Nächste halt, Mörkweg

I decided to walk into town today, since it is so warm, and it is a lazy sunday, and since my host family served me a huge lunch of potatoes and meat in a delicious sauce with vegetables soaked in butter and a honey almond pastry for desert and if I didn't start walking off some of those calories I would have most likely fallen asleep.

I bought a Monatskarte, or monthly bus pass for the first month here in Salzburg. It has been amazing, since I can ride any bus unlimited for the whole month. Bus tickets here are sold in the Tabbak Traffik tobacco stores and stands. I was pretty appalled that school children are basically forced to patronize tabacco stores if they want to ride the bus for less that €2.10 per ride. The bus ticket system is very strange. You buy the ticket ahead of time (unless you want to pay full price in cash) and then you validate it with a stamp when you get on the bus. The card is then valid from the time you stamp it until that same time whenever it is set to expire (a day, week, month or year). When you get on the bus, you don't have to scan or show your ticket to anybody, you just ride. Undercover ticket agents do random searches of people to make sure nobody is stealing. The fine for riding without a ticket is steep--Somewhere around €60. But I have been riding the bus for almost a month and I have never been stopped.

The busses are almost always on time. There are posted schedules with the time table in front of each stop and also in a book that you can buy. It is a little chart and on one side is the hour, and then it lists the minuets that the bus will come at. For example:

14: 05 15 25 35 46 58

The only problem is that I have to remember to look at the 24 hour time--Once I looked at the schedule for 9:00 instead of 21:00 and ended up waiting for an extra half hour. The same thing happens if you look at the Mon-Fri schedule instead of Sat or Sun. The Sunday bus only comes twice an hour. I end up waiting like and idiot in front of the bus stop a lot. I somehow am not good at timing things...and end up coming at 6:15 instead of 6:12 and then having to wait another 15 minutes. It doesn't help that the schedule book that my Guest family has is the 2010 and not 2011. It is slightly off.