A walk in the Vienna Woods

After walking blisters on my blisters on Saturday, we decided it would be a good idea, it being such a glorious day, to go for walk on the Kahlenberg (the mountain near where we live).

The Viennese are so polite in some ways (greeting you when you enter and leave a shop, and even in lifts!), when they are not, it seems completely out of proportion. For example, the journey to the top of the Kahlenberg from where we live is taken part on the tram and the latter part of the journey, from Grinzing up the mountain is on a bus which winds up the snaking road, flanked by green pasture and and the densely planted and oddly named Krapfen Wald - doughnut woods (don't ask me why, as I have no idea! but if I find out, I'll let you know).

Because the weather was so miserable on Saturday and so glorious on Sunday, the bus is packed with people who've had the same idea as us and we have to squash together to get on. Lots of the passengers generally get off half way up when the bus stops a the carpark. There are refreshment stands and a (new) petting zoo and some make the rest of the journey on foot.

The journey up the mountain is very twisty-turny and people have become used to physical contact with the people around them in the tightly packed confined space. As the bus stops and before the door opens, there is the usual kind of movement of people beginning to make it known they want to disembark and working their way towards the exit. I became aware of increasing pressure from the old man stood next to me. My initial thought is that he has unbalanced as the bus came to a halt and I turn round to help steady him. He isn't falling or unsteady at all he is actually pushing me, leaning and pushing me out of his way off the bus before the doors have even opened without a word of excuse me.

From the viewing platform at the top you can see for miles over Vienna and across the flat plains towards Slovakia. The hills in the distance are blue and dreamy... The wind is however, rather unforgiving so we retire to the coffee shop for a coffee, a grosse Brauner (a Viennese coffee closest resemblance to a macchiato, with capuccino froth) and a sausage, which here meant two each! Yum.

I thought you might like to share these little fellows too, from the gift shop.