In a few days, I will be travelling, alone.

The last time travelled alone was before I got married. That’s like, more than 12 years ago! Sure I’ve travelled alone without the husband or any of my children when I participated in a bloggers trip to Thailand in 2011 and to Turkey in 2013 but I was in a group that time. I was not totally, alone-alone.

This time I will be leaving on a jet plane, alone-alone. Roaming in Vienna and Salzburg alone.

Why am I doing this?

Because there’s a long-ish weekend coming up and while window surfing for airfares (like I always do when there’s a longish weekend, you know, daydreaming and all), I found something I can pay for. Also, I saw this in the internet staring at my face while I was thinking of the crazy possibility to just fly out.

I am going to do it because I want to do it! Because I know in my heart I really want to do this. You know those moments when you start to think about something and then you cannot stop thinking about it that your heart shouts, “Just do it!” in this case, it’s a silent shout that says “Just go!”

The long-ish weekend is from the 23rd to 26th September for Eid Al Adha. The plane ticket fares I found was fairly reasonable via Emirates Airlines (US$633 round trip) which flies from Dubai direct to Vienna (in 5 hours and 45 minutes).

I will be spending a short time in Vienna. Short as in probably 24 hours, God help me.

Photo credit

And then to Salzburg which is a couple of hours away from Vienna. Cue the songs from The Sound of Music.

…and then off to Innsbruck, which is a couple of hours away from Salzburg to visit my long time friend and her family who lives in that very charming part of the world!

Excited and terrified at the same time, have you felt like that?

It’s not like this is my first time to travel alone. I did it before. What’s the difference between the past and now? For one, I did not have my beautiful children yet who by the way are wonderful travel companions. It took me a while to make my final decision because I will be missing them so much but the husband had been very supportive because he knows about my crazy dream of doing a railway trip around Europe since the day we met. I am not going around all of Europe this time, only within Austria but I’ll take it.

Oh and huge thanks to my baby sister who helped me make this crazy dream of mine possible. I get the reward from washing her dirty cloth diapers during my teen years. Cough, cough.

I’ll be (of course) blogging about my trip and you can find updates while I’m on the road on Twitter, Instagram.

I may also add that this is an ultimate budget trip, like the poorest trip I’ve ever been! I might be the only person going to Europe and coming back lighter! The purpose here is to fill the eyes and my camera memory cards, not my tummy!