Day 10 - OAM - Monday, 15 June 2015 - Crans-Montana to Seefeld, Austria

I was a little sad to have this delicious breakfast for the last time this morning and for the 3^rd morning intentionally put just a wee bit too much of that delicious cherry jam on my freshly sliced bread. We packed up and headed out early on another cool and drizzling day – it was going to be a long drive to Austria. We had a couple of pit stops along the way. The first rest stop sported some interesting cows and the womens' restroom, as luck would have it, was closed for cleaning. We descended en masse on the mens' bathroom but it took just a bit to figure out how to put money (20 CHF – luckily there was a change machine in the hall) in the door to open it. You had to drop your coin in, lift the handle, then push down on the handle to open the door.

Getting to travel through so many different European countries you not only get a flavor of the city/town, sample it's foods, and shop it's cultural souvenirs but you also get to see a bunch of different bathrooms. This point did not go unnoticed by many in our group – mainly the women. I'm proud to say that Amina has traveled enough so that when I quizzed her on why there were 2 buttons to push to flush the toilet – she knew right away that the smaller button was for liquid waste and the bigger button was for solid waste. We used toilets that varied from 20 CHF to 50 pounds to 1 Euro in price and I couldn't tell you that this price determined the bathroom maintenance procedures or abundance (or lack of) toilet paper and towels, or whether or not the toilet had seats. Consistently, automatically flushing toilets were pretty non-existent all throughout Europe and almost all of the bathrooms had hand dryers rather than paper towels. Everyone on the bus knew what was meant if soneone asked “Is it free”?

Thankfully on most of our long travel days, Gerd stopped frequently at rest stops for us to use the facilities and re-load up on snacks. The 2^nd rest stop we went to had a really nice bathroom and when you used 1 CHF to enter the restroom, it printed out a 1CHF coupon to use in the store. Small children got in for free.

 Also, since day 1 on the bus with Gerd, there was bottled water, soda, and bottles of iced tea for purchase for 1 Euro, $1 USD, or 1 GBP. People on our bus took advantage of this frequently.

On our way to Austria, we stopped in Lichtenstein for a very fast visit. It was drizzling pretty steadily and we walked up the street looking for someplace quick to eat. We happened to find the Kunst Museum and decided to have lunch in their cafe which, as it turns out, was actually a sushi cafe. We shared a sushi combination plate (at a price of 80 Euros! Ouch) which was ok but at least it was very fast. We did some fast shopping and found the booth where you could pay 2 Euros to get your passport stamped.

We re-boarded the bus and took a very winding route to our next destination: Seefeld, Austria, arriving at around 4:30 in the afternoon. 

We met our city coordinators Ken and Judy and then hauled our luggage a couple of blocks to the Hotel Tiroler Weinstube. There were plenty of OAM posters and ads up around town. Each bus was, again, assigned to different hotels. Of all the hotels that we stayed in, this was my absolute least favorite – it reeked of cigarette smoke, the wifi was pititful, and there was no hair dryer to be found. The bathroom was very small, had the smallest shower I've ever seen with no shower curtain, and nothing but bar soap – no shampoo. I was glad that I had picked up shampoo/conditioner in Switzerland. I'm still not even sure that there was an elevator – we carried our luggage up the stairs and only used the stairs coming and going from the hotel.

We had a little free time before dinner at 7 pm so Amina and I walked around a bit and found a grocery store which was very very reasonably priced just up the street from the hotel. We picked up a few snacks.

We all met in a small room on the 2^nd floor of the hotel for each of our hotel meals – the food wasn't too bad. We had some kind of soup which was a broth and had round crunchy bits floating on top that tasted like little bits of funnel cake – it was good. We had the typical salad with carrots and corn followed by a goulash which was really good. Dessert was an apple strudel.

We were pretty tired after dinner and just hung out at the hotel. I went downstairs outside the hotel and across the street to pick up decent enough wifi to be able to upload some pictures to our Facebook group. I uploaded a few things really quick and then went back in – it was getting really chilly outside and some old grumpy guy came up to me scolding me in German for reasons that were unclear to me and he even tried to kick my laptop. Fortunately, there were plenty of people around and one of the OAM staff members happened to be walking by and stopped to make sure I was ok. I was surprised by his behavior but didn't feel like he was a real threat.

The beds in each hotel from Switzerland on were all consistently twin beds converted to one bed but we each had our own down comforter and, with the window/patio doors open at night, it was nice and cool in our room (probably in the low 50's F overnight) which is what we prefer.

Next Post (Day 11)