Went to Vienna city centre for a few hours and basked in the baking hot sunshine. This is a very historic city and seems to have two big bits to its history – religion and the arts, particularly music of course. They certainly build things big over here – the cathedrals, the musems, even the parliament building is massive – I’ve never seen anything like it before. Also there are loads of parks and gardens. I think they have a lot of pride in their city. The whole flavour of the place was of course captured in that famous song.
Early evening, I reached my goal of visiting all five Eastern European countries that border the western ones. Went to Hungary and finally Slovenia. I nearly didn’t make it to Slovenia as there’s nowhere to park close to the border, so it was a very long walk, but I made it and am really pleased with the achievement. It adds five more countries on to the total.
The last leg of today’s driving was the longest – and best. I had to get from the border with Slovenia (bottom-right corner of Austria) to Salzburg (far left side of Austria, near the top) to meet my wife who is joining me for a few days of the trip. Most of the middle of Austria is covered with massive mountains and so until fairly recently you had to go a long way round.
Now, the new A9 has been built and it is a direct route, going literally straight through the mountains with a series of winding roads and long tunnels. Again, what I could see out of the windscreen when not in a tunnel was amazing. I did have to pay for the priviledge though – yes, as well as the sticker in the windscreen there’s also this toll road. As the sun set and night fell, the only light was from the car headlights and small villages in the mountains.
Over the last hour of the journey, a violent storm was brewing and because of the height I was at, I had a panoramic view of the sky lighting up literally every few seconds. The sound was very loud too – something big was coming. Thankfully the rain arrived for me just 15 km from the airport so I only had to bear with it for 10 minutes. Passenger on board, off to the hotel via a late night trip to Burger King, the only thing still open.
KM TRAVELLED TODAY: 640 km TOTAL: 4046 km
