Filling in the gaps

This week on the blog, photos from another lazy spring hike! Although I have owned my trusty round Vienna hiking guide for over three years, I still haven't been to every place listed in it. Some of that is public transport related, but the rest is a combination of lack of imagination and not quite being able to connect the maps in the book to their location in the wider world. I realised recently that a section of the Wienerwald southwest of Vienna but behind the leading edge of hills bordering the Vienna basin had been left out of my hike planning, despite requiring only a bus from the edge of the city to get to!

Thus it was that the village of Sittendorf became the start point for the hike depicted here. The walk was a beautiful one, taking in all kinds of classic Wienerwald scenery like meadows, beech woods, and views of the ranks upon ranks of hills in the Wienerwald and Alps proper beyond. Especially wonderful were the flowering wild garlic plants, whose white flowers carpeted the forest completely in a manner similar to bluebells in the UK.

Perhaps by chance and perhaps due to its location relatively near Vienna, this walk passed 6 or more (!!) Gasthaeuse and two separate lookout towers. The second of these (by the Kammersteinerhuette) was particularly brilliant, the skeletal metal construction affording fantastic views from over 500m up, taking in the Lainzer Tiergarten, Vienna, the Hoher Lindkogel, the Anninger, Bad Voeslau, and many other past hiking haunts. The tower pokes out through the canopy and the hummocky nature of the surrounding limestone Wienerwald gives the view a dramatic quality that put me in mind of a very rough sea. The lowering darkness of a raincloud directly above the tower combined with the brisk wind and the sunshine from the further hills to create a magical view that I spent probably about half an hour gazing at, while everyone else went to look for cake and drinks in the hut...

All in all a lovely route, made all the better by ending at the boundary of Vienna, so you can just hop into the tram number 60 and be on your way home! The final part of the hike led us over the former grazing meadow of the Perchtoldsdorfer Haide, the scrubby grassland of which is more reminiscent of the chilterns than Austria and which provided the perfect place to sit around in the sun instead of going straight home.

Hope you enjoy the photos, the gallery is right here!

Bis bald,
Der Tom

Moedling to Baden: the Wasserleitungsweg in the sun

Look, it's not always sunny in Austria. But frankly it is sunny often enough that it sometimes feels that way to me. One of the most enjoyable things about spring in a country with a summer is that every beautiful day can be taken as a promise of more to come, not just a teaser for something that will never actually come to pass. Of course, one can see it that way however many sunny days one expects in the next several months, but in Britain, let's face it, we don't. In fact, often every sunny day is taken as an opportunity to complain about how it is never sunny! I was once told that there is a Swedish word/phrase for 'feeling sad in early Summer because you are reminded it will all too soon be over', which just goes to show that it isn't just the British who aren't very good at the whole positive outlook thing.

Anyway, todays photos are from a very leisurely hike purposefully designed to be inclusive to all (me as well after a night of dancing) by starting after 11am and avoiding any big hills. It was a fantastic and very warm spring day, with temperatures over 20 degrees. Due to aformentioned leisureliness and the fact that big high mountains do still actually have snow on them, this walk was along the local branch of the Wiener Wasserleitungsweg. Despite a lovely walk between Gumpoldskirchen and Moedling at sunset a couple of summers ago, I realised I had never actually gone further than Gumpoldskirchen, and made that the goal for the day (along with wine and food consumption, this is a VERY good walk for that as there are many many small wine stands along the way).

The whole walk takes place in vineyards on the slopes at the edge of the Vienna basin, offering sweeping views, misty ranks of hills, and the ever-present dramatic flourish of row upon row of vines receding into the distance. These factors combine together to give a great impression of perspective in the landscape, which nicely carries through into photos and makes it a pretty easy place to get some nice shots, especially with the addition of picturesque architecture and fruit trees loaded down with blossom. On our way we also saw a whole bunch of hunting kestrels and heard a cuckoo! Welcome, Spring.

Hope you enjoy the pictures, you will find them here.

Bis bald,

Der Tom

Hoher Lindkogel: mad weather, mad views.

An Easter Monday hike! Easter is a very big deal here, it is almost like a second christmas. At work the week before I was almost the only person from our sub unit actually there! Luckily I managed to find two people to occupy me on Easter Monday, I wouldn't have known what to do with my free day otherwise... It is no coincidence that the two people who were still around were an Irishman and an Englishman, in the British Isles we appear to be a lot more relaxed about easter and don't treat it as the kind of holiday where going home to the parents is near-compulsory.

