Our last day of crazy whirlwind train tours! 

We woke up early in Vienna as our train was scheduled to depart at 7:30. We opted for nice business class seats, and quickly were situated and on our way. The Austrian country side flying by, we finished some chocolate croissants and espresso. 

A few hours into the trip we cut through Germany before turning back south into the Austrian alps. Which then became mile after mile of draw dropping beauty. Beautiful chalets and farms, sweeping vistas framed by mountain ranges. It was hard to stop taking photos, meanwhile we are surround by more native travelers who are working on laptops and planning meetings while this all rushes by. 

Distracting from this are some delays caused by track works. We were averaging 15-20 minutes behind schedule, and we only had 14 minutes to make our transfer in Zurich. By the time we actually arrived, we were a hair over 30 minute late. Our train was long gone. We were directed to a customer service desk, grabbed our ticket to wait in line, and braced for the worst. 
We started to imagine fighting with some surly agent in a foreign language after an hour wait. Biased by our U.S. Expectations around travel, we were pleasantly surprised to be fast tracked to the next available desk, where a friendly attendant had new tickets sorted on the next train that leaves with a stop in Basel, all in less than 5 minutes. At no cost, which when asked about garnered “Of course no cost, it is our mistake not yours, enjoy your trip”. Revolutionary. 

So we stowed our bags and meandered along the river, snapping what few touristy photos we could at our surprise stop over in Zurich. 45 minutes later we hopped on a very full train to Basel, where we transferred to our TGV to Paris. Unfortunately our delay caused the sun to set during this leg, preventing good vistas of the countryside at 200mph. When heading to Paris, it seemed inappropriate to complain however. 

We lugged our bags through Gare de Lyon to the small hotel we had booked for one night, just to be close to the train station before getting to our Airbnb the next day. And what a great idea that turned out to be. We were exhausted. Thrilled to be in Paris, we gave in to sleep.