Day 7 - Bratislava, Slovakia to Wien, Austria - 2486 miles

Vienna is just over 50 miles from Bratislava and so Kit and I took it easy in the morning and had a little more sleep. We’d paid 3 Euros for breakfast at the hotel, which seems cheap on the face of it but turned out to be a 3 Euros off the price of the hotel’s restaurant breakfast menu rip off. We had scrambled eggs and some bread before hitting the road. This is my third visit to Vienna and I was here last year with my brother Steve where we saw Longital and Vienna-based band Das Trojanische Pferd. We also came here in 2000 to see Rosenstolz, a favourite German pop band. On both of our previous visits we've had a great time and there are stories to tell, like the time I booked my brother and me into a hotel to find it was a brothel, but Vienna isn't my favourite city. I like being there but it is a place I couldn't live in. The centre of the city is like one big museum and people interact in a unnecessarily formal way that I don't understand. Then there are the artists and unconventional like a reaction. What's the point of living in a place that you are constantly reacting against?

It was another glorious sunny day in Vienna and it was time to relax especially after negotiating the car through the narrowest of gaps to enter the hotel's car park. We took an hour to organise charging our various batteries before heading out into the city. Very annoyingly we discovered the hotel's wifi only works in public areas, whatever that means.


Just adjacent to our hotel there was anti-Europe protest, which appeared to be organised by Austria's version of the twin-set and pearls brigade. The forces of conservatism at work was curious for me. I haven't seen any anti-EC politics on my travels before. I watched the two women for ten minutes or so and nobody stopped to talk to them so they didn't appear to have much support.

We caught a tram to the nearest railway station and bought a day ticket for the city's transport system. In Vienna you need to use trams and the underground to get around as they weave in and out of each other's routes. The tickets also cover the buses but I've only ever had need for a bus on one occasion before in Vienna.

Vienna is not a city where it is possible to see everything in a day so Kit and I sacked the culture and headed to the main shopping area, Mariahilfer Strasse, and decided to concentrate on buying some gifts for my wife and daughter. We spent God knows how long wandering around finding nothing amongst the generic shopping crap that is the same all over western Europe. The only shopping worth doing, in my opinion, is that for music so I took Kit to Vienna’s best record shop 'Recordbag' at Kollergerngasse 4. 'Recordbag' is a wonderful independent music shop of the very highest quality. It sells a wide variety of music related paraphernalia as well as well as any decent independent German CD you might want. I was hoping to get a copy of the Enno Bunger album I missed in Rostock but unfortunately they didn’t have it and had never heard of him. The shop assistant was most put out that I knew of a German release they didn't have and looked it up in a catalogue in an 'Oh no, there's no such thing' manner. She appeared even more put out that the release actually existed. I compensated by getting new albums by Die Sterne and Der Elegante Rest. The latter being by one of my current favourite bands and coming as a complete surprise as I didn’t know it was available, which was slightly annoying as I thought I knew everything.

On the opposite side of Mariahilfer Strasse is Vienna's best drinking venue, the 7 Stern brew pub on Sieben Stern Gasse. They brew great beer including two flavoured with chilli and hemp. Actually, the chilli and hemp brews aren't very good but the others are all wonderful. Well, now I come to think of it the smoked beer is a bit poor too. They also have a great menu of traditional Austrian food which is kind of like German cuisine only less so. When I was last here with my brother we ordered a knuckle of pork which is a traditional north German dish. The menu recommended that one knuckle of pork was enough for two people when in Germany you generally get one each. I questioned the waiter and he said one knuckle was definitely too much for one person so we followed his advice and got one between two. When it arrived at our table, yes you've guessed it, it was just the same size as you get per person in Germany, which is slightly disappointing after having had your appetite stimulated by all their beer. Despite the previous disappointment we decided to eat at 7 Stern and sat in the sunshine in the beer garden. Kit had a cream of garlic soup followed by a classic Wiener schnitzel and I had a Serbian bean soup followed by a baked pasta and mixed meat dish with masses of grilled cheese served in a frying pan. The soups were both delicious and the main courses were quite good, which the observant amongst you will notice is a less impressive description than delicious. I also managed a glass of the pub’s lovely seasonal beer. Seriously, 7 Stern is a great venue and I would go there every time I'm in Vienna but like all the best places it is not perfect. It is a fact that the next time I'm there I will not eat either of the main dishes I had previously.

We took a tram past Vienna’s museum quarter, so Kit could at least glance at some of Vienna’s grand buildings, to Stadpark where we strolled in the spring sunshine and sang a few songs by the statue of Franz Schubert my favourite classical composer.
As we did so a small audience gathered but there was no time to linger because we had arranged to meet Hans Wagner, cello playing genius of the bands Neuschnee and Das Trojanische Pferd. Hans had suggested a number of possible evening activities and we plumped for seeing a live art play for something different. The play 'Gob Squad's Kitchen' was a German/English bi-lingual production with a live art flavour to it. The context involved a group of 4 actors attempting to recreate Andy Warhol's 'Kitchen'. Cameras were set up behind the large white screens and video of the actors was projected onto the screens. During the course of the play audience members were drawn into the cast and took the place of or joined the actors. It was an impressive and ambitious project that you felt could fall apart at any moment but didn't.

www.gobsquad.com

After the play we talked to Hans in the bar for a while amidst a lot of noise pollution and smoke. Britain's no smoking rules haven't yet caught on to the same extent in most of Europe. I went to the toilet and on my way back to the bar an attempt was made to charge me a further 3 Euros for the privilege of getting back to my son, friend and drink. 'It is a new party now,' I was told 'The after show party has finished and you have to pay extra for the music.' The music was the usual rubbish generic shit music you hear evrywhere so I told them politely but firmly where to get off and it was time to go. Last time we were in Vienna my brother argued with a couple of guys who were talking over a band we were trying to watch and I pondered how different I would be if I lived in Vienna, constantly reacting against silly formality and people who don't know the meaning of live and let live.

Back at the hotel we were disappointed to find that the promised free 'wifi' in public areas did not work and so the blog fell further behind. I began to feel very tired but a bit wired and I found it hard to sleep. My eyes were very dry and itchy and I realised I was dehydrated. Now I look back at the video I realise I look really fatigued and maybe the ambition of the trip was taking its toll on me. If this were a work of drama my condition would get worse but I had a long drink of water and got off to sleep.