vienna

Vienna or weim as the sign posts in the area call it, you get a lot of that what we actually call places in English is nothing like how its pronounced or written locally, the Danube its self gets called and spelt different on its journey to the sea the first German i spoke to about it way back at the start of the trip every time i said Danube he corrected me and said what sounded more like the Doh-now the spelling throughout Germany and Austria never has a B in the name! all the signs in Austria for the official route are spelling it the Donauweg which translates to English as the Danube way
         

Vienna ( i had the old ultravox song in my head a lot that day this means nothing to me lol) is much larger than i thought i Knew it was  a big European city but just not that big! I firstly went for a beer at a brau house to check my phone app for accommodation yet again i was unlucky i was later to find out there was some sort of conference going on! but i managed to find a place reasonably priced nui hotel which i just had to find once booked . I used google maps and headed across town checking at various street corners i was headed the right way, speaking of right way the city has lots of cycle paths which is fantastic except for a person who drives on the wrong side of the road i need to constantly remind myself yo cycle on the right because the cycle paths are on both side of the road and narrow in places other cyclists get ratty if you are on the wrong side
     

   Once i found the hotel and got booked in the receptionist said i was room 716 she would open up the garage door for my bike , whilst unloading the bike i got chatting to an elder;y cyclist who was doing a personal circular journey from his home town of Munich his bike was laden but he said that was because of his camping stuff but its winter season  now and the camp site was shut, the garage has access to the lift i looked at the buttons there was K and E at the bottom then 123456 -D i was on the 7th floor WTF lol !
   

   my room was fine though i liked the hotel it was quirky and i had a beer at the bar, before heading out the place was busy, my tram had to stop to allow the passage of a huge parade by people protesting about the climate change, it was the number two tram and i had taken a phone photo of my start station and asked some one when i got of at the busy part of town where the tram back will depart I had a few beers and some dinner and a stroll round the churches monuments and sights of that area, I visited an Irish bar but just had one beer as it was tiny and mobbed and in Austria they still smoke in the bars and this one had a fog of fag smoke in it, there`s also cafe`s now where you can have a beer and smoke cannabis i had a beer in one of these and you could certainly smell the sweet aroma of the cigarettes! other cyclists that i had met had cycled passed fields of hash that day, I hadn't seen this but it did make me laugh they would need armed guards on any farmers fields in Scotland if they wanted to grow cannabis, but here was two seperate cycling couples that cycled along spotted it stopped took pictures smelled it to be sure and never knicked any!
   

It was raining when i woke in the morning, i got all dressed for the rain and had a cycle round some more of the city sights. reaching Vienna was a milestone and at the start of my rough plan i had planned two days in Vienna to get a chance to see it all but i was starting to feel it was just too big for me and expensive i was tantalising close to Bratislava its got its plus and minuses travelling by bike but its a pest having to leave it loaded up outside shops bars and restaurants, especially when you need to leave it where you cant see it. I cycled to the hydrofoil ferry and had a look at that, on the way to the hydrofoil staiton which is up the danube canal a bit of a distance from the actual danube river but right in the centre of the main part of the city, i cycled passed the famous reisenrad ferris wheel inide Prater park. there was loads of locals heading in dressed in what i would have called bavarian tradition costume but they were defo heading for some beer tents inside the fun park, I filled my water bottles from one of the many city center water fountains and moved on to schwedenplatz to check out the hydrofoil prices and time scale
 

it was two pm and I still had a fair bit to cycle to Bratislava fifty kilometers away. i had only spent one night in Vienna it was cold and wet the super fast hydrofoil takes you to Bratislava in an hour and a forty five mins, basically I had options? book another night here in Vienna? start cycling out of town? ask how much was the ferry and was there any that day? I asked it would be 38euros for a window seat for me and five euros for the auld dear locked outside? leaving at four PM