Buchberg

I have been endeavouring to go hiking as much as possible in the autumn and early winter. I missed some of the best parts of autumn in September while gallivanting around greece, but I wasn't going to let the whole of the most beautiful and least hot season trickle away!

At the beginning of November we had the last of some pretty sunny and relatively warm weather, and today's images are taken from a hike taking advantage of the beautiful yellow, slanting winter sun. This hike was in the Wienerwald, but a little further west from Vienna than many of my hikes taken from my trusty hiking bible. Out this far, everything is definitely rural. The small town of Neulengbach at which we started the hike featured a pleasant old schloss, and while leaving the immediate surroundings of the town we passed a few horseriders and sunday walkers, as well as a horse paddock inexplicably next to a whole pile of mouldering ex-vienna transport buses...

The scenery of this hike reflected its location on the edge of the Wienerwald, just before the more open fields rolling down towards the Danube north of Vienna. The imposing, triangular lookout tower on the Buchberg, the destination of our walk, provided a fantastic view; out north over the rolling fields towards the Danube and Melk; southwest towards the capital of Niederoesterreich, St Poelten; and southeast towards the peaks of the limestone Alps, the striking (and by now actually snowy) Schneeberg among them.

Here you are then, a link to another small gallery of pictures of a hike in Austria. The scenery is a bit different in this one, and I'm really happy with some of these capturing the combination of undulating ground, the lines of the fields and the afternoon sun!

Der Tom

Potsdam

At the beginning of November I spent a week in Potsdam, the often somewhat overlooked small city just 20km SW of central Berlin. It is the capital of the Bundesland in which Berlin is embedded, Brandenburg, and is really completely different from Berlin. I was there to do some measurements on my samples, but a public holiday that took me slightly by surprise (Reformation Day, 31st of October, it is only celebrated in 5 of the Bundeslaender) offered an excellent opportunity for some sightseeing. This was my third trip to Potsdam for work purposes, but the first time I had ever had the time to see the city centre in daylight!

Sanssouci and wine terraces

Potsdam has long been a place where various rich people would retreat to to escape the hectic life of court or the big city and hang out on the banks of the many lakes/rivers in the area. The big trend setter here was Prussian King Frederick the Great in the mid 18th century, who built his frankly modest sized retreat in Potsdam, the Palace Sanssouci. Having heard this place mentioned along with places like Schoenbrunn, it was a big surprise to me that it was so tiny! Very impressively situated atop a south facing series of terraced vines though, an impressive feat of survival at Potsdam's latitude. Sanssouci is one of a whole complex of various grand houses and palaces from the last 250 years, set in a broad landscape of ornamental parks completely engulfing the actual urban areas of Potsdam.

Part of a different palace, actually the servants area/kitchens!

The centre of Potsdam has some really nice areas, more pedestrian streets and some narrower streets make it feel less horribly spread out than the vast multi lane highways that I find Berlin streets to be. The architecture is a nice mix of older buildings, with the star attraction being the beautiful Dutch-built houses of the Dutch quarter, built by and for Dutch workers on the various palace projects. There's also a Russian settlement in the area!

Autumn colour in the park

The weather on the day I chose to explore was beautiful, a perfect late Autumn day with a slightly unseasonal boost of extra warmth, few clouds and lots of sun, so much so that I could enjoy a fantastic meal in the Dutch quarter outside while reading a book! After the hectic few days science-ing, Potsdam was the perfect city to relax in, a great counterbalance to its big sister Berlin which is nonetheless only an S-Bahn away. (I guess I will use sister as cities are female in German).

Here is a short gallery of pictures taken that day.

Der Tom

Trans-european Mountain Goats Odyssey

Flashback to summer: I discover that the Mountain Goats are touring Europe for the first time in several years. Now, obviously (sadly) they weren't going to come to Vienna. I decide however that seeing as I have no idea when they might come back, I should go see them anyway. An examination of the schedule indicates that the easiest place to see them in would be Cologne. But, what's this? They were also playing in the Belgian city of Ghent! 'I have a good friend currently living in Ghent who I haven't visited yet!' I think.

Shoes in central Ghent...

Thus it was that I ended up travelling by train to Ghent, staying there for 2 days, seeing the mountain goats, then hopping on the train to Cologne to catch them a second time before finally arriving back home.

Ok, so it goes without saying that the Goats were amazing. They're my favourite band after all, and the chance to them on a tour where they were playing basically anything from their back catalog they felt like was really special, and made the value of seeing multiple gigs so much higher. I could go on a long time about both, suffice to say they were both totally different in venue and atmosphere, and that at the first I got to hear this song played live on piano, yay!:

So, Belgium. I really liked it! We spent only a few hours in Brussels, enough to see the main square, eat chips (V important in belgium) and find the first of many beer locations. What a joy to be in a place that not only has a beer culture, but also a beer VARIETY culture!

