An actual holiday: the Czech Republic

Although I am on permanent holiday in Vienna, it turns out that I am still able to take regular holidays! Actually, I haven't taken a regular holiday where I visit somewhere that isn't the UK for a non-job related purpose in probably over a year, such is the nature of PhD student and ex-pat life. So it was good for me that my good friend Manu was even more in need of a holiday and recommended a trip to the Czech republic. I was very excited, as I have always wanted to see more of the embarrasingly nearby Czech Republic than just Prague.

Manu's tip was that we head to the town of České Budějovice, in the South of the Czech republic and due north of Linz about two hours on a very sleepy slow train, which we later discovered pretty much exactly followed the route of the early 19th century horse drawn railway that connected Linz and
České Budějovice. The town has another name in German, Budweis, and this may give a clue to the major thing that it is famous for outside the Czech Republic, namley its position as the home of (and only production site of) the world renowned Budweiser Budvar beer. It goes without saying that we did the tour, Manu even managing to heroically drag back 40 bottles of the Czech-only budweiser brew in his vast suitcase.

České Budějovice has a beautiful and very peaceful old town absolutely littered with very old and slightly wonky buildings, centred around a vast and very impressive main square, whose highlight is the rather over-the-top town hall with big metal dragon heads protruding from it. Overlooking it all is a large medieval tower providing an excellent view out towards the hills beyond and over the river Vltava (which will later flow through Prague) and the smaller tributary that joins it in Budějovice. My main impression of the place was that it was one of those quiet, beautiful central european towns with abundant parks and enough room for everyone to have a very nice life, though I am sure there are plenty of inhabitants who would still want to swap it for London :-)

The coolest building in town was in my opinion the Dominican Monastery, a gorgeous gothic church with baroque flourishes, filled to the brim with medieval wall paintings incuding an almost TEN METER HIGH wall painting of St Christopher from around 1450 (apparently he was often depicted as a giant?!). In the nearby village of Hluboká we saw a building that, while not as reserved, was the only thing that topped the monastery, using brute sheer architectural exuberance. The castle, home for many years to the rich and powerful Schwarzenberg family (who had a knack for winning battles of europe wide importance against enemies like the Turks and Napoleon), is currently in its third or fourth incarnation: a mock tudor-style castle modelled after Windsor Castle. The outside is stunning enough, but the insanely complex carved wood panelling and almost casual assortment of vastly expensive objects really blew me away.

Our final day and a night were spent in the nearby (and pretty famous) Český Krumlov, all winding medieval streets, piles of tourists and an impossibly fairytale castle looming high on a cliff over the rest of the small town. We were lucky to have accidentally arrived during a middle ages festival, and proceeded to eat big lumps of grilled pig (I ate so much pig fat on this holiday) and drink rather a lot of Budweiser. Our very successful party evening brought us medieval electric guitar solos, drinking companions from Britain, Canada and the Czech Republic, a firelit procession of medievally clad locals, and a lot of fun! Our journey back to Vienna the next day was subdued but satisfied...

Catch the bumper 16-photo album of what I did on my holidays right at the link!

Bis bald, 

Der Tom

Hohe Veitsch Hike

Among young Vienna based hikers, one object is highly prized: the car. Given the advantages of bikes and public transport for everday transport around the city, most of us city dwellers, especially the non-natives, do not own one. However, it is in the nature of mountainous regions that they are never perfectly accessible by public transport, and the rare offer of someone with a car opens up exciting possibilities beyond the everyday.

This blogpost reports on one such car-assisted trip to a peak I had not climbed until now. There is a whole chain of biggish mountains heading West from the Schneeberg and the Rax, made of the same tough limestone as those two peaks/plateaus. I had visited all of the major limestone mountains in this row between Schneeberg and the Hochschwab but one, the Hohe Veitsch (between the Hochschwab and the Schneealpe, much closer to the latter). We set off on a beautiful sunny summer morning in June.

After a much-more-rapid-than-the-train journey it was time to hike. Starting off in shady forest we crossed occasional hot stretches of felled trees before reaching a gorgeous flowery meadow with isolated trees. The flowers were definitely the theme of this hike, we seemed to have hit exactly the right time and from that point onward the mountain was always colourful. Skirting the edge of a large ridge to avoid going over it, we climbed a steep saddle and easily made it up to the small summit plateau of the Hohe Veitsch. Sweeping grassland with flowers gives way to distant views of the other limeston peaks in the region, and I had great fun at lunch mentally ticking off all the ones I had been on! Especially nice was the view of the whole Hochschwab massif, which I really love to walk in but have never seen a good overview of from a distance before now. The domed head of the Hochschab itself was prominent, as were the snowfields collected in the nooks and crannies of the 2000m high plateau.

We started back down, thinking to get back to Vienna nice and early. A navigating error led us to miss a hairpin bend and continue heading straight, towards the ridge we had skirted earlier. From the back of the group I was pretty sure this wasn't the way we had planned, but quite honestly, I had been eyeing the ridge enviously all day. We reached it, and agreed to take the high road back to the car. This was absolutely the highlight of the walk, scrambling along the very top of the rocky limestone ridge with fantastic views to each side, and the whole place festooned with alpine flowers and almost no other hikers in sight. A brilliant wrong turn! The walk down to the parking place was more direct than the way there and we made it back for a quick icecream in the hut there, later but also happier than planned!

The photos attempting to capture the magical flowers and views can be located by clicking your manual interface device on this text! Hope you enjoy them and maybe it will inspire you to go outside!

Bis Bald,
der Tom

PS the ridge is called der Wildkamm if anyone wants to check it out themselves!

Perchtoldsdorfer Heide take 2

Hallo! I was away being other places and doing some science for the last couple of weeks, which meant the week or so before was full of preparations for those goings-away. All in all, little time for writing on the internet, but, due to the going away, new photos have been generated! Before that though are a backlog of things from late May and early June.

After enjoying the beautiful view from the Kammersteiner Huette lookout tower and the grasslands of the Perchtoldsdorfer Heide (which are part of the previous blogpost on this site) I knew I had to share the magic with my trusty companion Ash. The Aussichtsturm really isn't all that far from the edge of Vienna so can be reached with public transport for a nice 1 -2 hour stroll in the woods. The summer months also mean you can start the walk pretty late, which is a nice bonus.

On the weekend afternoon I chose to show Ash the route we had gorgeous sunshine, and the Heide was looking very nice, and also very Chiltern-like, as befitting its status as grazed land on limestone... There were a whole bunch of grazing sheep in small temporary fenced enclosures. These sheep were doing a great job of mowing the lawn, chomping down the grass rather noisily. Not once did any of them bother to lift their head for a good photo! The view from the Turm was as dramatic as before, though the photo conditions weren't perfect due to the bright sunlight. Thus I had more time just to sit and soak in the vista, which was improved by a view of the Schneeberg 50 + km away as the air was much clearer than on my first visit.

After some absolutely delicious Eierspaetzle (that's just eggy Spaetzle to you but these were done perfectly) at the hut we headed on back down to the Heide to admire once again the grassland plants and beautiful flowers. A short but sweet afternoon out! Here's the customary link to the full album.

Bis bald,

Der Tom.

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