Friday 27 December
Romantic road …’comments’ .

Rising early, a hearty breakfast of sweet bread and coffee (I was being very good as I could have had a sweet cake instead!!!), a quick chat with Laura and her kids on Skype…and we were on our way again on the “Romantik Austria” road. Today was going to be a travel day but we also managed to see some interesting aspects.

However, before we bore you with the winding drive today, there were a few things that need to be shared with you here in respect to what we have discovered in our trip through Austria .

First of all, you have to pay for public amenities….. 0.50 euro each visit. Some I objected to, but others were okay like Christmas Eve when you were standing waiting and as you went into the cubicle, you handed your money to the attendant who opened the door, wiped the seat for you and then left …..yuk…gross job but I guess someone had to do it. I can understand paying the money for this service,..after all who wants to sit on a wet seat in cold conditions!!

Then there is also the aspect when you are really needing to go because you have got out of the car, nice and warm, and the cold air hits you with a blast and all of a sudden your bladder contracts and it is, ” I have to go now Marc or I am going to go right here !!!’

Then there is the job of finding the WC or “vay zay”, as it is called in Austria. Of course when you have that urgent need, it is not around anywhere . We have discovered, that signs do not mean anything….they are wrong or simply in most cases just disappear. Yes you see that initial sign and an arrow to point in which direction…and that initial relief sigh but they have fooled you because the signs somehow disappear leaving you to wander around aimlessly looking for the WC. while holding on tightly to your bladder and crossing your legs as you try to walk quickly in the hopes of finding this well hidden but much needed amenity.

Do you know how difficult it is to walk cross legged in a strange city very fast???

Then all of a sudden you see it, walk quickly and politely walk towards it, not letting the general public know that you need to desperately relieve yourself, coming to the door and there is machine there with a gate blocking your way because you have to pay for it!!! Oh boy.. got to find that 0.50 euro quickly, then finding you do not have the correct change!!!!!
No! Not good!
After finding and paying for the use of the toilet, I can honestly say there is a tremendous amount of relief!!!
(At least in Australia I have not yet had to pay for public amenities when needed in cities or towns!!! )
We have now learnt to have some small change available just for that special moment in time.

You can stop laughing now!!!

While we are on the subject is amenities…yes again, I have had to learn, between Italy and Austria, so many new names for public amenities for male and female. Today I thought I had it right but in one of the small restaurants we wandered into ( the our off the normal roads)….I found some different names. These are now called Dirmholme and Baum. Now, tell me, sincerely, which one should you go into when you are looking for the female amenity and there are no pictures!!!!
Yes, I did it again!!!!!
But now I have learnt two new words in German /Austrian!!!

Oh dear, I still have Slovenia and Greece to go. What names shall I discover then??I guess I will have a few more surprised expressions of ‘excuse me’ said in different words as well as I find my way to these facilities!!

And I guess while I am on the subject of toileting….there is also the matter that we have been in so many hotels since the start of our holiday, with different layouts of rooms, toilets, baths and showers, that last night I was so disorientated that when I had to get up to do my nightly ritual at some early hour of the morning…..I missed. I hit the glass shower door instead….and all because I thought in my sleepy state I was back in my Salzburg hotel room where you had to step up to the toilet bowl. But of course I was not there, I was in Hallstatt …a different room and different layout…and I missed completely, trying to step up to the toilet ….waking Marc from his snoring slumber to rescue me from the loaded bathroom and it’s captivating shower screen….

Okay so back to restaurants

The restaurant also had German menus…..but have you tried to interpret a menu in German?? Italian menus I can do as I have good interpretation of their words,..but German??
Why have had our share of hit and miss meals believe me!!

In our little restaurant today off the beaten track…I mean there was only the restaurant there in the town….(that was a town???? ). We must have looked a little perplexed so our lovely lady host rummaged under the counter and handed us two menus in English – that is English as written by a non-native speaker – that is with a few errors.
Oh… It was such a pleasure to read as now I can understand what i am about to order for lunch.
I was so excited ..not only could I read the menu, I could have something re food ingredients that I knew what constituted the making of what is was about to eat.
Of course I ordered something exciting and exotic….oops that was Marc .
But guess what….I had ……toasted sandwich…..ham and cheese. I was so excited.
This was the first time I have had a ‘normal’ meal ( my terms anyway) since we left home!!!
I so loved this!!! I ate it with relish!!! Of courses they gave you a sachet of tomato ketchup.
Please….on my toasted ham and cheese sandwich…….never!!
Marc on the other hand had ‘ blood sausage, potatoes, bacon and sauerkraut’ since it was ‘different’…he liked it anyway!!!
Just look at the picture !!

