Villach, Austria and Zagreb, Croatia – Aug 2025

We traveled from Venice, Italy to Split, Croatia via two trains and a bus over the course of three days. The first train was from Venice to Villach (Austria) aboard OBB Railjet, which took about three and half hours. We debarked the train in Villach and found lockers to store our luggage for a few hours until our connecting train arrived. We strolled around Villach, having lunch and admiring this very pretty and clean town. Our connecting train was also on OBB Railjet (which is Austrian) but it was nowhere near as nice as the first train. Four hours later, at about 9pm we arrived in Zagreb, the capital of Croatia, where we stayed for two nights. On the morning of September 1st, we boarded a bus for about six and a half hours to get to Split, on the coast of the Adriatic Sea, and our home for the next half month. We will cover Split in future blog posts.

Not long after the train crossed the Italian border into Austria, we saw this church from our window. This train was modern, air conditioned, and had both a service car and nice bathrooms.
Downtown Villach, Austria. A town of about 65,000 people. It was nice to have about three and half hours to walk around and stretch our legs before our next train to Zagreb. The train station was an easy half mile walk from the center of town.
Saint Jakob’s Church (Catholic) in Villach. It was a short walk from the train station and had a craft show going on around the outside of it that day. On the other side of the square that day was a temporary beach volleyball court of all things..
The interior of Saint Jakob’s Church in Villach, Austria.
Some window shopping in Villach, Austria. The men’s shorts you see in the middle appeared to be made of leather.
Umbrellas as inside and outside decoration can be found all over the world. This one is a side street in Villach, Austria.
This is our little 6-seat cabin on the OBB Railjet train from Villach to Zagreb. It was a bit of a rough ride and did not have a service car. The washrooms were in bad shape and there was no potable water. There was also no air conditioning, but we did have control of the windows on both sides of the car to gain some airflow, which was needed.
Luggage storage was up high – good thing Adam is tall and strong. The seats were pretty wide but lumpy. Fortunately the train was not crowded and we had the whole 6-seat cabin to ourselves for all but one short section of the trip (a young adult backpacker from Barcelona sat with us). When we arrived in Zagreb it was pouring rain and we had a mad dash with luggage for about a quarter mile to our hotel. You can’t win em all.
Saint Mark’s Church in Zagreb and its iconic colored tiles roof. It was closed for extensive restoration work after being damaged by a major earthquake in March 2020. The church was fully restored and reopened to worshippers and visitors in late 2023. While the building is no longer closed due to damage, access to St. Mark’s Square, where the church is located, has been restricted at various times due to security concerns following an attack on a government building immediately next to the church in October 2020. The square was closed on the day we were there so we could not get any closer than this picture.
The main public square in Zagreb. Like every other European city and village we have been to there is a highly walkable downtown area without cars (or very few cars).
Zagreb has an excellent public tram system that cost us about $5 per person for a day pass, which gave us on and off privileges all day. The trams are very clean, well lit, and frequent.
Susan loves to take pictures of old world doors, this one in Old Town Zagreb.
More beautiful architecture in Zagreb.
In old town Zagreb this is Saint Catherine’s Church, not far from Saint Mark’s Church.
Zagreb, and Croatia in general, has a fairly robust craft beer industry. We stopped for a beer at a craft brew pub just behind Adam in this picture – in old Zagreb.
From Zagreb to Split we took a bus, which in this case was a double decker. There is a train but it is unreliable and takes several hours longer. The bathroom on this bus was unfortunately out-of-order, which I have read is very common. Due to an extra hour delay from traffic getting out of the Zagreb area, we ended being on this bus for for three and a half hours before we made our first stop – and bathroom break. The seats are also tight and the overhead storage space was tiny – so our backbacks had to be at our feet. It was not a comfortable trip. Nonetheless, we made it to Split in one piece and only one hour late. Next Blog post will be for Split, Croatia.

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