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Saturday, August 17th - Maria Gugging to Vienna, 9043 km
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The skies have cleared overnight and it is a beautiful morning. When the 10:30 check out time comes around I set out along the radweg to Vienna. The path hugs the Danube around the base of the 400 m hill at Leopoldsberg that separates the suburb of Klosterneuberg from Vienna itself. About five kilometres from the centre, the Donaukanal (Danube Canal) leads inland through the heart of Vienna to the west of the river, and the bike path follows it. It is set down by the water, below the street level. When I determine that I am at the city centre I leave the path to join the city streets.
I find the tourism office in a main square in the city centre opposite St. Stephens Cathedral. The woman at the counter supplies me with maps, accommodation suggestions and brochures of attractions. Her warm and friendly response is not typical of Austrians, who generally have no use for tourists or anyone who is from somewhere else. In fact, I am not sure if they have any use for each other either. They are the coldest people I have ever encountered. The friendliness on this woman's face slams shut as soon as she has answered my questions. It is only her service façade.
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Around 5:30 I return to the hostel to wait in a queue to check in. The process is predictably officious and efficient. A couple of the staff, the ones with foreign accents, are friendly and make the service warmer. It is a large hostel with probably a couple hundred beds. I am in a small dorm with three others, an American, a German and someone Dutch I believe. Their bags are here but they are not.
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It seems the name Why Not is more of an explanation than a rhetorical question. It is dead for a gay bar on Saturday evening. It is only 10 pm but there should be more than the a dozen or so people that are here. It is a pub more than a dance bar. I take a seat at a table a couple metres from the bar. There are three men at the bar, my age or perhaps a couple years younger. They check me out to see who has arrived and make eye contact with me. I nod and smile at them. They turn away without either with smiles or words in return. Their reaction feels a bit hostile to me, though it is nothing out of the ordinary here. I wonder if they suspect I am a foreigner.
The waiter comes by and I order a Pilsner beer. "He's English" one of the three at the bar says to the other two in English, loud enough for me to hear him clearly. He says it as though he is speaking about an object, not a person. It might be his way of letting me know they all speak English but are uninterested in speaking to me, only about me. I no longer want to meet them but I sit there for another hour hoping others will show up. They do, but they just as unfriendly and disrespectful as the men at the bar so I return to the hostel to get some rest.
PHOTO 1: Maria Gubbing Kirche
PHOTO 2: the bike path into Vienna
PHOTO 3: interesting graffiti on support to elevated highway
PHOTO 4: street in the centre
PHOTO 5: partially unsculptured block
PHOTO 6: Karlsplatz
PHOTO 7: St Stephen's Cathedral
PHOTO 8: Parliament Buildings and buggy
PHOTO 9: Vienna Rathaus
PHOTO 10: Hapsburg Palace
PHOTO 11: someone's having a bad day
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