The next day it’s time to reboard the trains, and on we go to Villach in Austria. Barely half an hour from Munich, snow-capped peaks appear on the horizon. Presently, large white Alpine-style chalets, complete with wooden balconies, begin to dot the dandelion-pocked meadows. The occasional cow grazes in a garden.
The train itself is decidedly more basic this time and stiflingly hot. I stagger through jolting carriages in search of refreshment, eventually locating a uniformed man arranging the contents of a snack trolley.
“Is there a dining car?” I ask.
“No. Trolley.”
“Will you be bringing it down the train?”
“No.”
He seems displeased by my intrusion, and even more so by my attempt to purchase some coffee and poppy seed cake.
This is more than compensated for by the increasingly dramatic scenes beyond the window: vertiginous snow-dusted mountains now, with dark pines clinging to their lower contours.
After five hours we arrive in Villach, a nine-minute interchange to contend with. We hurry between platforms in a panic, boarding our train to the Slovenian town of Jesenice just in time. Thrillingly, we snag a compartment on this one. Hot and stuffy, but ours for the next 36 minutes.
Then, at Jesenice, things slightly fall apart. I had assumed we would deduce how to reach Lake Bled upon arrival, given that it’s only 10 miles away. There are bound to be taxis, I thought. Except there are none. It is Sunday and nothing at the station is open either.
After some fruitless waiting, we discover there’s in fact a train to Lesce-Bled station.