I spent a while wondering which hike to do, and in the end decided to go for the Hoher Lindkogel (ca. 840m), which we have climbed twice before, but never from Bad Voeslau. Partly this was because there had been some definite snowfall the week before and the proper alps were likely to have been a bit deep in the white stuff, and partly because I didn't want to get up early knowing I would be dancing the lindy hop till late the night before. This hike was an attempt at a third time lucky good view from the top of the Hoher Lindkogel, on our two previous trips Fionn and I had been unable to see even the top of the summit viewing tower from the base of it...

The hike started in bright warm sunshine, and we sweated quickly on up to the viewing tower overlooking Bad Voeslau at around 450m up. We were treated to a good view of the Vienna basin, combined with a pretty strong wind. There was a fair bit of haze and cloud on the horizon, which soon resolved itself as the edges of isolated snow/hail clouds. These would be a constant feature of the day, either near or far, but never icing on our heads for very long. For ten minutes we would sweat, not wanting to take off our coats due to the inevitable snow shower we knew would come. Just as the warmth finally defeated us and we took off our coats, the sun would be swallowed, the wind and snow would start, and the whole cycle would start again....

When we reached the top, we were mercifully sitting in a clear patch and could enjoy the panoramic views out over the Vienna basin, the Wienerwald, and the ranks of the alpine foothills to the south of us. The isolated snow clouds out on the plain were really spectacular, the slowly falling snow making incredible wispy tendrils dropping down from the dark bodies of the clouds themselves. Over the course of only a few minutes these clouds could be seen to track across the plain, leaving sunny patches in their wake.

After an Apfelstrudel, we headed on down, first through a steep sided, mossy gorge (in which we were caught in a magical but brief snowstorm that turned everything white just for a few minutes) then through the Baerlauch-scented woods and into Baden. In the end we had done over 22 km, a pretty tiring first long hike of the year. Check out the rest of my photos of mountains and snow clouds at this link!

Bis bald,

Der Tom

Not a bad place to be imprisoned

At the beginning of March I finally got round to going to the famous Danube/ Wachau region village of Duernstein, having previously only floated past it on a boat from Melk to Krems. Well, in fact I gratefully took up the invitation of my hiking buddies, without whom I wouldn't go half the places I do! Duernstein is a beautiful village in the incredibly picturesque Wachau region, where the Danube flows through the harder metamorphic rocks of the Bohemian Massif. This leads to a narrower river with steeper cliffs to either side, complete with tor-like rock pillars peeking from between the trees. A covering of sandy, wind-blown glacial loess fills the valleys and allows for huge ranks of vineyard terraces. The whole area is overflowing with history, geology and wine!

Duernstein is particularly famous, for its medieval architecture and walls, for its striking blue church (that looks to me a bit like a 50s sci-fi rocketship) and for its ruined castle perched among the rock pillars above the village. Although we no longer know for sure whether it was in the village, in the much rebuilt castle (Burg) above, or somewhere else nearby, the name Duernstein has passed into history and legend as the place where Richard the Lionheart was imprisoned from December 1192 to March 1193, while trying to travel back from the Crusades. His ransom paid for many things, including the founding of a mint, the founding of a city, and upgrades to several castles...

Our hike took us switchbacking up the steep rocky cliffs next to the river, almost immediately giving us fantastic views of the rock formations across the valley, the castle, the Danube, and Duernstein itself. Zigzagging further between trees and rock formations, we passed the odd geological curiosity, like a beautiful ductile shear zone and some lovely small folds. Not everyone was as excited as me, of course.

The views of amazing rock formations remained for the whole of the hike, sometimes near, sometimes far, and occasionally adorned with the odd climber soaking in the early spring sunshine. This place looks amazing to climb in, and I really should come back and give that a go someday! The final highlight of the walk was the arrival at the castle proper, sitting almost impossibly atop a bit of rocky high ground. I have to say that castle builders seem to have much more of a flair for dramatic locations here in central europe! The castle has of course been worked and reworked over many centuries, including being invaded by marauding swedes (yes, swedes!) during the 30 years war...

We headed down the educational Richard the Lionheart tourist path back to the Danube, where there was time for a quick sunset stroll before the bus back to Krems. A selection of my photos can, as ever, be found by clicking a link. All in all, I wouldn't mind spending a few months imprisoned round here, at least if I got a window!

