So yesterday we moved from the horrible Donauzentrum to our preferred viennese hotel, hotel Capri. It’s not in Mitte (the medieval city centre), so isn’t stupidly expensive, but is just across the Donalkanal in Leopoldstadt right outside the entrance to Nestroyplatz U-bahnhof (U1 line) so you can easily go from it to anywhere in Vienna.

So Elly took our bags on the U1 from Kagran U-bahnhof (just outside Donauzentrum) straight to Nestroyplatz, while I cycled Curt. Here’s a map. As you can see, the cycle path wiggles a bit to take cyclists through the UN complex. I then took the U1 back to Kagran, collected Vonny and cycled him to Capri. I tried videoing the route but most of the time I had the phone pointed too low so all you can see is tarmac. I’ll post it anyway when I can.

We had to return to Donauzentrum because we’d left some things in the safe in our hotel room. By then both of us were hungry so we had lunch at ‘Happy Noodles’ in the Donauzentrum shopping mall.

Wienfluß wanderings

I’ve always been curious about the way the Wienfluß seems to appear from under concrete, just before it meets the Donaukanal under Radetsky bridge/Urania, so I wanted to see some more of it. Here’s some of what Wikipedia says:

The Wien has its source in the western Wienerwald near Rekawinkel and its mouth at the eastern end of the city centre of Vienna, next to the Urania, where it flows into the Donaukanal (“Danube canal”), a branch of the Danube.

Within the city limits, the river bed consists almost entirely of concrete, which was installed between 1895 and 1899 in order to stop the devastating floods, sometimes accompanied by cholera, which the river had regularly caused before that time. At the same time, the Stadtbahn (“city railway”) was built, which makes use of the concrete river bed and is only separated from the river by a wall. It is now part of the Vienna U-Bahn system.

The Wien is subject to huge variations in flow. In its headwaters in the Wienerwald, the soil is underlain by sandstone. Because of this, during heavy rain the soil quickly saturates, resulting in substantial runoff. Thus, the flow of the Wien can quickly increase from a creek-like 200 litres per second to 450,000 litres per second in the heaviest rains or during the spring snowmelt in the Wienerwald, a ratio of over 2000.

Along the course of the river, the Naschmarkt and the Theater an der Wien can be found. Much of the river is covered over in the city, particularly in front of Schönbrunn palace, in the Meidling and Naschmarkt neighbourhoods and around Karlsplatz near the city centre.

For safety reasons, cycling or walking in the concrete bed of the Wienfluss is officially prohibited. A continually controversial topic is whether to build cycle paths and footpaths next to the water. Proponents believe the water flow can be safely regulated, while opponents do not believe this is possible. In 2005, a short segment was opened to the public, near Hütteldorf railway station. It features an audible and visual alarm system to warn users to leave the path if flooding is imminent. Extensions to this path have been proposed, but continue to receive much opposition. The path is open from March to October.

So we took the U-bahn from Nestroyplatz to Schwedenplatz. Then we walked

• from Schwedenplatz to the mouth of the Wienfluß
• then along the Wienfluß through Stadtpark,

then had a drinks stop where I had a Greiskirchner dunkel bier. Then we walked on

• Along Wienerstraße into Karlsplatz
• Karlsgasse
• Paniglgasse
• Wiedner Hauptstraße
• Schleifmühlgasse
• Along the Naschmarkt (being near intoxicated by the colours and smells of spices and clothes!)
• Along the Linke (left [bank]), following the resurfaced Wienfluß and Stadtbahn
• Then along the Gürtel (outer ring road and red-light district) to Loving Hut vegan restaurant for vegan wiener schnitzel with potato salad (this time made with something like mayo but vegan) and green salad, followed by chocolate cake (E) or Eiskaffee (B). I can’t recommend this place highly enough, to vegans and non-vegans alike. You get to sit in a little courtyard under shady, pleasant trees and eat enjoyable food in a peaceful place. Elly’s reports that the chocolate cake is very good, not just among vegan stuff but comparable to good non-vegan cake. So what can you lose by trying it?

Neither of us fancied walking back so we took the U-bahn back to Nestroyplatz and sleep!