Most of my time was spent in Ghent, which was a lovely place. A stunning centre of the town with medieval and 20th century faux medieval buildings, a massive church and cathedral next to each other, a castle, and several picturesque squares and canals. Much more importantly than any of this stuff though was the feeling that Ghent had a real cafe and bar culture. I know I shouldn't judge other places by whether they have the stuff Vienna has, but it was easy to feel at home in Ghent as one could sense that you could lead a similar cafe and restaurant based life there as I lead here in Wien. The cafes aren't just for great beer either, on Saturday night we experienced a great live jazz/swing/rock'n'roll quartet in a packed bar. Another cool thing was the whitewahsed graffiti gallery situated in an old barge, of which there are many pictures in this post's accompanying gallery.

We also tried to spend the day in Bruges, but the weather was diabolical and drove us into far too many very touristy locations. Probably Bruges is great with the sun out but I preferred the more lived-in, less ENGLISH MENU HERE atmosphere of Ghent. The funnest thing in Bruges was seeing the graveyards of twisted umbrellas piling up and up at every rubbish bin in town.

A summary of the waether in Bruges as we visited

The trip required a lot of time in trains, which was for the most part enjoyable though I doubt I'll ever get the proper hang of sleeping on a night train. I managed to get through the whole of American Gods (for the second time) which was a great companion if a little at odds with the surroundings of central europe!

Pictures here...

As always,
der Tom.

Autumn Mists on a Salamander Quest

One Sunday I awoke, terribly late as usual, and discovered that it was dark, dingy and thickly overcast. Although it was not raining, the streets were slicked with water and it looked like it might start up again any minute. I immediately phoned my friend and fellow quest-participant Ash and we agreed that it was perfect weather for... A SALAMANDER QUEST.

The aim of the salamander quest is so simple, I shall not spell it out here. In previous years we had discovered that this time of year and weather conditions were excellent prerequisites for a successful quest, although ideally there would have been a few more dead leaves already on the ground.

We set off from the familiar ground of Cobenzl, halfway up the Kahlenberg and one of the most frequented parts of the Wienerwald still within city limits. The clouds were so low we were completely immersed in them, visibility was down to a few tens of meters and the widely spaced beech trees loomed indistinctly in the distance. Although it was not raining, the woods and undergrowth rustled constantly with falling water droplets, the fog condensing directly onto the leaves and dripping down in a strange almost-rainstorm.

Less than an hour of damp searching and many fungi photographed saw us heading on a major path in the direction of delicious Austrian Gasthaus food with which to fortify ourselves. On this path, quite undisturbed, sat a big, fat, orange and black salamander. Victory photos taken, we adjourned to the restaurant, consumed our lentils, dumplings and bacon (well, in my case) and then headed home, content in the knowledge of another salamander quest well quested.

This is what quest victory looks like. Cool and mildly poisonous.

Here's the full gallery!

Der SalamanderTom

Crete Field Trip

Part two of my geological journey to small parts of Greece...

We took the night ferry from Athens to Crete, which was a lot more luxurous than I was expecting. I mean there weren't gold plated bathtubs or anything but our cabin looked like any land based hotel room and the ship was so big I don't think I felt a single wobble the whole night. Sadly the ship still arrived before 7am though, so no lie in!

We spent 10 days on Crete, all of which I enjoyed greatly. I am sure part of this was to do with the existence of precious, precious clouds and even on one occasion rain! Also one huge advantage of Crete is that it has big (up to 2500m) mountains so there are some upland areas which are also cooler!

Crete is much bigger than I realised, over 200km long, and in 10 days we only covered parts of the western half of the island. The scenery changes dramatically, in keeping with the varied geological units and tectonic history that has affected the island and continues to the present day. There are high limestone mountains with folds on all scales, broad bays with sandy beaches, precipitous terraced areas and switchback roads aplenty. Big height changes are common, driven by the differences in erosion between various rocks combined with huge numbers of faults uplifting and downthrowing different segments. Best of all there is lots and lots of coast, leading to beautiful exposures of structures in full 3D.

The traces of earthquakes were everywhere for the trained geologist. A fault scarp is the exposed surface of a fault which breaks the surface as one side is thrown up and the other side is thrown down. These really are fantastic s
tructures, you can feel with your hands the scratches and mineral lineations which display the most recent movements of the fault for all to see!

This 50m high cliff is a fault scarp!! Note that it would not have been exposed in one event though, that would be an utterly huge earthquake.

We stayed in a varied selection of towns in Crete, ranging from a 'proper' town where many local people seemed to live, to a town which was completely swollen with beach tourism, to a village with barely 40 houses nonetheless entirely (and I mean this) occupied by german holidaymakers. All of these offered fantastic food, which is best experienced by ordering as many small dishes as possible, even though one waiter was convinced this was 'not the greek way' (he would have had a fight with the serifos waiters who were pretty sure it WAS the greek way!).

