Leaving Budapest, complete with bicycles, camping gear and loaded panniers has been no easy task. In fact, our journey back to Paris in time for our return flights home is proving to be the most challenging aspect of our trip. Like cowboys from the wild, west of yesteryear we are extremely attached to our trusted steeds. Although, we are the first to admit that it makes no financial sense to bring home our aged, broken down rides, we simply aren’t ready to leave without them...and so we initiated operation OPUS. (Our bikes are Opus bikes, a terrific cycling company based out of Montreal, Canada)
Our first attempt to leave Budapest was a no go. Unfortunately, there were no trains leaving on our preferred day that could accommodate bikes (or so we think we were told...again our Hungarian language skills are lacking.) Not really a hardship, we stayed an extra day in Budapest, savouring the city and waiting for the first train out. On our scheduled day of departure, we survived a frenetic 5am ride to the train station and successfully boarded the train scheduled for an early afternoon arrival in Vienna.
According to Operation Opus, we would arrive safely in Vienna, well rested and converse with a friendly, efficient Austrian train agent, who we were confident would prove a bit more helpful than their Hungarian counterpart. We sat back, relaxed and rode the rails until the announcement of doom. Our train came to a hard stop at an obscure train station somewhere in Hungary. A very lengthy announcement in Hungarian came over the intercom system which left our fellow passengers looking horror stricken. We waited with baited breath hoping against all hope for an English translation. Crackling to life, the loudspeaker came on, and to quote, “Ladies and Gentleman, our locomotive engine has a big problem.” Period. End of statement. No further instructions. A succinct translation.
Like sheep to the slaughter we followed the crowd out on to the platform. What else were we to do? Western style passenger agents were no where to be seen, when a second train pulled in and our fellow passengers began to sprint for the doors. As you can imagine, our version of sprinting, with fully loaded bikes is a sight to behold, but sprint we did. Like the rest of the sheep we rammed ourselves onto the second train, unsure of where it might be going, but hopeful it would be closer to Paris than our current location.
We rolled along, passing station after station until the train came to another complete stop and the sheep once again unloaded. Bewildered and confused we began to follow, and then the magic happened. A young German couple took us under their wing and explained where we were, and more importantly what we needed to do to get to Austria.
We would like to say that upon our arrival in Vienna operation Opus went smoothly, but unfortunately that just wasn’t the case. As planned, we found a delightful ticket agent, who was happy to converse in English and extremely helpful. We simply asked to go somewhere, anywhere closer to Paris on a train that accepted bikes. She got to work, and handed us an itinerary to Innsbruck that required several connections, the personification of a milk run. Having never been to Innsbruck, we excitedly accepted her proposed route.
Confident we could pull it off, we thanked her profusely. As she bid us farewell, she dropped the clincher on us. “Remember, you need to go to a different station in Vienna, it’s only 30 minutes away, so you will have 5 minutes to spare. It should be no problem for you if you hurry and follow the bike route.” Perfect, if you had a car or taxi. Perfect if you knew the city. Perfect, if you had a GPS. Needless to say, we missed our train.
From there the real excitement began and between the numerous changes we managed to loose and find our train tickets, board a wrong train, break another set of Rob’s glasses and make a few friends.
The day ended 15 hours later in a beautiful mountain campsite on the outskirts of Innsbruck. Fumbling in the dark we managed to set up our tent seconds before the rain hit. We slept like babies.
Phase 2 of Operation Opus coming soon!
Route Update
We spent a wonderful day in Innsbruck hiking Mount Hafelekar. Faced with another upcoming bank holiday, we have been unable to secure rail tickets, or flights to Paris. On the bright side, Innsbruck is home to 11 ski resorts, snow season is just around the corner and we have noticed ski instructor hiring signs. Things could be worse.
Giggle
During one of our frenetic train transfers we found ourselves in a foot race with two German cyclists. Changing platforms can be tricky, and with loaded bicycles an elevator can be a saving grace...or so we all thought. Like a scene from the Amazing Race four sweaty cyclists with four fully loaded touring bicycles arrived at the elevator at exactly the same time. The ladies begged to go first saying they would miss their connection if we stalled them. In a moment of weakness, our Canadian came out, and we let them go first. I teased them that if we missed our train they would owe us a drink. In a twist of fate, we ended up on the same train bound for Salzburg. They were true to their word and invited us to join them for a dinner and a drink. Cheers!
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