Today’s map is again in two bits, this time because cyclemeter auto-finished recording while we were stopped for lunch. Perhaps it  only allows quick toilet-stops. Anywhere, here are the bits:

• Traismauer to Korneuberg (lunch-stop)
• Korneuberg to Vienna

So we did it! 231 miles in 6 days. OK, not much distance by some standards (Alasdair M springs to mind) and definitely no Scottish-style hills and acne-textured road surfaces but lots of intense sun and a fair amount of headwind (especially today) so I think we can feel reasonably proud. I would advise anyone doing this sort of thing to take their own saddle and a good supply of vaseline (also called Vaseline‘ in German).

So what happened today?

• It was quite hard to get moving and today’s breakfast lived up to last night’s dinner: lovely bread, especially thin slices of a walnut-containing rye bread; pickled green pepper; pieces of yam in a semi-sweet yellow sauce. All good miles-fuel!
• We had decided to do as many miles as we could before stopping: our hope was to reach Greifenstein, about 30 miles into the journey before our first drinks stop. However, we were cooking by the time we reached Tulln, after only 20 miles. I think it was here that I freaked out a waitress by ordering a beer and a coffee, but it might have been at our lunch-stop. I do recall her morning-mood and her child’s cute wee dog, so small it could have been a mutant rat on a leash.
• We crossed the Danube at Greifenstein power station, so we could come into Vienna via the Donau Insel, the stopped for lunch at the first place we saw along the route in Korneuberg. This turned out to be quite a local pub, serving the nearby town and marina: smoking allowed inside, with political pub-banter between the patrons (as far as I could tell, of course) and with the toilet walls decorated with miniature Jaegermeister rum bottles. Whoever drank all those is either dead, still drunk, a hero or all three at once. The landlady accidentally knocked Elly’s drink over, giving my legs a welcome cold shower. She asked where I was from, my answer being ‘Schottland’. (It’s true that Scotland is where I came from to get to Austria: I don’t claim to be Scottish, of course!) She then asked how I spoke German so well. (I dont! I can get by with words, ZERO grammar and some gesticulation! Elly has a Higher in German), so I thanked my Viennese mother, German-speaking (but Australian) dad and a year of lessons when I was 13. She told us she too was a foreigner, having come to Austria 14 years ago from the Ukraine for love. She told us that she’d found learning to speak Czech hard, something to do with the variants on ‘ch’ sounds. I didn’t understand how Czechoslovakia/Czech republic fitted into her story: it’s been a number of years since Austria and Czech-whatever were part of the same country!
• Anyway, we pushed on through intense heat and against a severe headwind, feeling as though we had many more miles to go. However, seeing the Kahlenberg (a hill that marks the north end of Vienna, especially its wine-producing area) was reassuring. Pretty soon, we were at the Donauinsel, an island separating two parallel streams of the Danube’s modern course. It seems to be the Viennese equivalent of a mixture of Edinburgh’s Portobello and Joppa with St Andrews’ west sands, but with better cycle paths and more bridges. So we meandered along this to Reichsbruck and then fumbled our way vaguely along Wagramerstrasse to our hotel. By the way, this is in 22 district. Don’t go unless you have a fetish for 1970s concrete, shopping malls or the UN.
• We met Gillian and Victoria, two Glasgow-based women who have been on the same tour as us, although not always in the same hotels, again here. It’s their first time in Vienna, so I’m rather hoping they like it. (I feel a bit protective of my ‘home towns’!)
• After a couple of hours of down-time, we ventured into Mitte (central Vienna, to find food. We met up with V&G in Stephansplatz and then threaded ourselves back through Vienna’s underground system to Nestroyplatz and Cafe Dreivierteltact (3/4 time) for schnitzels, more veg and Kartoffel-salat and drinks. I had my second coffee of the day -and year to wash down the Wieselberger beer. (So I like the name. It also reminds me of seeing a baby weasel barking at a car this morning in Traismauer.)
• So now we’re back in the concrete box, it’s 11:30 at night, warm and still and I’m quietly pleased with our trip here. We have a few more days in Vienna: stay tuned for more Kartoffelsalat but much less vaseline!

