vienna and bratislava

20 july
Bratislava Slovakia is just down the Danube from Vienna. We wanted to take a boat there, but they have to be booked well in advance, so we took the train instead. It was a quick hour’s journey through more farmland. The difference between Eastern Europe and Western Europe was more striking here than in the Czech Republic, possibly because the trip was so quick and also because Vienna is so opulent.

pretty but shabby

the train we rode was in much better shape than this

Still, Bratislava is charming, with a pretty hilltop castle and small town centre. We enjoyed a wonderful meal of tapas before returning on the train.

our lunch stop


one of the main squares

Tim’s fever is gone and he’s back to his perky self.


19 july
Vienna is an impressive city. It’s all about the architecture again, but where Prague’s buildings are generally cozy and welcoming, Vienna’s buildings seem to sit on golden thrones that we wander around the legs of, like ants in the throne room. We started at St. Stephen’s church.


impressive tile work on the church roof


the opulent inside of the church

Then we made our way to the palaces, and museums that look like palaces. We stopped and had some Viennese coffee near the stables where the Lipizzaner horses are kept, trained and paraded. We didn’t see them. From the outside, the stables and arena look like a palace.

the square where we had coffee. the stables are behind paul who is taking the photo

this is a museum. we ate our picnic lunch beside one of the bushes.

i believe this statue of athena with nike is a replica of what scholars believe stood inside the pantheon in athens. we'll see the pantheon in a few weeks and can try to imagine her there about five times this big and without all the statues below her feet.

At 18:00, Tim’s fever spiked, so we took him to a hospital that we’d learned of from a pharmacist this morning. The care was excellent and immediate. The first question they asked was about insurance, and Paul was ready with EU insurance cards that he organized for all of us long before the trip. We saw four doctors, all of which spoke English. They were kind, friendly, professional and made a nice fuss over Tim. They gave him a suppository for his fever and a prescription for some drops for his eyes. We didn’t get home until 23:30, which was hard on Tim. He was over tired and screamed in bed inconsolably for about forty minutes. Poor guy. Poor neighbors. Poor us.

18 july
Our sat nav, which we love, took us to Vienna by way of a secondary road through Northern Austria. It wound through small villages and rolling hills of farmland. We met the Danube at Krems with the monastery of Melk making an impressive show on a high hilltop. Arriving at our Vienna campsite in the late afternoon, we spent our time doing administrative business, as Paul calls it. Our campsite has loads of hot water and laundry, so we got all the kitchen things clean as well as our clothes. When we arrived, the place was about half full. By the time we went to bed it seemed full, and when we woke the next morning the place looked like a music festival. Tim’s cold hasn’t improved or worsened except that his other eye now has the same discharge.

there is a tent to my left that you can't see with a family from romania inside.