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Tour date: 1-17 June 2005. Total distance: 1400 km.
Bicycle Tour: Eastern Europe (Italy - Slovenia - Croatia - Hungary - Slovakia - Austria - Czech Republic)
Thomas Driemeyer2005-10-16 14:37:51
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a reservation.
During the late afternoon and evening we walked around Vienna downtown. Everything is very meticulous, clean, appropriately monumental, and so on, but I don't really feel at home there. As if there were too many imposing facades but not enough life; it feels like a stage set. A beautifully done stage set though.
They have a public bicycle system where the first hour of rental is free and then gets progressively more expensive, but it's only open to people with a local bank account. (The public bicycle system in Berlin is open to anyone but you pay for every use.)
You sometimes hear that Zagreb or Budapest are the Vienna or Paris of eastern Europe, but this is nonsense. When you have seen the real thing it's very obvious that they can't compete, and never will. Personally I favor Paris over Vienna (and Prague over Paris) because Vienna's baroque architecture can be a little cloying. But still, Vienna is a crowning example of 18th century architecture, and the old center of the Habsburg Austrian-Hungarian monarchy. Something that is immediately obvious when riding through Austria after spending so much time in former socialist countries is how meticolous, clean, organized, and arranged everything is. All houses are painted perfectly, all gardens are trimmed perfectly, all cars are new and clean, and all shops are carefully designed. I had the same feeling when I came to Vienna for the first time, after travelling as a student from Turkey through still-communist Czechoslovakia.
The next morning we bought Czech maps, and found an excellent bicycle store at Nestroyplatz, where we replaced the brake pads worn off in Hungary's rain and other odds and ends. We left Vienna rather late, and followed a bike path north on the very long and narrow island in the middle of the Danube, which is basically one long narrow park. Another excellent way of leaving
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See photographs from:
Slovenia Gallery
,
Slovakia Gallery
,
Italy Gallery
,
Hungary Gallery
,
Czech Republic Gallery
,
Croatia Gallery
,
Austria Gallery