I’m finding it hard to believe that I’ve got up, mostly uncomplainingly, at 7:30 five mornings in a row, had a hurried (albeit delightful) breakfast and then cycled 35 miles on holiday. And I’m about to do 45 miles tomorrow! However, that will take us to my favourite European city, namely Vienna. I might even be persuaded to drink coffee,

Anyway, here’s today’s map and wibblings:

• Bought lunch ingredients at a Spar near our hotel
• Bought stamps at a stationers even nearer our hotel
• Set off through Melk and then along the south bank, intending to cross to the north bank by the first bridge. However, we were firmly told by an older lady we met at the bridge to stay on this bank because it would be nicer. I’m grateful to this Radlerinhexe because our route did go through some very pretty countryside. Pictures, as ever, to be posted later!
• Didn’t do 2 extra km of crazy slopes up to the ruins of Schloss Aggstein.
• Visited a simple country church, supposedly dedicated to cyclists, in Hofarnsdorf.
• Impressed (or maybe depressed) a waitress by my ordering tea at a drinks-stop. This was a sign that I was British, apparently. We also had a conversation with a Czech couple, who I guess are in their 60s and are doing the same route as us before visiting family in Vienna
• Took several diversions due to road or farmwork. This explains the jaggedness (looking for the correct route) and breaks (where I paused recording while looking for signs but then forgot to restart recording when we got moving) in some parts of the route-map.
• Ate lunch at Rossatzbach, in a field overlooking a small beach. People were swimming in the Danube: I rather wish Id done so too.
• Crrossed the Danube on a tiny bike and passenger ferry to Dürnstein. This is apparently where Richard 1 of England was held for ransome. However it’s also where we had vouchers for free tastes of the local apricot schnapps. Well worthwhile!
• Cycled on through more prettiness and baked air to the outskirts of Krems, before crossing the Danube again and pushing on to Traismauer and tonight’s hotel, Zur Weintraube.
• Despite this being a supposedly short day, we both felt the need to collapse and take in more liquids before doing anything else.
• This hotel prides itself on good local food: rightly so if Elly’s Verhackert-Törtchen (pancakes filled with minced pork and covered in creme freche and local cheese) is anything to go by. My salad was topped with fried potato noodles. (Apparently this is an Austrian thing but I don’t recall having it before.)
• Went for a walk through Traismauer, stopping for more drinks (beer and hot chocolate with rum and whipped cream) at a local cafe. It feels civilised to drink a small, tall glass (krugerl) of refreshing lager outside in a pleasing breeze that complements an otherwise very warm evening: far better than down in some dingy hole downing pints of fizzy piss.
• Back to Zur Weintraube to write this and sleep in preparation for tomorrow’s 45 miles!

There’s two parts to today’s cyclemeter map:

1. Down the hill from the hotel to Grein itself
2. Along the South bank from Grein to Melk. This map isn’t quite complete and the overall time is dead wrong because jPhone 4’s battery ran out just before we reached Melk.

I’m writing this in the courtyard of tonight’s hotel because, despite it being nearly 10pm, indoors is stickily warm. This might be to do with the washed cycle clothing hanging in our room and humidifing the atmosphere.
What do I remember of today?

• Stopping for drink at ‘Andy’s Drive-in’
• A cycle museum at Ybbs. This was the size of museum you might want to see while travelling: cutely small and informative, with a penny-farthing style bike to try. There’s a comical video of me trying to pedal it.
• Stopping for a picnic lunch opposite Gottsdorf, a typically pretty village
• Visiting the Oskar Kokoschka museum in his birthplace in Pöchlarn. He seems to have been all about his affair with Alma Mahler. Amor fati rings bells from my early escapades: I wish I’d been able to draw out some of these, rather than let them fester. We were guided by a young woman: it was the first time she’d given the tour in English. She was  nervous about her English (far, far better than my German) but with a few giggles on both sides, and some pre-existing knowledge of greek and roman mythology, we got on fine. It turned out our guide was a school student, just doing this for a summer job. I’d thought she was about 20. Yet again, one shouldn’t assume!
• Reaching Melk, then trying to navigate to our hotel. (Postcode areas in Austria are large because they only use 4 digits, unlike the UK’s 6- or 7- alphanumerics.) By now, jPhone 4’s battery had run out and navigating in a completely unknown town by hand-held jPhone 3GS wasn’t much fun.
• Walking through Melk’s high street looking for vegan food. The jackpot was an Austrian form of pasta cooked with cabbage, followed by a plate of salad including the ever-wonderful Austrian potato salad. Here’s some potentially amusing emails:

Bruce: Pasta with cabbage for tea. Elly will suffocate from my fumes!
Dad: Cabbage should not be eaten boiled. It should be shredded & rinsed with cold water then, while still wet, gently softened in a fairly hot saucepan, adding a little oil & spicing with caraway seeds as in Mum’s Austrian method. The other acceptable way to eat cabbage is to have it as Sauerkraut. Neither produces antisocial aromas.Bruce: Useful phrases for travelling: Ich furze wie ich ein totes Schwein auf meinen Hintern habe.
Dad: I imagine that eating cabbage could have antisocial consequences. I translate your sentence as ‘I fart as if I had a dead pig on my back.‘ Did you mean up your backside? That would be ‘Ich furze als ob ich eine totes Schwein in meinen Arschloch hatte.‘ Tiny pig – humungous Arschloch! Lay off the cabbage unless you have it as Sauerkraut.