Bis bald,

der Tom

Research Seminar in the Snow

A while ago now I went to a research seminar where all the members of my department and some external collaborators met up to talk about science. This may sound interesting or boring depending on your views about the science in question, but there was an extra perk: the venue for this meeting was a 300 year old wooden alpine farmhouse in a snowy valley and well known ski resort, Saalbach-Hinterglemm.

Naturally this was not coincidence, and most of the party, professor, postdoc and student alike, were soon off on the slopes. The lecture schedule, a few hours in the morning and a few hours after dinner, was specifically designed to enable as much hurtling down snow covered slopes as possible. I, however, am a very lazy person, and naturally wary of any activity that will make me exhausted, cold, and look like a fool. Well, not always, but sometimes, while in the closing stages of writing of your thesis, you just don't want to do new things, you'd rather go have a lie down...

However, I didn't spend all my time in between lectures lying down or staring forlornly at incomplete papers on my laptop, and on one sunny day in particular I did get out for a stroll. I didn't have any snowshoes, so it was lucky that most of the paths had a good frozen crust on them or I wouldn't have got anywhere. As it was, uncharacteristicly without a map and with unclear, snowy tracks that might just have been skiing trails, I still managed to have a nice time. Definitely blew the cobwebs away, and there were some great views out down the valley and of the ice encrusted back wall. Also sun! Lots of sun!

Enjoy the photos at this handy link, I've been letting them pile up so I have more to share soon, now that I have at least handed in my thesis!

bis bald,

Der Tom

Valentines day in the snow

So I really haven't been doing any hiking in this part of the year. Most of that is being busy, but certainly since the start of January we did finally have a bit of snow round here, which also makes one think twice about going for a walk. It's not been a proper crazy winter like two years ago, but there has been just enough punctuation by white stuff that I at least feel like there will be a difference when Spring rolls around, it will actually feel like we have had a proper year pass!

In the city itself we have only had the odd delightful day where the snow has been relentless enough to properly cover the place and start forming picturesque, wind blown drifts (Vienna is a windy city, which is what its Latin name, Vindobona, pretty much means). What with the traffic and the pretty startling efficiency of the snow-clearing operations - not to mention some inopportune 'warm snaps' - most of the snow in the city has ended up disappearing within 24 hours. But out in the countryside, the deep snow stays around a lot longer with the cooler temperatures, lack of asphalt and absence of snow ploughs.

The photos in today's album were taken on a quickly arranged Valentine's day stroll with Ash. He brought a packet of dates with him, because he is a joker :-)

The route is a very traditional one for me, one of the first walks I did after returining here in 2011, up from Huetteldorf over the hill and down to the end of the 43 tram in Neuwaldegg. The whole route is within the boundaries of Vienna, but nonetheless far enough away from buildings to seem like another world, even without the snow on the ground. It was a beautifully sunny day and I got some shots I'mreally happy with. The icing on the cake was that the fantastic, twisting viewing tower was open despite the wintry weather, affording some excellent, hazy views over the city and surrounding Wienerwald as the sun edged towards the horizon.

Here's the link to the gallery, and here's to more hiking soon!

Bis bald,

der Tom

Time spent outside...

... is never wasted time, goes the saying. This small crop of pictures result from a hastily organized walk in the middle of January during a brief freak warmth blip, sending us up somewhere above 15 degrees for the day.

Not only did we get to stretch our legs and enjoy the warmth and sunlight, we also got to witness a magical phenomenom, iridescent clouds! As far as I can tell / guess, it is clear that iridescent clouds are thin, high up, and composed of ice crystals of similar size (and that size is likely pretty small). All the websites I checked put the optical effect down to 'diffraction', which isn't very helpful. I would love more detail, especially seeing as the colour of the clouds appears connected to their thickness, which looks more like a scattering effect to me. But whatever their cause, they were absolutely magical and very persistent, hanging in the sky for a good few hours during our leisurely stroll.

On the walk we got peckish and stopped into yet another tiny Heuriger up in the hills that we didn't know was there, grabbing some tasty bread, ham and cheese to fortify us while sipping fresh grape juice. Not bad for a hike organized an hour or two before! Click the link for more GLOW CLOUD GOODNESS.

Bis bald,

Der Tom