Color that country in

When my wife and I got engaged I gave her a choice: either get an engagement ring or take a 3 week trip to Europe. The smart women choose Europe.

As part of the tour we stayed a few days in Zurich (each day we went to some other place in Bavaria or Switzerland). When we left Zurich our next stop was Munich which is fairly close as Eurail goes. So instead of going directly to Zurich I decided she should see the medieval part of Salzburg. As expected the Swiss trains were efficient and the station times were always correct down to the minute. That all changed the second we hit Austria. Just inside Austria the train stopped and we sat there for 4 hours. Apparently somewhere along the track someone had committed suicide by train. I could never get the full story as the Austrian I was talking to was so excited I could barely understand his German (at least that’s my story and I am sticking with it).

Anyway, it was too late to go to Salzburg, so we got off the train in Innsbruck to find a train to Munich. I noted that there was a train, the Dalmatian Express, going north due in about an hour. We waited the hour, no train. We waited another hour, still no train. Finally after three hours a train arrived, the Dalmatian Express. So we hopped on and went to a seat. My wife promptly went to sleep and I gazed out the window (Austria is really a gorgeous country). After awhile I noticed we were climbing up a very pretty pass. Half way up I saw a sign the said “Brenner”. The name was familiar, but I couldn’t figure out why. My geography is good, but not so good as to recognize small name places in Austria unless something important happened there.

Then it hit me, Brenner Pass is where Erwin Rommel learned the art of war in World War I. Of course that means we are on the border between Austria and Italy.............. Opps. I wake my wife up and tell her that we are in the wrong country. The train came to a stop in Brenario, we flash our passports to get off one train, flash our Eurail pass to get on the next and off we go back to Innsbruck. So my wife has officially been to Italy. We eventually made it to Munich late that night (after spending yet another couple hours in the Innsbruck station).

By the way, if I had been asleep we could have found ourselves in Tito's Yogoslavia without a visa and probably in deep trouble.