Travel Day 8 - relocate Bolzano to Judenburg

Today was a 500 km, 14 hour relocate by train day for us from Bolzano to Judenburg. We caught the 7:02 am train with a changeover at Fortezza on the way to Lienz, where we had an enjoyable day from 10:30 through till we caught the first of our next two trains at 5:24 pm through to Judenburg arrival time is 9:00 pm. We made our way the 250 metres from the station to the Centre of town, found a lovely Cafe and then spent the rest of the day sitting there eating and drinking sufficient to not be asked to move on...

It was a little bit rainy so we relocated for the afternoon session to the warmth of the inside of the Cafe. 

Peter and me both needed a new battery bank, mine to replace the one I left behind and Peter to replace his that was beginning to swell and burst at its seams (bursting, definitely not a good thing for a battery bank as the next step is perhaps a self combustion lithium ion fire which I hear are hard to extinguish).

We are both very pleased with our new purchases. 

There is a Pic below of Stephen with the tablet open focusing on some paperwork. The paperwork is our accounts for the day that he is feeding in to a magical spreadsheet he has created that takes our daily group spend and allocates it accordingly so that at the end of the trip we should all be in the happy situation of nobody, owing anybody, anything. 

Oh, the beauty of travelling with two accountants with one in particular who relishes that sort of detail. 

THANK YOU STEPHEN. 

It is now three weeks since I left NZ and in that three weeks we have had a range of accommodation from basic as in last night through to very nice hotel. By and large as in NZ the price does not always match the standard. Travelling as we are, three blokes we're happy sharing a room but not the bed (I know call us old fashioned or whatever but that's just us, okay) and knowing we might have this situation arise and being the Queen Scout that I am I've bought along my thermarest to counter this very situation. So far we have each had a night on it on the floor and tonight will be the start of the second rotation as our room has one double and one single bed. 

We were faced with the same arrangement for tomorrow night, that we booked today until I saw we could each have our own room for 56 Euro or the one room with someone on the floor for 150 Euro. We opted for our own rooms. 

Now back to our travels. We made our way back to the station with plenty of time up our sleeve and found the train was spot on time so off we went to Villach for our next change over. The loudspeakers were telling us the train was 30 minutes late. The official on the platform told us to take our bags off our bikes and the last carriage is for bicycle. 

We waited and then our train arrived, on we pile with three others only to find all the bike spaces were taken. There was one thing German fellow there being very protective of his "special" bike and saying three people do not have bicycle ticket. After a stop of standing there in the bicycle carriage holding in to bikes the controller lady comes through checking tickets and confirmed that we had bicycle tickets but three others did not. They were told "not possible" but after a lot of pleading by them she relented from putting them off and they were told that our bikes must have the bicycle rack and theirs must lie down on the floor under the others! 

After we were confirmed as legit and all the karfuffle was going on we had to tell each other "problem, problem, whose problem? Not ours, so just keep out of it and let others sort out their problem" - funny that it was only this time yesterday that we had to tell another person that their problem is not our problem!

Yes, this travel can make one "harden up" 









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