Sunday, 13th of October. 2019.
I have to spend some several minutes on the road, under the freaking cold weather, with my hands and feet almost freezing, until somebody decide to pick me up. A lot of them looked very friendly thought.
I am very surprise with the ones who finally stop: another family. A four member family this time. Mother, father and two teenagers. And they are going to Bad Gastein. Yay! I wish the father spoke English, because I want to ask him why he stopped for me. I think it is because he has two girls and he felt like doing what he would expect someone to do, maybe one day, for his daughters.
The girls, Agnes and Anna, speak English though, and I spend the whole trip talking with the youngest one (which now, unfortunately, I am not sure if it was Agnes or Anna). They are going to swimming in Bad Gastein because it is Sunday, family day. Wow, now can you imagine have to go to another town just for swimming? Now forget about that because some people might drive even more than them to go somewhere, even to go to work everyday, and they still live in the same city, so it does not matter. The younger sister I am talking with it is very sweet and she gets very surprised about my travels, telling her parents about it time to time. They drop me a bit before Bad Gastein itself, something around 10 Km, because they are going into another direction.
A wonderful couple, Florian and his wife, which I will call T. because I cannot write her name, who is going to do a hiking around some lake over two hours from Bad Gastein, picks me up. For a brief moment I had the wish of join them. That is one of the few things I miss: not be able to going for longer hiking, just for the day. Maybe as soon as I organize / finish all my texts and publish them, I can plan some hiking in my next destinations. So the nice couple, looking so young to have an old daughter who also likes to travel a lot like me, as they told me, drops me in the entrance of Bad Gastein. Very sweet people!
There is a group of people, apparently waiting for someone or something before start a tour / hiking. One of the guys, ask me if I am looking for someone or for him. I do not know why but I am not that friendly with him or with them. I do not ask what they are doing or where they are going. I regret a little bit later. From the Tourist Information building, which has no one inside, I get the map which will replace the Vatican Museum Map in the scale of the worst tourist information map ever. You could not possibly understand anything in this thing. Not on single thing. Laugh. So horrible. So I just decide start to walk. I must to have breakfast so I look for some quite good view to do that.
Bad Gastein it looks very nice at first sight. Old buildings, pretty cool ones, and this huge one just in the middle of the town, a hotel called Europe, If you did not searched so much about the town and what to do on it, like me, you can get very surprise to find out that there is a waterfall crossing the middle of the town. Probably one of the big reasons which attract so many tourists to here. But I do not know if it is because everything is closed (since it is Sunday), but it could not be since I am not into shopping or cafes anyway; or if it is because of the hundreds of hotels everywhere. Which makes the town looks like a ghost town (seriously, there are like three columns with about ten names of hotels and their directions everywhere in town); I do not know but I have the felling that something is missing, that it is a fake town. It has some beautiful views and a beautiful church, plus the waterfall, of course, but still. And you have loads of options for hiking and go to explore further points around town. Maybe that increases the good experience. And of course you do not need to worry about finding a hotel to stay over night. Nope.
I think after something around two or three hours, I decide to leave direct to Vienna, not sopping in a castle, which was the plan before, and I do so.
It is a good spot where I am, since it is the only way out of town, if you are not going to the dead end mountains at South, but I am still pretty sure that I will not catch a lift direct to Vienna, so I do not worry too much about find a place to stay in there.
Who could predict that the first car which stops for me, just in a few minutes, it is going direct to Vienna? What? I could barely believe when they told me. Four friends, Greg, Clara, Luca and the last one who I did not write the name so I forgot, are going back to the capital after spend the weekend at a wedding. Amazing! How lucky I am!
