Day 21 – Vienna, it’s raining and cold – Saturday 21st October 2017

So today is the last day of retail activity by the said Olympic Class shopper, on Sunday Vienna shuts down except for church, food and museum activity. For Genelle this will mean a quiet day, church might be needed after a visit to the Sex Machines Museum but museums ain’t her big thing and shut shops could bring on anxiety and depression, I’ll have to watch her closely. For me, well I’m going to use my Vienna Pass and see a couple of museums by myself. I’ll work out which ones tomorrow.
Once again I think the internet wifi speed will be a problem to load photos up on the blog so as per yesterday check the photos on Facebook.

It’s raining outside when we get up, it’s grey and drizzling, and oddly enough this is the first real rain we’ve had in the 3 weeks we’ve been on the road. So for the first time the Gortex coats come out, scarves around necks and off we trot to Stephenplatz U Bahn station, of to Karlsplatz U Bahn and the Nachmarkt, a fresh food market during the week and flea markets added on Saturday. Now I pride myself on being pretty good with directions but once again Karlsplatz throws me and I go the wrong way until Genelle’s trusty iPhone Google maps gets me on track, much harumping and hairy eyeball activity from you know who makes me feel a bit small, but I’m used to it and let it all slide over my head.

First thing at the market is breakfast, a serious pastry with coffee and tea. The food area is huge and the food and vegetables area is great and cheap. The Viennese do good coffee, not as good as home but getting close. We wander for ages through all the food and then the flea market area, which has mainly 2 nd hand junk and Chinese scarves with some knock off Addidas and Jack Wolfskin clothes. Genelle negotiates hard and buys some sweats and some biscuits, but there isn’t anything really that catches her eye, and there is no chance anything is going to tempt me.

We leave the market and get on to the U Bahn and head out to where the big European cruise boats dock in Vienna on the banks of the Danube River proper. There are about 3 boats moored on the main old Vienna side of the river, it’s raining steadily, it’s bleak and we drop some of Tim’s ashes into the Danube. A huge river, and who knows where the waters of the Brown Danube will take him. The river isn’t blue like folklore would lead you to believe.

The afternoon is spent walking, resting, walking and resting. It’s hard to do too much in this weather.

Dinner tonight is at Reinthalers Beisel Restaurant, where we ate last night – I think ai had the wrong name last night. As before the food is really good and well priced. A Viennese man sits beside us and we strike up a conversation, he says this place is well renowned by the locals for the Viennese style food, the price and the quality, and we’ll vouch for that, €8.90 gets me a beautiful Wiener Snitzel pork with salad. He’s been to Australia 4 times and has friends who live in Canberra and has travelled all over Australia. As he’s getting ready to leave a young American couple sit beside us on the other side, they are from Minnesota, she’s a HR recruiter for a big international law firm and he works for Target ( different to the Australian one) as manager of their “Intimates” section – the women’s underwear, lingerie etc etc. We learn how they book accomodation and ideas for travelling, food and site seeing etc. by their use of Rick Steve’s book. A lovely young couple and they suggest that we see Alaska and Delouth in Minnesota if we ever go to America.

We leave and head for the streets, to see what is happening. The city is alive, people everywhere, no sign of drunks or trouble UNTIL as we wander back past St Stepehens and a brawl has just broken out between what looks like 2 groups of about 6-10 people of what looks like middle eastern decent, the language sounds like Arabic, there is pushing, shoving, punches and screaming, there are girls involved and possible knives, by then we’ve moved well away. About 6 police cars with sirens roar in, their are police dogs, lots of people with guns appear and the noise goes on for a while. Bit scary but we’re about 70 metres away by the time it got really scary.

Tomorrow is our last day in Vienna, a quiet day I feel.

Gute Nacht aus Wien

Paul