After a night at the Brown Bear Gasthaus in Griefendorf, which by the way was only 20m from the railway, we had an early start for Vienna (some 20km down river). You may well ask why did we stay at another hotel on the railway lines. Well after 100+km we had had it. In mentioning the issue to the host he said not to worry as the trains stopped at 10pm. Well the last train was past 10.30 which wasn't so bad but what he didn't mention (and I failed to ask) was that they started again at 4am and came regularly every 15mins. Fortunately Lia slept through but I was awake for several hours and nearly slept past breakfast time. The disruptive noise was compensated by a fabulous view and good double glazed windows and doors which kept most of the sound out. Enough of that.
An hour and a half later we were in Vienna quick felt a bit like coming home after having spent a week there a month ago. We didn't want to spend much time there so went straight to the Kunst Museum which had a great garden restaurant surrounded by Hundartwasser's art works.
Hunndartwasser's incinerator in Vienna
We were surprised by quiet it was there compared to the rest on Vienna- too busy for us!
The trip out of the city was exceptionally quick riding through beautiful parklands initially but later through an oil refinery. We then started on a long straight section (sometimes 6+ km straight) though a national park.
At lunch we started thinking how we were going to get back to Holland and it may not be as easy as first thought - oh well, I'm sure we will figure it out. We ended up in the border town of Hainburg which has one of the best preserved medieval walls. Unfortunately that didn't help the residents in 1683 when the Turks killed some 8000 people after breaking through poorly the then maintained walls. Many of the deaths were when people were trampled as they rushed towards these gates.
One particular feature which caught my eye was the pillory in which miscreants were restrained as punishment - along with being pelted rotten tomatoes I imagine. Tomorrow we ride to Bratislava, the capital of Slovakia. Best get a good night sleep - no trains at least to wake me. 77Kms today
No comments:
Post a Comment