I’m saddened to report that there have been no posterior reports. Perhaps it’s the vaseline. Whatever, it’s now nearly 11pm so despite the continued heat in the room (the hotel, in common with most of Austria, shuts at 10 so I was gently hinted out of the courtyard) I should sleep. Goodnight!

Today felt rather long and tiring. I know that I slept for two hours straight after tea and that some unmentionables are quietly glowing. Today’s map might explain why.

We started by shopping in a nearby Backerei and DM (think of UK Boots amalgamated with Holand and Barrett) for lunch items, retrieved our bikes from the hotel’s underground garage and sett off along the north bank. I don’t remember much about this (photos will remind me) apart from the joy of seeing our first crossing-point, a hydro power station at Abwinden.

Our route then meandered us through farmland, back to the riverbank, then slightly inland to Enns. This is apparently Austria’s oldest city, having been giving a charter by some king or other. Quite why a place needs a charter to be a city is beyond me: I’d make the distinction based on relative or absolute size and/or population density or possessing certain characteristics or governmental functions. Anyway, leaving behind my ignorance, Enns’ history includes being an important roman settlement, quia nomine erat Lauriacum.

There’s an extensive museum: we’ll worth a look, especially if you can read German better than I can. The city also has a more recent tower (built 1565-1568) which ‘served as a clock tower and was a distinctive symbol of the city’s pride’. There was a magnificent ‘Boris and Boris’ (doubled-headed eagle) mural on it: photos to be posted later. (DocM, I hope you don’t mind me extending the name from the Romanovs to the Hapbergs. Aarrgghh! I’ve just thought of a double-headed Boris Johnson. Shudder!

We thought we’d escaped today’s promised rain because it had poured down while we were in the museum but no, we got severely wet while negotiating our way back to the cycle route and out of Enns.

The route then took us through some industrial areas before guiding us through more rurality away from the river on to Wallsee. We had a very quick lunch-stop there because we didn’t want to miss the 5pm pick-up. (Tonight’s hotel is 5 km from Grein up some very steep slopes so the tour company has arranged for the hotel to transport bods and bikes. I’m slightly nervous about cycling back down to Grein.) We then pushed on through more rurality along the south bank before crossing a fairly busy bridge and getting to Grein itself.

The hotel transport seemed full, so for a moment I thought I’d be perched on the bike-trailer going up through the hills. Bit of a shame that there were enough seats after all. Anyway, tonight’s dinner was a treat for carb-lovers: a salad-bar including Austrian potato-salad (nothing like the mush that passes for PS in the UK), then a huge platter of roasted and boiled potatoes and other vegetables, washed down with earl grey tea and and a light local beer. Then two hours of post-prandial torpor to recover from 45 miles of saddle-interaction. I may need to vaseline my posterior before setting off tomorrow.

First, here’s today’s cyclemeter map. I needed to look back at it to remind myself what we’d done today:

• Stopping in St Agatha to photograph the Gemeindezentrum.
• An exhilarating downhill ride from St Agatha to Schlögen. Somehow it seemed longer and steeper going down.
• Then pushing on from Schlögen to Aschach. Of course I just had to play this (lyrics here) while having drinks at Kafe Roma Eis.
• I’d have liked to see around a museum about traditional Danube barges but it wasn’t open. Here’s its website.
• Crossing the bridge to the north bank was, ahem, interesting: we ended up on the opposite side from the pedestrian/cycle path, sheltering from traffic thundering past. Anyway, once we got across the bridge, the route took us away from the river and through quiet rurality. All of the farming I’ve seen so far has been arable, so where do the huge amounts of meatvAustrians eat come from?
• The route also took us through Feldkirchen an der Donau, the capital of the local area. I’m only noticing this because of my current research.
• Back at the Donau, the path ran along the top of heightened banks. I guess the river levels might be raised due to the  number of hydro power-stations along the river. There were lots of canoeists gently paddling downstream: most seem to be carrying wheels for when they would need to move their canoes on land.
• It’s a bit confusing at the approach to Ottensheim: the path splits, the correct branch goes inland around a backwater that was set up for skulling and canoe races.
• We stopped in Ottensheim so that Elly could buy a sandwich. (I scoffed more of yesterday’s rye bread.) We saw other cyclists taking the ferry across the Donau to Ufa. We wanted to stay on the north bank because we had read that the south bank route was along a busy road.
• Our route was along was on a dual-use path at the side of a busy road and railway: an introduction to Linz’s business (a great change from the rurality we’d been through so far). This final bit seemed quite hard, against wind and certain aches.
• Once we got to Linz, it was fairly easy to find our hotel and collapse for a while. We then went for a wonder through Linz’s Altstadt. Elly’s eye was suffering so we called into an Apotheke for some drops. These were forthcoming but we were firmly told that Elly should see a doctor if the condition carried on for more than a day.
• We went back to the hotel for some drinks (here’s a relevant email: I’ve just drunk wine! Some people at the table next to us we’re drinking something the colour of Irn Bru. So I had to try one. It turned out to be an Aperol Spritzer: white wine, soda and bitters with ice. It’s the only form of wine I’ve ever had which wasn’t a waste of grapes! PS accents here (Linz) are very far from Hochdeutsch: fast but slurred and elided. ‘Nar’ instead of ‘nein,, zb) and for Elly to rest her eye, then bimbled into Linz’s ‘Oberösterreich Cultural Quarter’ to find a veganoid restaurant called Gelbes Krokodil. Tofu curry for me and ricotta/spinach-filled tortellini in gorgonzola sauce for Elly. I had a chink left so tried to order some bread and hummus but ended up with a full plate of dolmades. So much for losing weight!
• Now we’re back at the hotel, gently steaming and listening to traffic going by…

I know my prose is turgid. Here’s looking forward to adding photos!

So just after posting this, I retreated to our room and an hour of dozing. We went to dinner on the hotel terrace where we’d had drinks. Here’s some of my thoughts thereon: Just had another food-gasm: potato dumplings (half-moon shape) filled with herbs on a vinaigrette of herbs, with lovely salad. Elly had turkey schnitzel with boiled potatoes (I helped her with those) and again salad. My vinaigrette was so good I had to ask for some bread to finish it. The bread that came was that lovely rye bread with carraway seeds.

As we were starting to eat, the thunder and lightening evolved into a real rainstorm, so we abandoned the terrace for the dining room, juggling plates and causing merriment. Back in the room: the clothes Elly had washed and set to dry on the balcony had become rain-soaked. Mice & men! Despite the rain’s temporary cooling effect, it’s still somewhat muggy. Oh well: as the evening progresses it will cool. Hmm: how to post photos when they exist only on jPhone? I guess I could tweet them and then add links….

food

arriving St Agatha

part of my lunch

passing through a heavily guarded border

a notice road at Jochenstein

There are more pix but that’s all for now. The rest will go on Digital Evidence when we get back.

And so the bollocks starts with buses to the terminal running late due to ‘an incident at the terminal’.

09:16
boarding our 09:15 flights might begin soon…

Posting this from hotel Revita, St Agatha, Austria:

Bus to Westbahnhof via Meiling bahnhof.

18:00
On the bus to Edinburgh airport.  Elly slightly nervous, Bruce empty in head and tum.

More updates as and when…

18:57
Bollocks! Our 19:40 flight to Heathrow is delayed until 23:00 because the plane is stuck in Manchester. Our flight from Heathrow to Vienna is at  09:15 tomorrow so we’re not going to get much sleep. A good start for a cycling holiday.

Plane took off about 22:50, so we landed in Heathrow about 23:50. Baggage collection was relatively painless but then we found buses to our hotel (terminal 5 Hilton) had finished for the night. The taxi queue moved very slowly: there seemed to be a lot of haggling going on for each set of passengers. We found out why when told our hotel was out of the taxi drivers’ area: they wanted to charge £35. In the end we accepted this but had I been on my own I’d have walked rather than pay £6 per mile!

It’s now 01:38 and we have to get up at 06:15. Bollocks on a shitty stick.

For shaggy-dog-story reasons, I ended up sheltering from pissing rain for over an hour. My mood was lightened a lot by receiving a card from the children on the cycling skills course.