Well wasn't Vienna a nice surprise!
We arrived aweek ago today and thought we may hang around for a day or two... then the sun came out. Travelling over... seats outside... pass the sun cream.... and relax!
Every night we would check the weather and decide if it was a good day to go in to Vienna (we were actually in Klostenneuborg, about 12km outside), but it was always just too sunny and we'd decided just to sit at the campsite.
This gave Kristina a chance to get her bikini on and Chris for the first time to get his speedos on. I'm sure you want to see the pics!
Finally biting the bullet, we got the train and then subway into Vienna. We visited the Holocaust Memorial then St Stephen's square and Church. After which we toyed with the idea of a bus tour, but decided against it. We walked down to a much more impressive church called Jesuitenkirche, with great spiraling columns of marble.
By now we were feeling a bit hungry and stopped in a coffee shop, very local, very authentic, very German spoken. We couldn't understand a word of the menu and for some reason, we've not bought a phrase book since Italy. So we ordered cheese on toast... loved by everybody, everywhere.
Now we're off to the MAK museum, which is a museum for Applied and Contempary Arts. We were quite disappointed with it as it was more 'recent' art than modren art. For example, there was a piece of Japanese cloth from the late 20th century.... oooohhhh. Still, we gave it it's due and walked around. Well it was free!
We headed for a small cafe, recommended by our travel book, that took us through the park. Where we stumbled across a huge fair of local produce. It was Great! Wine sellers, private beer makers, cheese producers, etc, etc. There were stalls selling local hot snacks, so we tried the sausage (can't remember what kind) with grated horseradish (or "Devil's Cabbage" as Kristina calls it), then Goulash and finally black-pudding and potatoes... lovely.
Everyone was just sitting around eating, perusing stalls and drinking wine/beer. We got our food (and some wine) and lay in the park for a few hours listening to the live jazz band. We kept asking each other what we should go see... but couldn't drag ourselves away.
On our last day we got the bikes out again and cycled into Vienna and back, about 25km round trip in 30 degree sun. Collapsing (rather sweaty) into the van we realised the we had no food and the shops were shut, Great!, the ideal excuse to go to the campsite resturant. Our waitress had no English so we struggled to order. Chris went for some thing the waitress decribed as "mish-mash", and as Kristina still could decide she was taken in to the kitchen to see what everything was. It was pretty much all sausage. Who need language when we can still point and smile!
We had agreed that this would be our last night, but as Chris was having his second tankard of wine it was decided that we would deal with where we were staying Monday night on Monday morning. Ok, in the sober light this wasn't a good idea.
The plan was to go to Bratislava, Solvakia......... We're currently sitting in Budapest, Hungary. It's close enough.
On the way here, about 200km from Vienna, a man pulls up beside us on the motorway and starts honking and waving hello. Now we only know one Hungarian and he's in Scotland. Turns out it was the barman from Vienna saying hello! What friendly folk we're meeting.
Uncle Michael Bothwell