All in all an excellent trip, after years more or less out of the field, and a limited field experience at university, it was more than useful to get some quality time on the rocks with a whole buch of students and some excellent field geologists, most of whom were discovering the outcrops for the first time themselves, lending a very excited atmosphere to the whole proceedings...

There's a whole other half of crete to explore someday, I guess!

Until then, here's the gallery of photos from the half I did see...

Der Tom

Summer School on Serifos

After less than 24 hours in Athens we negotiated the subway system and boarded the fast ferry from the port to the island of Serifos. Serifos is a 75 square kilometre member of the Cyclades, more or less in the middle of the Aegean sea. Its only claim to mythological fame is that it is the island where Perseus and his mother washed up. After returning with the head of Medusa, Perseus turned the king of Serifos to stone as punishment for attempting to forcibly marry his mother (thanks wikipedia!).

The ferry ride was much more exciting once I found the way to the outside of the ship, although you were only allowed at the back where the strong wind mingled with the diesel fumes to produce a somewhat unpleasant atmosphere in contrast with the azure sea and dusty islands. In a theme we shall return to often, the sun was also incredibly intense, and I eventually fled below, only returning to get a good view of the island itself as we rounded it and came into the harbour. The geology field trip began before we even got to land, as one of the professors pointed out salient geological features as we passed them.

By far most of the time was spent on geology, and so shall receive necessarily little comment here. Every morning were 4 or 5 hours of lectures, and every afternoon several hours in the intense sun looking at outcrops relevant to the morning lectures. The rocks were fantastic, though I could have enjoyed them easier without the punishing schedule and the more punishing sun!

Mostly I only got round to taking photos as the sun headed towards the horizon, painting the dry rocky island with a less blinding light. As with much of Greece I suspect, the real times of activity and relaxation were the warm evenings, featuring plate after plate of greek starter dishes, the odd beer (greece has lots of beer due to the historical german influence) and the odd ouzo (as long as it is with LOTS of ice!!) and the odd 'tsiporo', which is island greek for raki... One particularly amazing restaurant lay outside the rest of the town, a few hundred metres from its lights. If you made it that far without turning back, thinking you had left the town completely, you were rewarded by reaching Margarita's restaurant. The eponymous owner must have been at least 80, and with uncomplicated english she invited us into her kitchen to choose our dishes! Once she had lifted the lid of various cast iron pots and pans and explained (in greek, with a short english translation) what they were, we could make our choices. Every possible type of greek food was available, the highlight being the stuffed aubergines and tomatoes, as well as the chicken in tomato sauce, and, well, everything frankly. If all the food is gone for the night, the restaurant closes!

A last highlight was the night sky. I had guessed that a tiny mediterranean island might be just the place for a bit of stargazing, and on two nights I was able to hike a little out of town to get an absolutely brilliant view of the sky. Partly aided by the fact that greece is considerably further south than my usual stargazing spots, I was able to see at least 5 or 6 zodiac constellations at once as well as some southern (celestial) hemisphere stars! The milky way was in fine form, and I pretty much convinced myself I *just* saw the Andromeda galaxy.

The ferry trip home saw a gorgeous sunset over the sea, which rather monopolises the last part of this small collection of images I took on the island.

Next time (whenever that is) we get to Crete!

Der Tom

A brief stop in Athens

So, here we begin the tale of my September antics. Due to a cunningly scheduled confluence of a student field trip to Crete and a PhD group seminar on the much smaller cycladic island of Serifos, I was privileged to spend nigh on three weeks of September learning about and getting to literal grips with the geology of the Aegean area.

Of course, the thing about islands, remote or no, is that it is always a tiny bit harder to get to them than some other places. In the case of my first destination, Serifos, the vagaries of flight and ferry schedules demanded an overnight stay in Athens before heading to the ferry the next day.

I didn't know much about Athens (still don't!) but my colleagues and I were clear on one thing: you're supposed to go and see the acropolis. So, less than 2 hours after stepping off the plane, we did! Athens is a different sort of city to the ones I spend most of my time in. There is little in the way of old (as opposed to ancient) buildings, and most of the streets are lined with 4 or more storied flat blocks. The pavements are pockmarked, occasionally narrow, and it is clear that street cleaning is slightly lower on the priority list than in central Vienna (though this is true of almost every city, I'd imagine). A lot more stuff was going on on the streets though, all kinds of small stores and hundreds of people with second hand things just spread out on blankets on the ground.

Other things I didn't know about Athens include how many hills are in and around it, adding a cool element to the city's skyline (can you can call it a skyline when it is made of hills not buildings?). The acropolis is of course situated on/around one such hill, sticking up abruptly right in the centre. After Florence it was a nice surprise to find that the acropolis in the evening is a fairly quiet place, partly just because it is so large. The view from the top was amazing, especially with the sun going down. From the top all the dusty streets and flat blocks of athens turn into a big white carpet lapping up against the occasional hills and stretching a long long way out towards the sea, just visible on the horizon.