In this same restaurant they had a Christmas tree with beautiful decorations as they have all been
( we have started a photographic collection of the Christmas trees in each city/town of significance) ..but this one had chocolate decorations…..all creatively made and hung….it was so unusual!!

I do miss the bread basket, with rolls and breadsticks you get with your meal or snack in Italy, here is Austria when you order meals, or even just a soup, you only get soup…nothing else. I must also add here that each time we order coffee or wine in Austria, you also get a lovely glass of water. This was different from Italy. In Italy you have to pay for the water, either sparkling or flat….in Australia, it is habit that it comes with part of the meal. I mean in Brunswick Heads, you just go to the fridge in the cafe and get it yourself. However in Austria, it comes with your drink you order. Realistically it is the only water we are drinking each day…because if you drink too much you have to pee..and …well you know the story….so we will not go there. !!!

Now that I have shared all these stories with you…I guess it is back to the Romantik Austrian road part 2.

We travelled on little roads and big roads viewing little villages along the way. Oh yes we had some scary parts again with the road and the ice and snow. Some towns were picturesque, others were dirty and horrible but all quite different. For many parts of our trip, we were the only car on the road….going and coming towards us and you begin to think…” Where are we?”
Of course I was thinking….”where is he taking me this time….”
But as Marc said you have to have share in something that scares you each day!!

So our journey took in viewing steep mountainous terrains along narrow roads…. Low clouds…fog……blue sky……more plantation pines along the way to keep us company…, snow on the roadside …looking dirty and tired but by the end of the day we saw fresh snow, nothing to hinder our path but it was refreshing to see to change…..Much more interesting and very different from travelling the austostrade !

We did find a clever little town which we had to take a photograph of……I hope you look closely at the picture to see where we were…
We thought it was clever!!!

Today’s trip took us from Hallstatt to Gaming. Along the scenic view (a reminder to see above for the actual description) we stopped at Mariazell. Here we viewed a beautiful basilica which we were not allowed to be photographed and it was so hard to describe. All gaudily painted with gold leaves…..big…huge…enormous in fact …structures, paintings, shrines, pulpit, two sections of the church in one large area……with two worshiping sections. I am going to try to find a photo on the net to download,,.it was too ‘over the top’ to really describe.

Also, another example of a church not built in the familiar large church floor plan based on the cross. We had seen two other examples in Hallstatt of rectangular structures with the pulpit mid way along the LNG side of the church. The basilica was the same but split into two rectangles with one set out as above and the second with the alter at the narrow end. No explanation. They were all ‘old’ churches dTing their origins to the 1300s.

One thing I have discovered since my stay in Austria, is that this country is a catholic country and revere their religion greatly. I knew Italy was but did not realise this with Austria. The other aspect of this country and Italy was during the Christmas season…very little pictures or comments of Santa Claus or frosty the snowman…all nativity scenes and creations..and even live performances of the nativity scene in some villages we saw. I am aware that they have St. Nicholas day which is celebrated early in December.
Frosty the snowman is an American creation….Santa is not European at all. The Italian and Austrian Christmases were about the birth of Christ…through the Virgin Mary ( of course).

Tonight we have stopped in a hotel called Kartause just outside Gaming. (Marc had had enough driving for one day) This is part of a monastery which was commenced in 1300’s and developed into a walled settlement with its own church, seminary, houses, gardens and orchards. The houses, church, monastery and much of the walls remain but part of the monestery has been turned into quite a nice hotel and restaurant. In monastic tradition, it still makes its own ale. We went for a walk in the ice cold conditions,,,both of us were freezing by the time we turned back, but viewed the monastery and the little walled town associated with it. You can still see the original walls and the cloisters are still as they probably have been for centuries. Marc tried the local brew and found it quite nice, a soft and sweet lager-style. The restaurant had quite a reasonable priced menu but we settled just for soup but then shattered our frugality by sharing some appel-strudel with vanilla cream – not necessary but delicious. Then up the three floors to our bedroom…which is immediately under the roof with the ancient exposed wooden beams revealed complete with their tenon and mortise joints secured with wooden pegs. The floor appropriately creaks with every step as it should for its age. We feel sorry for anyone staying below us. At least there is no-one above us.

Tomorrow is another basic travelling day into Vienna but planning on following the Danube rather than staying on the autostrade.

