UK 2.0: Train - Vienna - Prague

The morning of 26 Nov was much colder than the days before. After using up all of today's heat yesterday, we were breathing clouds. The pigeons in Vienna Sudbahnhof train station puffed themselves into feathery balls as wait for the train to be made ready.

We were not seated in the cabins this time. This train was bound for a long long trip ahead. Its itinerary read like a light magazine. We would be off in Prague well before it had even completed a third of its epic trek across 3 countries, coming to rest finally in Hamburg in the wee hours of the following morning. Dresden and Berlin also numbered among those on the list. The cities it passed could be useful for a geography lesson of Germany.

Fresh out of Wien, we passed some snow white wind turbine that weren't spinning.

Mist began to crept in subtly upon us as we speed into the countryside. Slowly but surely, it engulfed the landscape in its ghostly grip.

Soon, we felt as though we have passed beyond the familiar fields we have only crossed 2 days before, into the a bygone era of witchcraft and enchantment.

Despite it being midday, the mist hung low and thick. Its impenetrable white shroud barely wane, even when we were well into the highland woods by mountain streams.

Glimmers of sunshine began to thrust through the moist cool air near the most mountainous part of the journey where we frequently weave in and out of tunnels and ducking under hills. (A suggestions to photographers traveling in this direction between Wien and Prague, if you can aim your camera towards the rear of the train, the instant it emerge from a tunnel in the hills tends to be the prettiest moment. Though I reacting a little too slow to catch a satisfactory picture.)

If the fog came like a thief, it departed as abrubtly as the snap of a finger. It was like waking up from a dream by having cold waters thrown at your face. The dream world seemed irreconcilable with the waking one. The moment we were out on the other side of the mountain, the sun smiled upon us generously.

By different cars we passed.

More farmlands and towns flickered by. (This one dedicated to all the 'Collins' of the world.) The afternoon sun was strong. Jackets were stowed and the blinds on the opposite windows were drawn.

A jet sketched the sky, foreshadowing the crisscrossing lines on the blue sky above Prague.

After a taxi ride through the rush hour traffic, we were ready to resume our adventures in the dying light.