The acropolis itself is impressive, of course! It is really quite impossible to get into one's head how really, really old it is, even at the same time as I think, geologically speaking, that it is really rather young! And the sheer size of the remains is impressive too, just enough to hint at how monumental it would have all looked intact and painted!

As is becoming terribly monotonous for you I'm sure, you can click on some words and they will lead you to pictures of the things I have been talking about!

Hopefully soonish you will get the first batch of field trip images proper, of the island of Serifos.

Till next time,

Der Tom

Vienna Interlude: 70 year old graffiti in the Lainzer Tiergarten

In the week between my trip to Florence and setting out for the greek islands (all for work mind, no holidays here!) I snatched the chance for a brief walk in the Lainzer Tiergarten. It was the first week of September, the beginning of one of the best months of weather Vienna has to offer, and I was a little sad to be missing so much of it.

The weather for our walk was obligingly autumnlike, not too hot, not yet cold, plenty of bright sun but lots of dramatic clouds too. The original plan for a very small walk soon stretched out into what for me and one of my fellow walkers still counted as a short walk, although the third member of our group wasn't so sure (and he certainly wasn't expecting to still be out at dusk, as he was wearing his prescription sunglasses... sorry!).

'Damen haben Antwort zu erwarten' / 'Ladies should expect a reply'

The grounds for extending our walk were to reach the viewing tower in the centre of the Tiergarten. There i took a few shots of the dramatic light breaking through the clouds, and also for the first time some shots of the rather unique graffiti to be found there. The tower was finished just prior to the outbreak of world war two, and scratched into its metallic cladding around the parapet is a veritable history of postwar Austria, first featuring Austrian army members advertising their addresses to prospective lady correspondents. 'Ladies can expect a reply' writes one soldier under his address, complete with rank and barracks.

'die Welt in Ruhe'/ 'the world calmly/quietly/peacefully'

After the war there comes graffiti from British/Americans, such as 'Bill Stallings, 1948, Vienna 1946-49' and also plenty of Russian graffiti too. It is actually almost rarer to see more modern graffiti in some areas, which were obviously filled up quite early, but one particularly romantic graffito from 1961 portrays the changing times, reading '2nd July 1961, I looked at the world quietly and at peace. Erich und Helmut, 30 years old' ('2. Juli 1961 sah ich die Welt in Ruhe und Frieden, Erich u. Helmuth, 30 Jahre alt'). Our modern scratchings are rather put to shame by the beauty of the handwriting, not to mention the depth and richness of sentiments of those from earlier times... The view is still good though!

The full 6 photos can be accessed here. Sometimes the handwriting is hard to figure out, and I only just now think I have puzzled out that Helmuth's name is Helmuth... Do check up on my work!

Der Tom

A trip to Florence (but not on holiday!)

At the end of August I travelled by night train to Florence (Firenze) Italy, for the annual Goldschmidt conference, an international geochemical gathering.

Probably one of the most important and exciting occasions for scientists are international conferences. Sure, it's fun sitting around doing research and chatting to your office mates, but nothing beats finding out what everyone else from all over the world is doing! If you're lucky, you might even find a few people where you feel qualified to actually discuss their work with them, rather than just take their conclusions at face value. And if you're super lucky, you might find some people who can do the same for your research (here's where you hope that you haven't been barking up the wrong tree for the past few months!).

Naturally, seeing as you could hold an international conference anywhere in the world, one tends not to choose ugly places for them, so I do have some small tourism anecdotes. One part of learning to be a PhD student has been to realise that just because I am at a conference doesn't mean that every microsecond of my time has to be focussed on me and my project. It is very important to relax, wander around, look at posters on things you have no idea about, and generally chill out. This helps avoid feelings of demoralisation when you realise how little of the time you actually spend presenting your own work and/or 'networking' with new and influential people. One has to realise that a conference will usually never provide the exact answer to that problem that's been bugging you for the last month, but nonetheless, it can still give you a bunch of ideas, usually about stuff you hadn't even started thinking about yet...

Florence in late August was hot, but no hotter than Vienna, so it was just about possible to explore. I only spent one day checking out the city, and even then I rushed back for the poster sessions, so most landmarks were experienced only from the outside. Florence is a beautiful, but therefore reasonably full city. I wouldn't say it reaches Prague-like levels of tourism congestion, but it is on the way. This means that those seeking authentic italian experiences that do not come from the architecture might have to look further afield. Nonetheless, the food is great, even if the menu is often in English, and so's the ice cream! Though I was surprised to note that true italian fruit icecream seems to be more fruit than cream.

Zhang Huan + Florence....

