Day 7 Vienna

A day off the bike. Hurrah! Known locally as ‘Buttock – Recovery Day’. Instead it was a day of footslogging along the Vienna tourist trail.

The morning started with a breakfast in a local patisserie (not in the hotel which was going to charge us €25 each for breakfast – bloomin’ cheek). Also frequenting the patisserie was a plague of wasps all enjoying the sweet pastries and looking like they were happy to spend the whole day there. We have seen loads of wasps on this trip and seemingly there is an unusually high number of them this year for reasons unknown.

Talking of plagues – in 1679 Vienna had one. A certain Marx Augustin, balladeer and bagpiper, was known to frequent some local hostelleries, play a few tunes and then spend his money on the demon drink and often to be found face down in the gutter the following morning. However, during said plague, the unfortunate folk who had succumbed to the infection and died were left in the streets for the body collectors who then took them off to the tip to be covered in lime and buried. Yes, you’ve guessed it, old Augustin got pi**ed one night and fell asleep in the gutter and was mistakenly scooped by the body collectors and carted off the the tip with the dead folk. He was tipped unceremoniously into the hole and left there waiting to be covered over the following morning. Fortunately for him he sobered up just in time to realise his predicament of becoming entombed but he couldn’t get out of the hole. This is where his trusty bagpipes came in. A few frantic toots brought the gravediggers hurrying to the side of the pit to find a bleary eyed Augustin trying to scramble out. Legend has it he didn’t catch the plague despite having spent the night in a hole with loads of infected bodies!!

This little story was told to us by Gerty our guide on the 2 hour walking tour around the nooks and crannies of the old town. Highlights included:

After the gruelling 2 hour walk we retreated to a cafe for a restorative coffee and kuchen before the peloton split. One pair to the tasty sounding Naschmarkt and the other pair to the Schloss Schonbrunn. The latter pair enjoyed miles of footslogging through Olympic sized parterres and ostentatious statuary rounded off by a very expensive slice of apple strudel and a very welcome thunderstorm.

Oh well – so much for tourism. Back on the trusty bicycle steeds tomorrow heading towards Bratislava.