Saturday 28

We left our hotel for the night to find that the temperature was -2deg and there was a heavy frost on the car. After starting the car to get the defroster going, Marc improvised by using his plastic Medicare card to scrape the ice off the windows – it did a great job and the windows have not been that clean for days (there is a lot of dirty snow melt on the roads and the windows are constantly dirty as is the car and now also Lyndell’s new coat from having brushed up against it a few times)

We drove to a place boasting that it was the best European Renaissance castle north of the alps only to find that we arrived about 1/2 an hour and about three months too early – it did not re-open until 10am in March! Well, we walked around outside the castle and viewed what we could. From the outside it looked interesting. One thing about castles compared to churched, they are much more varied in how they have been built and altered over the centuries and therefore more interesting.

The Romantik Strasse directional road signs reappeared after we left the castle. We had not seen them since before St. Wolfgang two days ago and been totally reliant on Lyndell’s road map reading and directing – she did not do too bad a job considering that some of the roads we went down were pretty non-descript and we could not use the GPS since it kept trying to take us on routes of its own choosing, not ours.

However, after using the Romatnik Strasse road signs to get us over the Danube, we abandoned them and enjoyed just following the north shore of the Danube a river downstream. By this time the sun had burnt off the fog and it was sunny so we were able to actually say that the Danube is blue, or at least it was today as it reflected a blue sky above. We saw quite a few large barges being pushed either up or down stream, castles or their ruins on the banks and plenty of church spires atop churches high on hills overlooking the river. This part of the drive was pretty and easy going.

Lunchtime coffee in a place called Turinl. Not on the tourist routes and not that friendly and then onto Vienna.

We have now arrived in Vienna.
What an amazing trip to get into Vienna. For some reason the GPS did not find the address of the B and B we are staying in…and so we had to rely on finding a tourist information to help us to get there . Now we know that every major city has a sign of a big ‘I’ that indicates which way to the tourist information centre….. Well today we were wrong.
No sign
No right way
No good!!!

We were driving around and around looking…and this city is so huge with split roads everywhere and one way lanes and add to that horse and carriages, trams, buses, people….oh fun!!!!
I never realised how huge Vienna is…well never having being here I guess I did not know…now I do.
Eventually we placed into the GPS “tourist information” and it began to direct us to some place…..
However, to add to this, I needed desperately to go to the toilet.
We had stopped in Tulin…which was an hour out of Vienna for a coffee break…..and the coffee had gone straight through,,,,,I mean straight through.
Add to that the cold air which hit us…( it is very cold in Vienna ) and my bladder contracting tightly. Squeezing me tighter and tighter, I began to feel sick with it…of course this added to Marc’s stress of trying to drive in these city road conditions, going nowhere and his wife holding on tightly to cross legs in the car.
Eventually I spotted a WC sign near the park…and mark doubled park while I raced across the busy road….only to find it ,…you guessed it…locked.
Tell me what city locks it’s public WC near a public park….in this huge city full of tourists and residents….you guessed it- Vienna !!
By this time I was near tears from the pain in my bladder and so Marc found a parking garage (four floors underground ) and we raced to the top of the garage…literally sprinted up the steps to find the WC at the top floor of this parking garage.
I think he gladly paid the 1.90 euro for parking so I could use the lavatory.
Oh not a good move when you were in a strange city and do not know where anything is.

Wy have now found out in our walking tonight, that there are some in the main city square area…( which is huge and many plazts ( squares) all rolled together in one……parking garages have one at the top floor of their underground parking, Marc even went into ‘McDonalds’ thinking they have amenities but was unsuccessful since you needed a code to get in. Obviously you have to buy something in order to use the toilet.
Tomorrow, when we are are out walking, I am not going to drink anything. When you drink you have to pee…and well you know the story from there!

Eventually we found the tourist office, which was also huge….and realised that the B&B address had been spelt wrong and that was why the GPS could not find it. By the way, the Tourist Information office does not have a public toilet in it – hmmmm, for a city that thrives on visitors, they obviously do not think they have to pee. The GPS could now take us the 2.5kms by road to our little B and B (it only takes less than 1/2 to walk but the roads do not allow cars to take the most direct route….and we sighed a huge sigh of relief finally getting here in one piece….having left early this morning from Gaming.

However, after our lovely surprise of our beautiful B and B ….it is gorgeous …red, white and black I decor…mostly white, and huge….( I have placed some photos up in Facebook) ….we went for a walk into the city. We enjoyed a horse and carriage wrapped up in a blanket…very romantic ride around the city and this gave us some views of the beautiful buildings and and ideas of which places to go back to tomorrow.
The sun had now set (4pm) and it is very cold…..more discoveries of Vienna tomorrow…stay tuned.