Of course the highlight is the insanely detailed Cathedral in the centre, clad in 3 different colours of stone with a massive dome on top. The whole of the town centre is littered with ancient mansions from ludicrously rich people from the 16th century, which you can look at if you don't mind getting run over by mopeds cos you're not looking where you're going... The second highlight was rather a serendipitous find. On a hill overlooking the city I discovered an exhibition of vast, buddhist inspired sculptures by Chinese artist Zhang Huan. The juxtaposition of giant buddha heads and the Florence skyline was unexpected, but therefore all the more entertaining.

A few pictorial highlights can be obtained from the usual location by carrying out the usual clicking operation!

Der Tom

3 Days on the Hochschwab

I have just returned from a three week internet (and Austria) absence. Hopefully, more on that soon! But first, time to briefly recount the three day hiking trip that I had, more or less, been training for the whole summer with all those other hikes detailed in the pages of this 'web log'. The reason I even felt I had to get fitter at all had less to do with the fact that the hike was planned to be three days and more to do with the fact that I knew my very good friend William was coming over from Norway (where his PhD is, he is a New Zealander and thus more given to saying 'bid' for 'bed', etc than fits of nordicness). Anyhow, I was aware he has been known to run more than one marathon in his time, and thus thought it best not to disappoint. Nicely though in the end we ended up a bigger group with William's brother and a group of Austrians and a Dutch person the brother had met while travelling south america...

When the call went out for routes I got very excited, bought several maps and eventually identified the broad concept of the route we ended up taking, which was very nice, though i relied on the locals for finesse and hut booking.

The hike took place over a weekend with forecasted highs of 38 degrees in Vienna, and boy were we glad to (somewhat) dodge that! After a friday afternoon bus and train journey down to the northern edge of Styria, we headed up into the majestic forest of limestone cliffs to find our first hut just as sunset was painting the mountains gold then violet. Not going to lie, I was pretty happy with this bit of the walk! Cool late afternoon temperatures, quiet paths, mountains and a sunset. Fantastic! Reaching the hut at 1600m (we started around 900 or so) we settled into the big dorm room for the night. This is just a big, mattress filled room, so little privacy and there is always a snorer, but if you are rising at 6am like us you need all the help you can get to get up!

The hut had no water to offer, and even filtered drinking water had to be bought, and was not free. This was due to the weeks and weeks of dry weather that preceded our hike. Indeed until we reached the bottom of the valleys on the 3rd day we did not see any sign of running water other than still preserved snow, slowly dripping into sinkholes and feeding the lower valley streams.

Day two began with the aformeentioned early start to dodge the worst of the heat on the 700m climb up to our goal, the summit of the Hochschwab, 2100 ish metres. This part of the walk was hot and sweaty in the sun, but still cool in the shade, and once we reached 2000m the path spent a pleasant while winding between lesser peaks without major height change before the final brief push to the top. After the breathtaking view came a hot descent, getting hotter with every metre dropped and with every minute as we headed into the afternoon, hottest part of the day. After a hot time walking through and amazing boulder strewn valley we reached waterless hut number two.

Day three was an uncomplicated descent, begun with an impressive sunrise and a nice walk in the morning light. As the day wore on and we got lower down the heat again became hard to bear, and once we left the mountains we decided to taxi it back to the train. This proved a good thing as the bus wasn't running and the direct road to the station was closed due to clearup from a recent storm!

All in all a wonderful 3 days, tackling a nice long stretch and ending up somewhere different to where you started are both things I had been missing from my hiking, and it was a great bunch to share it with.

I took a lot of photos, but I have narrowed it down to the best eighteen for your viewing pleasure (or I hope pleasure, at least).

Der Tom

Climbing a mountain with bits of metal stuck to it

This blog post concerns a hiking/climbing trip I took up the Rax with Steve, an old scouting friend of mine. Although when I lived in London it would somehow have never come into my head to travel one and a half hours by train starting at 7.30am to reach a mountain, that's the sort of thing I do nowadays. Of course, it helps a lot that the mountain in question is 2000m high and offers a series of opportunities to scramble up or along its steeper parts while attached to some wires which are in turn attached to the rock.

Such an assisted scrambling route is known in english by its Italian name, via ferrata (iron way I'm guessing), and is in german called a Klettersteig, which interestingly involves two different words for climb, one being in the sense of rock climbing and the other in the sense of climbing stairs/a ladder/up anything.

Steve models the slightly too small helmet I hired for him (sorry Steve!)

I bought the required equipment for the Klettersteig last year, a helmet and a pair of clips that attach to your harness which will be familiar to anyone who has ever done any kind of high ropes course as they are basically the same. These are not supposed to be routinely fallen upon (unlike in climbing, where you can give up and fall onto the rope any time you like), they are just there to stop you falling off the mountain if you do something really silly.

Our route, the right hand Steig then the upper traverse.

 A lot of the time, a via ferrata is something that in the UK we wouldn't even put any protection on, so it isn't all that dangerous, but the addition of ladders etc means it can get you to and up some really cool bits of the mountains where walking wouldn't work, without requiring you to spend a whole day flat out climbing a rockface, which requires a lot more specialist skills.

