The Semmering Railway.

A new month, it is hard to believe that our mid-life crisis is almost over. It's just a few weeks until we meet up with William and Nita and from there the time will fly very quickly and we'll find ourselves back in Johannesburg taking up the yoke of employment once more to pay for the time we are having now.

Today we drove out to Semmering which is the town in the middle of a section of railway that is particularly picturesque. Going by guide books and hearsay one is never sure just what one is going to experience but today, as opposed to Lake Balaton, was good. Very beautiful countryside which seems to have skiing in winter and even now, one can see the remaining snow up on the northern faces of some of the mountains.

We caught the train to Payerbach and back and tried to take photographs from the moving train on the way there but it just doesn't work. There is often trees obscuring the view so by the time one realises that there is a picture, frames and focus's and presses the shutter a tree has come into view so I have a glorious array of photo's depicting fuzzy trees! Getting to Payerback, we gave up on the photo thing for the return trip and just concentrated on enjoying the scenery which was an altogether much better experience.

Once back at the car we ignored mabel for a while and explored looking for somewhere to have a coffee and a bite to eat but everything is closed; we thought at the time that this was because the ski season is over but it turns out that today is a public holiday.

This looks like a good place to hole up in Semmering during the winter months!

We eventually gave up finding somewhere to eat and headed back into the city to find a camping shop because we are running low on fuel for the stove and I don't feel like repeating the exercise I did in france trying to work out what works and what doesn't. We gave mabel the address and she guided us there, there was a shop there but it wasn't the correct shop. We entered the co-ordinates of the shop and mabel guided us 5km down the same road to the correct shop. Unbelievably there are two shops with the same number in the same road and no, the road did not change names so it must be an Austrian plot to confuse foreigners. When we got there it was also closed which was when we knew that it must be a public holiday of some sort.

Back at the camp I spent some time drinking my daily tipple before we went out for supper and to the internet cafe which was closed by the time we got there. A very simple day. When the sun is shining here, it is absolutely fantastic but there are far too many hours when the sun doesn't shine.

The showers at the campsite are unusual because they use proxity sensors to turn the water on and off, this works reasonably well when one is showering but has some unfortunate consequences when soaping or drying oneself. Sometimes the water turns on at unexpected moments; sometimes good technology is definitely used in the wrong places!