Lowcost trip to Austria

About our weekend adventure in Austria and why hitchhiking in winter sucks. 

Okay, it was November. Not really winter but in the Austrian Alps, it felt like winter winter. We went from Prague to Linz on a Friday morning. We were sleeping via Couchsurfing in Linz and the plan was easy. Hitchhike to Hallstatt on Friday, to the Gollinger waterfall on Saturday and explore Linz on Sunday. Nice plan right? No.

We didn't realize it was November and that it gets dark around five or six o'clock.
We also didn't really realize how much colder it is in the Austrian Alps, I didn't even have a warm hat. Great job.
And also we didn't think about the fact, that exploring an Austrian town on a Sunday is pretty stupid because the only place where you can hide from the cold is McDonald's. Every other shops, cafés and restaurants were closed.

Over-planning kills magic, but a bit of planning can be helpful sometimes.

It's just a one and a half hour ride from Linz to Hallstatt, no problem for one day, right? Yeah, we also thought so but... When we got out of Linz there were almost no cars on the road. To most of the cars we got by asking the people on gas stations or parking lots.

We didn't manage to get to Hallstatt on the first day, fortunately, Austria is an extraordinarily beautiful country and it was all beautiful on our way to Gmunden, where we managed to go. The weather was awful, extremely cold, windy and rainy, but hey bad weather can't stop us! At least we got back to Linz in the evening to meet our Couchsurfing host Lucas, we were so happy about the warm bed.

Day two. "Today we manage to go to Hallstatt for sure, right?"
We tried, but nobody was going there. No wonder in that awful weather conditions. However, we made it to Trankirchen which is really a beautiful breathtaking town. I don't think I'd ever get there without this hitchhike fail, so no reason to be sad about Hallstatt!
It took us like two freezy hours to get out of this beautiful end of the world, but it was worth it!

On Sunday rainy Linz was waiting for us, super rainy. It didn't stop raining the whole day. Amazing. Linz is small, very small and when there are no restaurants, cafés or shops where you can go it becomes even smaller. We went to the castle to see the city from above and then we were just going through the streets to find somewhere where we can hide from the rain and cold wind. And so we ended up in McDonald's- thank god for the veggie burgers in Austria. We were googling for something we could do in Linz on a Sunday, either we are bad at using the internet or maybe Linz is just the most boring place on Earth.