View from the top of the Klettersteig!

The Klettersteig was excellent, the valley in which it is located is surrounded on all 3 sides by very steep walls of limestone, and the second part of the via ferrata was a traverse across the back wall, affording excellent views down the whole length of the spectacular valley. Having reached the top we spent a couple of hours exploring the undulating Rax plateau, a very different looking landscape to the sharply plunging cliffs that form the edge of this big chunk of limestone.

Alpine flowers were everywhere on the plateau

After a refreshing Almdudler and an expensive trip in the cable car to save us breaking our knees for no reason getting back down to the road, we called it an exhausting but thoroughly worthwile day!

The selected photographic highlights are located beyond this link!

Der Tom

Trip to Burgenland

In the second week of July I was privileged enough to be invited along with my housemate to the homeland of my other housemate, who has recently left us to return to that magical land. I have a couple of friends in the area and my housemate had sure spent a lot of time there, so I was curious to check out what made the area so great! The area in question being Burgenland, a reasonably narrow but long strip of a Bundesland which divides the rest of Austria from Hungary and contains Austria's largest lake.

Burgenland is really very close to Vienna, an hour on the train but only maybe 50 km, the train is just quite slow and winds around a lot.We breakfasted at the parents' of another friend, and it was here I was first introduced to one of the coolest things about Burgenland, at least at this time of year: there is food growing EVERYWHERE. I barely had a single fruit or vegetable that had not been grown in the garden or field of the person I was being served it by...

Schloss Esterhazy has some crazy faces on the wall...

Then it was off to examine the main town in the area, Eisenstadt. It is certainly no Vienna in size, but it does have a cool Schloss (Esterhazy) in the middle of it. Having taken the tour and soaked up some grandeur in the Schloss (where Haydn spent a lot of his time as musician in residence), we headed up the hill to one of the oddest churches I have ever visited, a 'Bergkirche'. Basically it contains all the stations of the cross (plus some extra stations they added for extra fun!) inside an artificial, dome shaped rambling building of rough stone. The path winds up, down, in and around and round every corner is another biblical tableaux, until at some point you reach the top and can enjoy the view. Apparently (according to german wikipedia at least) these things weren't so unusual in the 18th century.

The Neusiedlersee and some inhabitants.

Other activities that day included checking out the famous Neusiedlersee, a 36 km long and 6-12 km wide but very shallow (< 2 m) lake surrounded by thick reedbeds and beloved by austrians, holidaymakers and waterbirds alike. In the evening I took my first ever trip to Hungary to eat some Hekk, which appears to be a delicious pike type fish in batter that frankly wasn't too far off a posh british fish and chips! It comes with garlic bread, not chips however.

What Hekk looks like, though mine had no chips!

The following day saw more hanging out by the lake and a trip to the picturesque town of Rust, which is absolutely full of stork nests, perched on little artificial platforms above the chimney. Previous to that occurred the best wildlife sighting of the weekend, when on a visit to a low hill above a large roman quarry (now used for a big opera festival) we were privileged enough to see a Ziesel, or European Ground Squirrel. Not a common thing by any means! The hill by itself was rather cool, it was littered with abstract sculpture left over from a sculptors international conference in the 70s, which gave it a real Salvador Dali air, what with the weird forms intruding on the rolling landscape.

Sculpture park/ Ziesel habitat

We finished off our trip by picking some fresh apricots and courgettes to take back with us. So there you have it, Burgenland, hot, flat, and full of fruit and veg! Oh, and one huge lake and some storks! And lots of people who very much enjoy living there to take advantage of these things...

Have a quick look at the highlights by clicking the green words!

Der Tom

Schneeberg, 2061 m

It's summer! Things have stopped flooding! It doesn't rain, even when you really, really want it to! When it is summer, you can climb mountains because they are not covered in snow anymore!

Later in the summer I had agreed to go on a 3 day hike in the Alps with some friends. As at least one of these friends runs constantly and has done at least two marathons, I figured it wouldn't hurt to put in a bit of training and get up on some mountains for the month beforehand. Obviously, I also just really, really love mountains.



Today's post and photos concern a hike I did with a couple of Vorarlbergers up the Schneeberg, highest mountain in lower austria and easternmost peak of the alps over 2000 m in elevation. The hike started in drizzle but this quickly evaporated as we walked up the winding track next to the railway which leads up to the plateau near the peak. The railway is pretty cool actually, and it certainly demonstrates how tricky it is for trains to go up steep hills. Once a day on weekends they send the old time steam train up, and it takes 1.5 hours for a climb of 1200 metres! We saw it, and it was a pretty noisy thing. The engine was placed at the back of the train, possibly more to save the passengers from the immense gouts of steam/smoke it was pumping out than anything else... I know there must be a lot of kids that are pretty sure that train is the coolest thing ever though!

