Puchberg am Schneeberg

After exploring Vienna, we headed off for the mountains, to the alpine town of Puchberg-am-Schneeberg. Dave's vision was of us enjoying mountain hikes, fresh-flowing streams, and beautiful scenery. However, the weather that greeted us when we arrived in town was grey, rainy and very windy. This meant that the cog rail train that usually travels up the mountain was shut down for the day, and so we spent a bit of time exploring the town, and a lot of time hanging out indoors.
A cloudy view of the mountain.
The license plates in town all started with "NK ...", so we looked around town until we found "our" car!
In the evening, we had a farewell gathering for our tour group. This is a photo of half of the group. This was the end of the tour group's time in Vienna, but we stayed on for an extra day, along with Tim, Janice, Tessa, and Willem, and Bill and Mim, and hoped for clearer weather.
The next day was equally grey, but not quite as windy, so we were able to ride the cog rail up the mountain. This is the "salamander" train that took us up to the top.
A view of the mountains on our way up.
We had a brief stop halfway up the mountain. The track was, unsurprisingly, quite steep.
The weather at the top was even colder -- and snowier -- than at the foot of the mountain. This is a chapel that we walked to, near a mountain lodge where we hung out and had lunch. It was so cold, in fact, that Natasha had to buy an extra pair of socks at the lodge!
Natasha and Sam posing in the slightly sunnier weather on the way back down.
Three intrepid mountain explorers, returning to the bottom.

This is the end of the "narrative" portion of the Vienna blog posts. Each of the next few posts will highlight a particular theme from our trip.

Up next: Sam in Austria!