This is an honest diary of our road trip through Austria, which we drove with my girlfriend Terka in a Mercedes convertible. The plan was simple: drive the Grossglockner Hochalpenstrasse, the most famous alpine road there is, and enjoy a few days in the mountains.
I pictured the roof down, an empty mountain road and soft morning light. The reality was three degrees above zero, a schnitzel for 37 euros and a war over a parking space. And I’d still do it again in a heartbeat. What it turned into was a far better ride than the one I’d sketched out on the map.
From Prague to the Alps without an Austrian vignette
A quick tip to start, because a lot of people wrestle with it. We didn’t buy the Austrian motorway vignette. In the Czech Republic we took the D3 all the way to the border at Dolní Dvořiště, and from that point on we stuck to back roads. Yes, it adds time. But behind the wheel of a convertible on alpine lanes with no motorway, you realise you’re not missing a thing, quite the opposite. On top of that, the Grossglockner has its own separate toll, so you don’t even need a vignette for that road.
We based ourselves in Altenmarkt, at the family-run Scheffer’s Hotel, which I wrote about separately. Three nights, half board, mountains right out the door. The perfect launch pad for what came next.
Grossglockner: the day it was all about
First the numbers, so you know what you’re getting into. The toll for a car for the whole day comes to 46.50 euros. The road is open roughly from May to the end of October and runs daily from early morning to evening. Your ticket is valid all day, so you can go back and forth as much as you like.
We originally wanted to set off at dawn for the empty road and the soft light. But it was around three degrees up top in the morning, and during the day the summit climbed to maybe nine. In a convertible with the roof down that’s a proper shiver, so we pushed the start to later in the morning. And it paid off, because the weather stayed clear all day.
From the gate at Ferleiten it climbs, switchback after switchback. First stop, Edelweißspitze, the highest point a car can reach, 2,571 metres. You climb the steps up a stone tower and get a 360-degree view of the surrounding three-thousanders. Then back down to the main road, past the mirror-like Fuscher Lacke tarn, through the Hochtor tunnel, and finally the dead-end spur to Kaiser-Franz-Josefs-Höhe, where you look straight at the Pasterze glacier and the summit of the Grossglockner.
And because every road trip needs its own tale, here’s ours: lunch up at 2,369 metres. Half a chicken schnitzel spilling over the plate, fries, a broth and two sodas. 37 euros. At an altitude where everything has to arrive by cable car, I honestly didn’t mind. It tasted all the better for it.
When the plan stretches by two days
We were originally meant to head home earlier. Then it turned out our cat sitter had him until Sunday, and suddenly we had two extra days. We even considered a hop to Bratislava to record a podcast, but in the end the chilled option won. Just drive home slowly through a lovely stretch of Austria.
We shifted our base further north, to Wels, into a budget hotel on the route to Linz. Nothing charming, a functional stopover for a reasonable price. But the surroundings had plenty to offer.
Wels, pizza and an evening on the square
The first evening we did Wels. An old town with the long Stadtplatz square and the floodlit Ledererturm tower at the far end. We headed into the centre expecting a proper Austrian pub, and ended up with pizza at Pizzeria Da Tano. And it was excellent. One beer on the square after a week in the mountains just hits the spot.
Attersee and the battle for parking
We dedicated Saturday to the water, because the thermometer read 29 degrees. We made for Attersee, one of the bluest lakes in Austria, to Nussdorf. And this is where the real road-trip comedy kicked in.
First we parked in a spot that turned out to be reserved for the residents of certain flats. We moved on. The next spot was in a blue zone with a time limit and a parking disc. The official paid car park by the beach was full. In the end we landed at an EasyPark machine, zone 486500, a day ticket for six euros, and finally got into the water. Anyone who’s ever hunted for parking by a lake on a hot Saturday knows this is a discipline in its own right.
The water was worth it, though. Attersee is deep and fresh, not a bathtub by any means, but a proper wake-up. Exactly what you want after a week in the mountains.
A floating castle to finish
On the way back we stopped at Schloss Ort in Gmunden. It’s the castle that sits right in the water of Traunsee, with a wooden bridge leading out to it. We didn’t go inside, the whole magic is on the outside anyway. We walked around, photographed the bridge and the surface of the lake, and had, what else, another pizza. A road trip simply can’t resist Italian food, not even in Austria.
And then it was just the drive home. Through Linz to the border without a motorway, back onto the D3 past Dolní Dvořiště and on to Prague. Cat collected, the roof up maybe twice the whole week, my head full of switchbacks.
What I took home
The Grossglockner is a legend for good reason, and a convertible is the best car for it. But what stuck with me most were the things between the lines. A schnitzel at two thousand metres. A blue lake you can’t park at. A castle on the water and a pizza beside it. Because a road trip is never only about the destination, and here the old line truly holds: the journey is the reward!
