Regensburg was a hard town to leave...I think it is the most extraordinary place I have ever been. Not that I have been many places until my 55th year, almost. Anyway, leave it I did, with the feeling of absolute awe from looking up at the spires of the Dom still in my thoughts. The wonderful bells...indicating the hour by the appropriate number of strikes and the quarter hours by one and three strikes, the half hour by two. The slow-moving Danube. The colour, atmosphere, the life of a great city.
But, move on I did. Taking advice from a friend living in Regensburg, I decided against boating down the Donau (Danube) and instead went fot the quick option of catching a speedy ICE train from Regensburg to Wien. Met an Australian on board who was a young chef from Brisbane who had been told to take time off, and a lovely German lady called Claudia. We shared stories of our lives in German and English, laughed a lot, and the four hour trip did not seem long at all.
I arrived in Wien (Vienna) at about 1.30pm, and immediately saw that this was going to be another impressive town. Old buildings showing a variety of styles, people everywhere, and I thought it would be easy to find an internet cafe where I hoped people had responded to my late news that I would be arriving in Wien. Perhaps it was a bit of a warm day, and I was carrying too much after a long trip, but I couldn't be bothered with the email responses, and just booked into a hotel...as is my style, just across from the Wien West Hbf. Once I had splashed myself liberally with cold water, I checked the emails, and sure enough, Zsuzsanna and Gus wanted to meet me at 5pm. My first thought was that I didn't want to go anywhere, because I was quite tired...but knew I would regret it if I did not meet Susanna, who had been an MSN and Skype friend for some time. So, I followed her directions, and was there first at the Herrengasse station. Gus soon joined us, and we began wandering through laneways and streets, with both Gus and Susanna explaining what each building was, its significance, etc. I hope I didn't seem rude, but I was too tired to take it all in. In any case, we soon boarded the city Hop on-off bus, and took a journey that lasted about an hour around Vienna. I sat next to Gus, an amiable big bloke who confided in me, when I asked what he did apart from his artistic/computer projects that what he did was 'either, immoral , illegal, or fattening!' I am sure that that is a common Austrian line.
When the interesting tour finished, we set off for a restaurant Susan had picked, which served the hugest wiener schnitzel imaginable. Very nice too. After that, we set off on our separate ways, after Susanna had ensured that I knew the way home. She needn;t have bothered as I had ages ago got into the habit of asking people questions about directions, my own sense in this area being quite poor.
I got back to the hotel on this fairly hot night, spoke to people on MSN briefly, and then went to sleep.
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