Vienna by Motorhome
Zagan the motorhome’s made it into an official stellplatz outside Vienna (N48.13556 E16.31584). Even the might of the Ottoman Empire couldn’t get this far north into Austria, we’re proud of our mighty Zagan! It costs €19 a night to stay here, without electricity, but we have showers and the site is only 150m from a U Bahn (underground) station, which is itself about a 20 min ride into the city centre (€2.20 per person each way). There’s a freebie place to stay just north of the city too, according to our Camper Stop book. As we’re leaving Charlie in the van (muzzles needed on the train, he hates trains and no muzzle ever stays on him), we opted to pay for a couple of nights to get some added security in the big smoke.
Official Motorhome Stellplatz in Vienna
Austria’s a wonderful country to travel through in a motorhome. Unless you’re in a city or in the Tyrol, you can legally park up for a night just about anywhere, saving you lots of wonga which you can spend on peach schnapps. Sweet. The countryside is beautiful. It’s a calm, safe, place with incredible architecture and landscapes. So how come we’re about to leave so soon? Because getting here is fairly easy – a nip through France and a blat across Germany’s freebie autobahns and voilà, you’re in. The other countries to the east and north of us are harder to reach from the UK, so we want to spend longer in them. After a night in a village (last night) and the two nights we’ve paid for here, we’ll head into Slovakia. Gulp. New country nerves…
Only Austria seems to have these – air inflation devices at fuel stations which you lift off a stand and carry around to each tyre. I love ’em, no fiddling with a long hose
Today we pootled through a few Austrian villages, reminded of the country’s religious conservatism by signs at each of them announcing the times when mass is held in the church. One even sported a fetching blue ‘Park and Pray’ sign. After filling up on €1 a litre diesel (soooo much cheaper than the last time we toured Europe!), we hit the motorway and racked up 3 hour’s worth of northwards-nailing. Our Austrian hosts seem to be in the midst of a major road-patching exercise as we hit roadworks after roadworks. Since the speed limit in ’em was set at 80kph, and I drive Zagan at roughly 80kph anyway (for the free beer), they made no difference to the time it took us to get to Vienna.
Austria has wee ‘cone men’ in roadworks, which get happier as the distance to the end decreases, awesome!
Pulling into the city the familiar, yet-unfamiliar, cityscape of advertising hoardings, fast-food eateries, huge IKEA capitals and slighty (for Austria) shabby blocks of flats filled the screen. Through it we rolled, pulling off a pretty bad 3 point turn to get across the road and into the stellplatz.
Erm, not sure why these signs were in both English and German
Settled in, brew taken, Charlie walked, we headed into the city using a couple of ’72 Stunden Wien’ Vienna Cards a kindly Dutch couple gave us as they left, telling Ju there were a few hours of the 72 left. As ever in cities, Ju thankfully takes on the role of guide, as I’m clueless on public transport and navigating. Pulling out our Austria Lonely Planet, she plotted a course through the place using the guide’s Vienna Walking Tour, as I pottered along behind.
First view of Vienna
I’m no match for the guide books, so no description of Vienna or it’s history here, sorry! My take on Vienna is this: wow. I loved the grand-standing architecture and sculptures, having acquired a taste for the fun-baroque over the years. But oooeeee, all the world is here, and none of us appeared to be from Vienna! It’s a flippin’ zoo! Clearly May’s early enough in the season for tour operators to start cranking up operations, dropping in folks from every corner of the planet. At one point I stood taking a photo of a fountain, and turned to find a hand raised, curtly shifting me to one side with repeated flicks of the fingers. I did a double-take, and the second time around the stern lady’s face had mellowed a little, as I suspect she may have read something of a message in my face…
Worth upsetting a fellow tourist to admire stuff like this
After only a couple of hours walking the city we headed back to Zagan to an ecstatic Charlie, loaded with photos of statues and grand buildings. Without ever reading a book, it’s obvious the city was the seat of an empire. The statues of over-sized beefy naked blokes beating various animals to death grew ever more hilarious the further we went, topping out with a pair of chaps hand wrestling a lion and bull respectively. Yep, masters of the world lived here! A ton of photos follow, sorry, I couldn’t pare ’em down any more.
Tomorrow we’re aiming to get some interior culture, heading for the Kunsthistoriches Museum after a morning’s pooch walking. Our guide enthuses about the place, as a world-class art gallery. The Uffizi in Florence impressed us, as much for the building as the paintings within, so hopefully we’ll enjoy the place. If not, there’s always that schnapps…
Cheers, Jay
Your pics brought back good memories of my 6 month stint working in Vienna. The food, the cakes, more cakes… mmmmmmmmmmm. try and take time to sit and have a coffee in the Graben and watch folks walk by.
Sachertorte??!
Ju has it on her list for today! Passed the famous cafe, Big queue outside yesterday.
Oh Vienna, it means nothing to me… You might want to check the spelling of tomorrow’s museum, unnecessarily rude. Have fun.
Whoops! Ta Matt.
Ah Slovakia. You’ll feel right at home there but watch out for the lumberjacks in the east!
Lumberjacks? They’re OK aren’t they?
Wow, Vienna, fond memories! I took my mum on a week’s holiday there for her 65th birthday.
And those statues, hilarious! The way you talked about them, seeing the pics. Great blogging! Enjoy the beer in Slovakia!
Not sure how far you will get info Slovakia and how quickly, but the European Slalom Canoeing Championships are being held there this coming weekend…and they are only charging 5 Euros tops to get in for a whole day. You could support the GB team and have a great time too, sitting in the sun and seeing world class sport in a new country. We try to find similar things when we are away, to make a change from the Churches/Museums/Wandering around thing….so we may hit the world surfing in south west France in October. Enjoy!
Woo, that might work Andrew. Looks like Slovakia’s main attractions are off to the north east, so we may well be there in time for the finale, thanks for the info! Jay
Well lumberjacks like to congregate to enjoy a drink or two. Rosie and the barmaid were the only females in a large bar? full of them, and they were perfect gentlemen to the women. But I was forced to drink with them (yes they are big and hairy) and as we had only gone into the café for a coffee and a bite to eat at lunch time it came as a surprise. It appears in eastern Slovakia anywhere is fair game to drink alcohol but we were newly arrived and innocent. A few days later at a folk festival (without music but there were a couple of ZIL cars there) it was the same, hard drinking is the order of the day.
Not sure if I sang the Python lumberjack song or not as after the first glass my brain went numb, but Rosie said they were very nice to us?
Wow, sounds like a great experience! We’ll keep an eye out for hard drinking wood lubbers as we go. Weather forecast here is for solid rain for a week, so they might be making the most of the drinking opportunities…