The UBER driver drops us off at the train station in Vienna. I get coffee while we wait for the information regarding the platform number for our train to appear on the departure board. We slept better the night before so we are feeling fresher, our minds a littler clearer than the previous 2 mornings. We head to the platform and enjoy the mechanical ballet of trains arriving and departing. Our train pulls up and we board, that is when the trouble begins.
An older,surly ticket taker comes by. It seems from his grumpy manner that he is just killing time till retirement, any pretense of customer service a thing of history. We have with us paper records which contain a travel number, a confirmation number and a receipt for the amount paid for the tickets. None of this is enough. We do not have the pdf attachment he says he needs to scan and insists that we cough up 185 euros or get kicked off the train in the middle of nowhere, Austria. Reluctantly I hand over the credit card, taking care to make sure it is the same one we used for the original tickets, hoping we can straighten out the mess when we get back to the states. As the trip progresses I search through old emails, we booked the tickets 3 months prior to the trip and eventually locate the attachment needed. It takes some searching to find the constipated, irritable ticket taker. After looking at the attachment, none of which is mentioned as being necessary in any of the documentation associated with the train trip, he says it is what he needed to scan but any refund will have to be handled at the Salzburg station. This information is gleaned through the help of the young man and woman staffing the food car as the nasty ticket takers English is a little faulty. It appears it is taking an incredible amount of restraint on the part of the 2 younger people to keep from rolling their eyes at him. The young man's eyes are wide, cute and deer-like, "I hope you get your money back" he says. I resist the urge to kiss him as thanks for his concern.
Upon arriving at Salzburg we are told by the woman behind the counter, rudely, that there is no one there that can help us and that we will have to contact the headquarters in Vienna. She dismissively shoves a form, printed entirely in German, and an envelope across the counter to us, then glares at us as she motions the next person in line to come forward. My husband places a hairdresser hex on her, after her next bleach job her hair will fall out and she will be left completely bald.
We do enjoy the view on the ride. The green countryside is dotted with farms and small villages dominated by churches with onion domed spires. We ignore the areas of industrial warehouses. As we pull into Linz, Austria's 3rd largest city, there is a cemetery next to the tracks. beyond it are modern highrises. On the opposite side I glimpse a section of older, historic buildings.
We climb into a cab outside the train station in Salzburg and our adventure continues.
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