Day 11: Vienna to Bratislava

A shorter day between two of the great capitals of Europe but there was a surprising amount of this in between.

20km of this in a perfect straight line.

The Artist “Boutique” hotel in Vienna was absolutely lovely. We may have been the only people staying there and a team of 5 chefs and waiters served us fresh eggs and coffee until we were bursting.

I did some early morning “repairs” on my bike’s rear brake calliper. As long as I wasn’t intending to actually use the back brake then it was going to be fine. As we rolled away from the hotel, a car edged out of a junction and reflexively I pulled both brakes. Great, that’s 70km of brakes squeaking and binding that I had to look forward to.

Getting in and out of major cities is always a pain in the bum and Vienna was no different.

Cars, roads, bridges, rivers, tramways. Always interesting…

After some cycling under graffiti-stained motorway underpasses we were expelled into the Vienna’s Prater park. Constructed in in the sixteenth century as Emperor Maximillian II’s private hunting ground, it was opened up to the public in the late 18th century and it is an oasis of calm just a few kilometers from the centre of Vienna. Early on a Tuesday morning, it was full of fit young people cycling and running — some of whom seemed to be aiming to beat Eliud Kipchoge’s first marathon under 2 hours much of which was run in the Prater. Slightly embarassingly, Kipchoge’s running speed comfortably outpaces our bike riding pace.

Beautiful in the morning.

The Prater also contains The Wiener Riesenrad which I remember from the 1949 Orson Welles film noir The Third Man and also played an important part in the Bond film The Living Daylights. For 60 years it was the world’s tallest ferris wheel.

No sign of Orson Welles or Timothy Dalton…

A few wiggles through some underpasses took us onto yet another bridge over the Danube which afforded a great view back to Vienna.

Vienna from afar.

We skirted round a giant petrochemical storage area and ended up on the dyke above the Donau-Auen national park. This is a 93 square km park established in 1996 to protect the largest area of undeveloped wetland floodplain in Central Europe. It covers an area of backwaters, creeks and wooded swampland stretching 38km along the bank of the Danube. As we joined the dyke, it looked like this:

A longstraight path.

And 38km later, it still looked like this:

The longest and straightest bike ride…ever.

Thankfully we had a tailwind. It would have been miserable doing an 38km straight time-trial into the wind. The tailwind was welcome but only seemed to negate the drag effect of my rear brake binding and squeaking.

Eventually after about 2 hours of this we came to a slightly concerning bridge with a very narrow bike path on one side on which we crossed back over the Danube to Hainburg.

The narrow bike path was actually a relief after two hours of straighness.

We stopped in Hainburg for a drink and some gazpacho and watched the ships go up the Danube. Hainburg is a bit of a quiet backwater now but in the past it was one of the most strategically important points on the Danube. It was the most easterly point of the Holy Roman Empire — “neither Holy, Roman nor an Empire” — and was extensively fortified. It still retains 2.5km of walls, three city gates and 15 defensive towers. It was thought to be impenetrable until the Turkish army stormed the city in 1683 and killed all 8,433 residents. Beacause this is definitely a patriotic blog, it should be mentioned that the biggest gate (The Wieinertor) was constructed with the funds received by the Austrians as ransom for Richard the Lionheart. Well done England!

This was a fast catamaran which did the Vienna/Bratislava run in under 2 hours.

From here we cut away from the river through farm fields and small villages. In the distance, Bratislava appeared.

A blurry picture of Bratislava from a long way away.

Slovakia is part of the Schengen zone — and also the Eurozone a fact that the Slovenes are very proud of since they were the first ex-communist country to join the Euro. Without fanfare, border control or even a sign on the bike path, we were in our fourth country of the trip.

The best I could do for a photo of a border crossing

To get into Bratislava, we crossed the famous Novy Most bridge which is often used as the symbol of the city. Originally known as the Bridge of the Slovak National Uprising — a prototypical Warsaw Pact bridge name — it’s an elegant suspension bridge with an iconic UFO-like restaurant and viewing gallery on top of the single suspension tower.

Now that is an elegant bridge.

We passed across the bridge on a suspended cycleway under the main roadway. On the south of the river we were pootling along cycle paths between fields and on the north we were in the middle of a major European capital city with all the traffic, danger and tensions associated with that. Unlike most big cities, there was no gentle introduction as you rode through the “doughnut of shit”. It was like being suddenly dropped in Trafalgar Square on a bike in the middle of a gentle coffee ride through the Mallorquín countryside.

Luckily our hotel wasn’t too far from the river and it turned out to be a great choice. In former communist countries, it’s always good to choose a western chain and Bratislava was no exception. The Raddison Blu Savoy is wonderful. Our bikes were whisked to the locked bike store (my bike squeaking like a dog toy), we were informed that of courseit waspossible to launder and dry our clothes and, while we were there at the front desk, would we like a free room upgrade? Our kit was washed and, more importantly dried, in under two hours and our room is the size of a tennis court.  It even has a balcony overlooking the main square.  

Excellent for giving stirring speeches to the proletariat.

Bratislava is quite small (460,000 people) and the old centre is very compact. There are a few must-see things starting with this rather disturbing statue.

Cumil the Peeper. A statue of a sewage worker looking up women’s skirts. Right.

There was another statue of some other bloke but I didn’t know who he was so I have spared you the inevitable photograph. There is also the famous Napoleonic cannon ball stuck in the wall of the old Town Hall.

 

A major tourist attraction in Bratislava. Just to the left of the 1st floor pointy window.

Zoomed in so you can appreciate the wonder in all its glory

We wandered around the old town which was full of tourist oriented shops, bars and restaurants. It was busy and it was hot.

After repairing back to the hotel and admiring our freshly laundered cycle kit, we did a bit of admin including, in my case this.

One thousand days of Spanish. Not wildly useful here though.

Then it was out to try and find some dinner.  Bratislava was full of Slovenes out eating, drinking and promenading through the old town.

Old town Bratislava

We had a somewhat disappointing and probably overly expensive meal in a nice place on the main square.  Unusually, it was two restaurants in one.  A steak restaurant and a fish restaurant and you had to decide what you wanted to eat before you sat in one section or the other.  Very odd but an excellent gelato rounded off what was a good day.

Tomorrow’s stage is 100km on the north bank of the Danube and there are no shops, towns or indeed much of anything.  It is the most isolated stage of the trip and having a terminal mechanical failure there would be a disaster so fixing the bike early #1 priority.

The Stats:

• Distance: 70km 🙂.  Absolutely fine although more than half of it was on one ruler straight path.
• Average Speed: 20km/h. ☹️.  Slower than Eliud Kipchoge.  I blame the endlessly rubbing back brake.  Without that I could definitely take Eliud in a race.
• Bike: ☹️☹️☹️.  Not sure that we can keep going without fixing the problem.  There might be a bike shop open tomorrow but
• Soft tissues: 😐.  No flare up in the upper east side but Dr T’s neck is a problem.  Pretty much every part of your body hurts by this point.

Previous