 
Once over the lip of the plateau at 1800 m or so it became clear that the sky might have been blue and the sun beaming, but the weather was still not ideal. The wind was about the strongest I have ever experienced on a mountain, and when walking across it you really did have to walk diagonally leaning into it, and it could hold you up! Thankfully, the wind was not evenly distributed over the mountain so we soldiered on to the top, to be greeted with incredible views, reaching even to a faint Vienna in the distance over 60 kilometres away!

Heading down a much steeper and rockier section, we finally reached the bottom of the mountain having done 1500 m up, 1300 m down, and nigh on 20 km horizontal distance! Getting up for work the next day was NOT easy, I can tell you.

Here's some visual highlights!

Der Tom

Wasserleitungsweg part 2: The Wasserleitungsweg strikes back

As I mentioned in my first post about the amazing series of tubes that bring water to Vienna, the Wasserleitung travels all the way up into the mountains. Along with a large group of mostly russian and bulgarian speaking companions (english very much not the majority language on that hike!) who all wanted a nice Sunday stroll, a month or so ago I set out to walk to the source of one of the big pipes that ensure we have tasty water to drink in the city. It's an easy hike, following the valley cutting through the mountains, rather than going up any off the limestone giants themselves. As most of the hike was along the valley floor, I haven't got too many photos to show you that I think are that impressive. But I did experiment a bit with some long exposures to capture the cool wide mountain stream we encountered further up.

 This stream was obviously textbook habitat for a bird that is rather elusive in Britain, the dipper. I found a whole nest of these interesting streambirds, which like to dive messily in and out of fast flowing streams, and are apparently unimaginatively called 'Wasseramsel' or 'Water-blackbirds' in German. I was very excited to see one, on family holidays in the UK we were always being told that 'there might be dippers about' but I cannot once recall actually seeing one. After getting used to the idea that these birds are mostly invisible, it is a little puzzling to have several of them hopping and flying around with noisy abandon next to one's seat on the pebbles of the riverbed!

A dipper! Top left.

Here's the tiny collection of pictures in full!

Der Tom

Two Towers

... but not *THE* two towers.

I have been trying to get out on a hike at least once a weekend throughout this summer, I really didn't take quite enough advantage of the hiking around here last year and besides, when it is predicted to hit 38 degrees sometime on Sunday, it is clear that leaving the tarmac filled heat sink that is the city centre is just a matter of common sense!

This brief bunch of photos were both taken at the top of lookout towers in the Wienerwald, although the similarities mostly end there. The first group of images were taken atop the 600m Anninger after a pleasant, conifer shaded walk with Ash from the train station at Mödling. I feel sure that I have mentioned the Anninger before, it is one of the higher hills in the immediate vicinity of the city, and seems somewhat higher once you reach the summit as to the East of it lies only the flat Vienna basin. Most of the walk is shrouded in trees, but once you reach the lookout tower you are treated to a magnificent view of the peaks of the Wienerwald, ranging away to the Schneeberg in the distance. I have taken hundreds of photos of this view, but this time some excellent shafts of light breaking through the clouds made it all look just that bit better.

The next small batch of pictures come from a couple of weeks later, on the evening of the summer solstice. I had actually planned to nip up a lookout tower, the Jubiläumswarte that overlooksVienna from its western slopes, in order to catch the sunset. As it turned out, despite a rather brisk walk from the tram stop up into the hills (necessary to avoid the mosquitos, never mind anything else), I managed to miss the actual sun by 10 minutes or so. Shouldn't have spent so long on dinner! Nonetheless I spent a good hour and a half relaxing in the cooler air at the top of the tower, watching it go slowly dark over Vienna. I spent a long time trying to photograph the planes coming in to land at vienna airport, from a good vantage point such as mine one can usually see about three at once strung out in a line getting ready to land...

Enjoy! And I hope it is cooler than 30 degrees in your office right now!

Der Tom

Wiener Wasserleitungsweg

Apparently in Austria sometimes there are work outings, I suspect possibly just excuses to use spare department money for wine. Anyway, this year for the first time my department had one, where we went for a brief walk in the sun along the path named in the title of this post. After a short time we ended up in the picturesque and wine-filled town of Gumpoldskirchen to enjoy the fruits of its labours and tonnes of very fatty spreads on bread. This is what one does in Gumpoldskirchen.

After the wine drinking was over and everyone was setting out for the somewhat infrequent trains back to Vienna, I decided that I hadn't had enough of the Wasserleitungsweg, and headed off for another hour and a bit, walking through sunset and finally stopping when it was basically too dark to continue. I eventually blundered my way to a train station and went home, much refreshed.

