Natalia Pazicka
Natália Pažická is the founder of the #everyindividualmatters initiative. As an influencer, she promotes ethical fashion and climate activism and shares travel diaries of her train journeys and regional explorations of Norway, Sweden, and Slovakia.
This time, Natália is travelling next door to Austria. She’ll be taking the train to Salzburg, then back up for an exploration of Vienna. Along the way, she’ll showcase what it’s like exploring the country by rail and what that experience might look like in the future with the help of the new High-speed rail plan!
Natália is on her way to her first stop: Vienna. It’s so close to Bratislava that she’s made this journey by train many times!
It takes an hour to ride from Bratislava to Vienna today but once a planned double-track expansion of the Parndorf-Kittsee section is completed, this journey will be significantly faster.
If you’re an 18 year old resident of the EU or of countries associated with Erasmus+, you can apply to do your own version of Natália’s train journey for free through #DiscoverEU.
Natália passed through Vienna’s new train station, which integrates the city’s metro and rail services in one location. Opened in 2015, it’s Austria’s busiest station, welcoming over 275,000 passengers every day!
After catching some ‘stunning’ performance art at the city’s Albertina Modern museum, she barrels on to Salzburg. Along the way, Natália will pass through two new tunnels: the Lainzer Tunnel and the Wienerwald Tunnel. These were built so that trains could maintain speeds of up to 230 km/h, which was not possible on the former route.
After just over four hours of train travel from Vienna, Natália could stretch her legs and admire the ‘beautiful’ historic centre of Salzburg, catching the Christmas markets along the way.
In the coming decades, Austrian and EU funding will upgrade sections of the Vienna-Salzburg journey and increase train speeds. The train ride today is already a scenic experience: riders can enjoy the mountain vistas as they pass through the Alps.
