunately, even if Florence made me a student card on Friday, when I bought my ticket, I learned that “student” really means “young student” under 27.  Oh well… This was my first time out of the big city in my month and a half in Austria, and it was definitely something to be grateful for.

Melk:
I was up bright and early and out the door before 7am to walk to Westbanhoff, about 20 minutes away to catch the 7:36am train.  I’m glad I arrived early because as I asked passengers which direction the train was going to decide where to sit (seats are arranged face to face), they engaged me in conversation and I learned that this train didn’t go to Melk.  Luckily, I had time to run back down to the ticket office to find out that I was on the right train, but needed to transfer in St. Polten… that would have been useful information to get when I bought my ticket.  Lesson: allways ask if it’s a direct train as there may not be an agent around to answer that question (no one checked my ticket on the first 2 trains of the day).  About 45 minutes later, I was in Melk, known for its baroque Benedictine monastery, a cultural and spiritual center for Austria.

One definite advantage of being an early bird is that I got there before the throngs of tourists/ tour buses.  I wandered the historic streets for a while before going up to the monastery where I happily strolled through the gardens for over an hour before taking an English guided tour (2 Euros) through the courtyard, gallery/museum, and library (no photos allowed in that one).  There are only 30 monks left now at the abbey (which still serves as a school), but only 5 came to the mid-day prayers (1 late), presided by 2 of them.  I had read somewhere that these 15-minute daily prayers are chanted and had expectations for an uplifting concert by a church full of well-practiced monks (ah, those expectations).  Still, I tried to join in the one and only song, following the German in the printed leaflet at my pew with little success.  Nevertheless, it was nice to be in a church on this Thanksgiving weekend, knowing that my family in Ottawa would be doing the same at some point.

I then headed to town to look for a quick bite to eat before heading to the ship docks.  I had a great pizza (surprise, surprise) and practiced my German with the Afghan cook (I seem to have a lot of German/English conversations with Afghan pizza chefs here in Austria – the most conversation I seem to have outside of class – nice ones too!)

Blue Danube River Cruise:

My wish to be on the water came true this weekend. I got to feast my eyes on the Fall colours as this cruise went through the beautiful Wachau valley, famous for its scattering historic towns/villages, castles (Richard the Lion Heart was held prisoner in one of them), vineyards and apricot farms.  Beautiful!  I didn’t partake in the alcohol soaked apricots that they were selling, but I did have an apricot gelato later in Krems.

Krems:

Krems is a beautiful historic town that has been recognized as a World Heritage Site by UNESCO.   I didn’t learn much about its history or visit any of its buildings or museums, but I had a great time wandering the streets and taking pictures for several kilometers (zigzagging) and about 6 hours .  It’s a good thing I enjoy my own company – I don’t mind traveling on my own, especially when I have my camera and tripod. It’s true, I wasn’t thrilled when the 0% chance of rain turned into getting soaked for half an hour, but I was grateful when the lights came on at nightfall and the reflections off the wet cobblestone enhanced the beauty of it all.

I took the 8:01pm train back to Vienna and was in bed by 9:30pm, exhausted, but happy.  Today, I did laundry, cooked, edited photos, and blogged (you might think this is a lot of photos, but it’s less than a quarter of what I started out with…).  I’m now off to get turkey schnitzel at a neighbourhood take-out joint if they’re open – I like turkey on Thanksgiving now that I’m no longer vegan.  There’s so much I’m grateful for, and the plenitude of restaurants around here is one of them.