So today I fancy knocking off two capital cities, from Vienna to Bratislava. It's only 80KM away, so not difficult and it just sound kinda cool to do.
Up early for a hearty breakfast and said goodbye to Christof. Louise and I spent some time chatting and said she would accompany me out of town on her bike. As we barrelled down the Billrothstraße into town avoiding the tram rails and loving the overhead cables that powered them, the weather was glorious and the (downward) hills just perfect. It had that feeling of utter liberation that I have come to enjoy recently, able to take in the sights and sounds of this historic city as it prepared for the working week.
We followed the canal pretty much to our first stop of Freytag & Berndt, the most comprehensive travel bookshop I have ever seen.
For the final part of my journey, I have decided to take the much less well travelled EV13 Iron Curtain Trail along the borders of Croatia, Serbia, Romania, Bulgaria, Macedonia, Greece and Turkey to the Black Sea. I may well change my mind as the route doesn't look particularly well developed and is mountainous. In addition, I am enjoying meeting so many new people at the moment, a big difference from my first rather solitary trip through France, and I know I will be pretty much on my own if I take the EV13. Even more so as I can't speak a word of the native languages of these countries so will have noone for company at all. However it does sound rather appealing and one thing is for certain, having a paper map sounds essential as I cannot rely on tech to get me through. In fact getting this map has been on my mind for a while now, so excellent that I will be able to get it at Freytag & Berndt and the excellent staff there were super helpful.
Once the map was successfully in my bag, off we set off across the city taking in the art nouveau toilets on Graben by the French designer Adolf Loos (where the attendant shows you to your cubicle and closes the door after you),
the winter palace of Prince Eugene and a gorgeous cycle through Prater Park which was just perfect in the morning sun. Louise accompanied me to the Donauinsel (Danube Island) and left me there to continue for basically 65KM down a dyke with nothing but endless trees, although the last 10KM from Hainburg does bring with it some nice views of the Danube.
I said goodbye to Louise, really pleased to have met such a terrific, interested, interesting and compassionately driven woman, whom I hope very much to keep in contact with. Upon leaving, I did get a bit lost near a nudist colony, but that was the most exciting thing about my exit from Vienna.
I was looking forward to crossing the border into Slovakia, but there was zero passport control and I wasn't even sure at what point I had entered the country. I did spy a small shed that perhaps could have been security, and indeed there was some guy in a uniform leaning against a wall and looking up at the sun, resting. I don't think any invading armies would have too much of an issue.
The first thing I noticed was the observation deck of the strangely named UFO Bridge which definitely had a Big-Brother-is-Watching kind of feel to it, a symbol that made me think of the Berlin TV Tower.
This was my very first Eastern European city and to my untrained eye, looked cute, cosmopolitan and forward thinking, although Simon told me that this was just the centre and outside of that, it was still a place very much stuck in the Soviet era.
I stopped off in one of the numerous inviting coffee shops, bathed in that early evening glow of perfect sunlight. Above me, higher up on a rocky outcrop of the Little Carpathians mountain range stood the impressive 10th Century castle.
I checked out a couple of hostels but there didn't seem anywhere too safe to leave the bike and anyway, after such luxury of Viennese life these past couple of days, I needed to gently let myself back into real life cycle touring and the accommodation that comes with it. In the end I opted for the Hotel Petit Pension, just a stone's throw from the Presidential Palace, had a shower and set off into town to catch some sights, sink a beer and have a meaty filling dinner.
Afterwards, I went for a short womble and came across Cumil, the sewer worker who is, as I suspected, a bit of a landmark in Bratislava.
There had been some showers as I ate and as I walked the streets, out came a rainbow which was atmospheric and perfectly placed, as it arched across the National Theatre.
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