Tue, 09 Sep 2003

author Tim	location St. Sebastian, Steiermark, Österreich
posted 09:19 CEST 11/09/2003	section Europe2002/Europe/Osterreich/Osterreich 1 ( all photos )

Into Wien ( No photos )
(Continued from Ceska Republika (Czech Republic)).
Across no-mans land from Ceska, we slowed and stopped at the next border post, Drasenhofen, this one belonging to Österreich. We were expecting more grief about my Shengen visa status (I'm still all legal, my passport just doesn't quite look that way), but the guy on the desk was more interested in Liz.
We had to find first then produce her driver's licence (an example of which he had obviously never seen before), then the green card (rego papers) for the van. There were no problems in the end, and perhaps it was good that he had all this to distract him from me.
In the end, we waved Ceska goodbye, and stopped at the first service station. Similarly to Ceska and a lot of European countries, Österreich requires you to buy a vignette (windscreen sticker) if you want to use the motorways. So, we removed our Ceska one for safe-keeping and attached instead a shiny new one. It was quite strange to be back in a country where only 2km north I couldn't understand a word that was going on, but now we could communicate, even on a basic level.
The rain started hounding down, accompanied dramatically by wind as we pushed due south to Wien (Vienna), the capital city. In terms of our luck recently, finding Camping Neue Donau on the east side of town was a walk in the park - only about three wrong turns! Since our caravan club guide book is written mostly by elderly British caravaners who we can imagine probably bicker between themselves over whether they turned left or right to get there, we are not totally suprised when the directions end us up in totally the wrong place. So, Wien was a pleasant suprise.
The guy on the desk put us near two vans full of about eight kiwis - perhaps he thought "they're from your hemisphere, you put up with them". They had all sorts of kiwi slogans and icons painted all over their vans - I suspect their chances of selling the vans when they are finished travelling are somewhat reduced now.
We wasted little time getting organised and getting down to the bus stop for a bus to the U-bahn (underground train) into town. However, we missed the bus by ten seconds or so and had a half an hour wait. We used this time to read up and get ourselves oriented in the city. When the bus did arrive, the guy on-board wouldn't sell us a ticket. Wien has moved to the same system as the vast majority of European cities we have encountered - you need tickets before you get on, and they typically last for 24 hours.
Luckily, he just waved us past and we bought our tickets at the other end. The wait for the U-Bahn at Kaisermühlen (Vienna International Centre). This got us to Karlsplatz near the south of the centre, from where we walked down to Naschmarkt. This is an arrangement of little shops and markets in the middle of a wide street, from where we got what we intended to be a snack until we cooked dinner later, but turned out to be huge meals.
It was about here that I worked out I hadn't brought my camera in with me. First time I have forgotten that for a while, but no real matter as we had planned to come in again the next morning and could get some snaps then.
We wandered up Kärntner Straße into the centre of town at Stephansplatz, dominated by Stephansdom (St. Stephen's Cathedral). Not a vast open square like many others, this was instead surrounded by plenty of shops build tall and seeming to overhang. The whole time the rain was just annoying enough for us to need umbrellas, but not drenching.
From there we wandered out to Michaelerplatz, which fronts onto the Kaiserappartements and the famous Spanish Riding School. The latter Mum had suggested was worth a visit, however the one-month wait for tickets coupled with the huge sums of money they demanded meant this wasn't going to happen for us this trip.
We walked past some excavations of old buildings which existed here hundereds of years ago through the archways and found ourselves in Heldenplatz. This is surrounded by the massive Hofburg (Imperial Palace), which is so big it plays funny games with your eyes as you walk past it.
Onto Burgring and Opernring, two of the roads which combine to form a ring around the city (well, not quite a ring, but the Danau/Danube river fills the remaining part). We had heard about the famous Viennese coffee houses, and Lonely Planet recommended Café Sperl as one of the most un-spoilt. We whole-heartedly agree. The place had an amazing charm, complete with centuries old upholstered bench chairs, billiard tables and of course fantastic coffee. We were a little taken aback at the small size of our supposed großer (large) coffees, but this was a case of quality over quantity any day. The waitress even humoured our horrible attempts at Deutsch, and brought us a great mineral water which dissapeared rather quickly - it was hot in there.
Next was a trip back into the heart of the city to have a look at the interesting-sounding Haus Der Musik (Das Klangmuseum). This turned out to be a wonderful way to while away a few hours, with everything from the city's famous sons Mozart, Beethoven, Schönberg, etc. through to an interesting (for me anyway) network of computers which automatically made real-time compositions over the Internet. There were rooms where you could push buttons to mix together human voices in strange ways, explorations of the nature of sound, and plenty of ways to do very strange things with sounds.
Done there, it was time to think about "home" and dinner, so we re-traced our steps to the caravan park via the Stephensplatz U-Bahn station. This time a bus was only a couple of minutes wait away, returning us to the caravan park to cook in the kitchen there. It was strange to eat in the van again after so long.

author Tim	location St. Sebastian, Steiermark, Österreich
posted 09:02 CEST 11/09/2003	section Europe2002/Europe/Ceska Republika ( all photos )

South out of Ceska ( No photos )
After packing up and working out how to pay the old dear running the site of our night's accommodation, we set off around the south-west side of Brno.
We stopped to grab some cheap Ceska fuel and breakfast for ourselves, before heading the 50km or so south to the border with Österreich (Austria).
Unlike the border crossing into Ceska, this one was split in two. We first drove up to the Ceska side of the border, convincing them to let us out. Once again we had no problems as our paperwork was all in order. Also, it is generally easier for countries to let you out rather than in.
Stamps entered in our passports (Liz got her first in her British passport - the downside to the freedom it gives), I got out and tried to work out how to get a stamp for entering Österreich. After giving me another Ceska stamp, one of the Ceska guys told me that the Österreich border crossing was another kilometre further down the road!
So, we drove along in no-mans land, not quite sure what country we were technically in. No matter, as around the corner we saw the next border post. Getting through that was our first experience in Österreich (Austria).

(customised)