Across the Austrian Alps

The aim on the second day of our journey was to cross the Alps and reach Salzburg by evening. This can be done quickly and comfortably by taking the A10 motorway (Tauern Autobahn) which has two long tunnels to spare the drive over the mountain passes. These tunnels are quite a remarkable engineering achievement, but the drive through them is not particularly scenic and the air inside can hardly be called alpine. Therefore, we exited the motorway and took instead the road up to Katschberg (1641m) and Radstädter - Tauern Pass (1739m).

Once we entered the white heart of the Alps I suddenly felt within my element. Even started daydreaming. Weather was getting grimmer and colder as we gained altitude, so the prospect of a snowfall became quite realistic. Without telling Tsveti, who was sunk in her seat, eagerly watching around, I began imagining, with immense pleasure, a snowstorm coming at us and how this could lead us into some kind of adventure (e.g. geting stuck in snowdrift and then being saved by a legion of bulldozers).

But the mountain gods must have gone to church that Sunday morning. Unstead of shoveling in the snow, soon we were sitting at a restaurant in Obertauern, facing two mountains of green salad, forks in our hands.