Thursday, July 20, 2006

funny walks

I have made it to Vienna..

Well almost.

I'm staying in a town about 30km to the south west called Berndorf and catching the train into Vienna during the day. How I came to be staying with them is a rather random exercise in good luck. At the NUKE Festival I had conversations with about 30 people. One of them was with Clara, who I spoke to while picking up one of the many free Nokia pizzas eaten that weekend. We talked about travel, my adventures thus far and her plans to venture overseas eventually. I gave her my photo page and email address, and a couple of days later I had an invite to stay in Berndorf. It's a cool little country town, with slow trains and early closing shops. The neighbouring villages have started encroaching on each other and now Berndorf is made up of about 4 little villages rolled into one. Last night we walked up to the top of the main hill to the "Googlesplithe" (or something like it), which had a fab view of Berndorf and surrounding area.

The ride to Berndorf was fairly nasty. Hot sun. Big hills. Tired legs. I took the wrong road from St Polten and ended up going over the hills, rather than around them, adding another 2 hours to the journey. I did meet some guys who race old Alfa Romeos in the local rally circuit here. They bought me a Most after they found out I had an Alfa a while ago. It was a hard 5 hours of riding, and wen I got off the bike, my walking style had changed a little.

Vienna is pretty nice. Very touristy in some bits, with the old scam of 'which box is the ball of paper under?' popping up sporadically on back street corners. I'm looking to rent a room/flat for about a month while I'm in Vienna. It's summer time, so all the students have left their flats to go take funny coloured pills in Hungary. Which reminds me, I'm probably going to Budapest in a couple of weeks. There's a massive week long music festival on called Sziget and I think the plan is to camp there with some newly acquired Austrian friends and take some photos. I'll keep you posted on it, but considering the line-up and the cost, it's worth a week in a tent on an island near the Hungary/Czech boarder. Then after that I have one day to get to Salzburg for the Frequency Festival for more photo fun.

Ah Europe.. I love you.

2 comments:

Roxanne said...

Cheers Dan, great to read your blogs.

Anonymous said...

Hi Dan

I used to leave in Hernstein just near Berndorf in a castle called Schloss Hernstein