9 September Klosterneuburg - Vienna - Hainburg

An overcast day, with light showers brings me to Vienna. The bicycle road feeds into the city nicely. Pompous and rich is how the city appears to me.

I bump right into an enormous statue resurrected 19 August 1945, making sure to the habitants of Vienna that it was the Russian Red Army that freed them from the Fascists.

I lunch in the Stadtpark and get out again. That’s only possible after asking, because maps do not help too much. But a friendly street cleaner helps me, but not after telling me that one without a map is depending on what others tell. But I do trust you completely, I tell him. A big smile shows under his enormous moustache.

After one hour I am out of the city and I can head towards Hainburg. I bike with a strong back wind through a beautiful nature reserve, the Donau - Au environmental park. The colors are fabulous.


My couch surfing host, Miriam, is a Slovakian, lawyer and has chosen Hainburg (Austria) to buy her apartment. However she works as the procurement manager in a bank in Bratislava. By bus that takes only 25 minutes.

She takes me on a quick tour of Hainburg, a medieval town with an intact city wall and some towers. We climb the road to the ruins of the castle above the city. Afterwards I have a wonderful dinner in a restaurant, recently bought by a Slovakian. The vegetarian meal with potatoes, zucchini and cheese is wonderful.

We discuss about the changes and her career wishes. But I’ll try to explain more tomorrow about the specific position of Bratislava, so close to Vienna and formerly so far apart and now so close together.