Day 49 – Salzburg to Strasbourg (Friday 31st May 2024)

The rain had returned overnight so the wet weather gear came out again to protect our puffer jackets, our back-packs and our heads. Today it was the No. 9 and then changing to the No. 2 to take us directly to the Salzburg Hbf. We’d arrived in plenty of time for our 10:00am train to Stuttgart, the first leg of what was planned to be a four leg journey. The train left Platform 1 on time and we were away. The first major stop was a Munich where many people alighted and many more got on. We were 15 minutes behind schedule by the time we left. At every other stop we seemed to be loosing a minute, so much so that by the time we left Ulm, the last stop before Stuttgart we were 22 minutes in arrears.

We made it to Stuttgart with 30 minutes to spare before our next train was to due to depart – the ICE 9572. When arriving in Stuttgart the conductor announce our connecting train and the platform it was leaving from. Great! Worryingly though, he also declared that the train was leaving at 14:39 (rather than the scheduled 14:52) and that it was going via Karlsruhe and Strasbourg to Paris. Went I’d booked this leg of today’s journey I couldn’t book this route so I booked a more convoluted one instead.

A helpful conductor told us our Eurail ticket Salzburg-Strasbourgh was good but we hadn't booked a seat, which apparently is now mandatory on this train. He let us board and when the train was rolling sold us a couple of reserved seats to go to Strasbourg on the one train. After shelling out €20.00 a pop we sat back to enjoy what would have otherwise been a disaster. At about 4:30pm the train rolled into Strasbourg station – an hour ahead of the arrival time – when compared to my schedule.

The Hotel le Grillon is a lovely, little three-star hotel just a few hundred metres from the Strasbourg railway station. After we checked on we took a wander through the nearby streets, stopping in a supermarket for a couple of essentials. Looking for a simple and quick meal we stopped at a table on the street for a pizza at a cafe just near the hotel. The older gentleman who waited on us was a master of the trade. He looked after us like we were the only customers in his restaurant which, now that I come to think of it, we were! But the pizza was good and the beer was good too after a long day on the move. With plenty of daylight in the sky we walked back to the station on a reconnaissance mission to find the Sixt rental office ahead of tomorrow’s visit to pick up a car. As we approached the station the big, dark, angry cloud above us let go and sent its contents thrashing down on the travellers crossing the Place de la Gare. We made a dash over the last 25m and missed the worst of it. In the safety of the modern edifice built in the front of the 19^th century facade of the station we searched in vain for the Sixt office.

Back at the hotel I found it on Google Maps, hiding around a corner just outside the modern edifice. As I suspected, businesses are not permitted to erect signs for fear that such crass commercial objects may conflict with the beauty of the station’s 19^th century charm. Have a look (on Google Streetview) at the modern edifice that stands before the 19^th century facade and you’ll be scratching your head over that argument.