Perhaps I should mention, the Wasserleitungsweg is a path along the slopes at the edge of the Vienna basin which follows the route of one of the large aqueducts that provide Vienna with its famous water. As you were perhaps aware, almost all viennese water is springwater from the alps, piped in two vast aqueducts towards Vienna, the first of which is 140 years old. It is 95km long and the water drops through 270m over its course, meaning that absolutely no pumping is required! The water from a spring in the vicinity of the Schneeberg in the alps delivers around 62 million cubic kilometers of water a year (just over 50% of all the water needed/used) according to the wikipedia article, which is only available in German.

As is traditional, please enjoy the photos I took of the sunset over the vineyards (which I persist in trying to call winegardens even in english nowadays) by clicking on a linky thing.

Der Tom

Todays PS highlights an absolutely incredible installment of NASA's image of the day feature, a photo shot by a crewmember on the international space station showing a view of storm clouds over the atlantic ocean. It is my current desktop, you shall see why!!!

Hochwasser

As you may or may not have gathered, the beginning of June saw a rather wet time for central and eastern Europe. Weeks of unseasonal rain swelled rivers to bursting in Germany, the Czech Republic, Austria, Hungary and many other countries. For inhabitants of many towns, cities and villages, this was a stressful, expensive and for a few even deadly time. I say this as I don't want to make light of all the damage done by the floods in the rest of this post, but as many know, the natural world in excess can be beautiful as well as dangerous.

The swirling floodwaters

The reason that allowed me as an inhabitant of Vienna to spend my time gawking and the high waters rather than worrying for my house is Vienna's rather effective flood defence system. In the 70s a whole second channel for the Danube was dug out, the material excavated from this was then used to build an island separating the new and old channels. The new channel, Neue Donau or new Danube, is usually sealed off from the Danube proper by large gates, making it still water and incidentally the only bit of the Danube that is even remotely blue. Together with the 20+ km Danube island, the new Danube spends most of its time being a much loved recreational area of Vienna, affording opportunities to swim, jog, relax, bike, eat pizza or whatever your heart desires, all in easy reach of the main city but somehow a million miles away.

When the floodwaters appear, the gates are opened and the second channel comes into use. With an almost doubled cross section, the Danube can handle much faster and more voluminous flows without breaking its banks. The gates were indeed opened during the most recent flooding, and like a number of Viennese I went out to take a look at our favourite recreational destination being used for its most important purpose! The danube islan and new danube are without a doubt one of the most effective and thoughtful pieces of town planning I know of, and a great example to the world's cities of how to improve and protect yourself at the same time!

The photos I took of this undeniably rather impressive phenomenon can be found as usual by clicking on a link.

Der Tom

BONUS FINNISH FACT: The finnish word for 'world', 'maailma', is an ancient compound of the words for 'earth'/'ground' (maa) and the word for 'air' (ilma)

Hainburg an der Donau

I am an occasional member of a group of likeminded and extremely international people who like to go for a walk on a Sunday, sometimes this will be an actual 8 hour hike, sometimes a tiny stroll with a bit of culture thrown in. This is the advantage of doing things with non-natives, they are a lot more willing to go see the sights, and/or go see if there are any sights to be seen!

The castle at Hainburg, beneficiary of Richard the Lionheart's misfortune

The Sunday we went to Hainburg was one of those Sundays more tourism than hiking tour. Hainburg an der Donau is a town of about 6000 people situated right next to the danube (the clue is in the name!). It has quite a lot to recommend it, touristically speaking. The town centre is still surrounded by high walls built originally in the 13th century, and these are broken only by some rather large medieval gatehouses, one of which houses the comprehensive town museum. Atop the hill above the town is the castle (Burg) alluded to in another part of the name, the destination for our mild stroll. A real proper castle ruin, not a prettified villa or folly, the castle was expanded and improved substantially using the ransom money England paid to get back Richard the Lionheart! Near to the town proper lies the important Roman crossroads settlement of Carnuntum, and the town also includes a museum featuring a number of roman artefacts (and on the day we arrived, some kind of archaeological conference).

Above, one of the medieval town gatehouses!

Hainburg is also almost directly on the border with Slovakia, and is closer to Bratislava than Vienna. From the castle walls Bratislava can be recognised by some of its more famous sights such as the castle. The train line to Bratislava used to run past Hainburg but now the main line runs somewhere else due to a cocktail of historical circumstances, the modern train service runs on only one line and the stations are tiny... The same S-Bahn that terminates after Hainburg goes past the airport, so the train starts out packed and then very quickly empties as you travel across the dead flat of the Vienna basin towards the widely visible hill behind the town. Geologically speaking these hills mark the edge of the Vienna basin, the very end of one little outlier of the alps and, over the river, the start of the slovakian tatras.


Hope you enjoy the small gallery of images, showing a more typical small austrian town instead of the overgrown and beautiful monster metropolis (hah) that is Vienna.

Der Tom

PS stay tuned for a couple more updates soon, I have already sorted and uploaded pictures for them which is always the slowest task, so I should get round to writing about them shortly.