Austria - a welcome sight after the Czech Republic and I could understand everything again. At this border crossing the guy actually wanted to look in our van. So when we opened the back door for him, there were our wet clothes hanging up everywhere. He couldn't help but smirk
So we entered Austria and our GPS took us around some back villages for a while because apparently that was the 'fastest way' to Wien.
The Carrot - oh yes our first night in Austria will always be a memorable one. So there we were in Horn, preparing dinner, when I ate a small piece of carrot, cut like a $1 coin. It felt like it got stuck down my throat, and then I got sharp pains in my chest. The pain got worse and was at the back of my chest. It came and went, and after 1L of water and some other food wouldn't go away. I have never felt anything so painful. After 20 minutes, Elman had enough and found the closest hospital. They were really friendly and took an x-ray of my chest while I drunk some yucky fluid. Nothing stuck or torn, so the carrot just caused damaged to my throat (Schpeise rohr). They put me on a drip for an hour (painkillers and relaxant). Felt much better after that, but it still really hurt to swallow. Poor Elman was starving at this stage and had to eat his potatoes soggy that night :-( The next day I could already eat soft food, and recovered fast from then on. It's pretty embarrassing in hind sight.
Vienna (Wien) - what a beautiful city, many old buildings and palaces. We had a look at the Hofburg in town and Schloss Schoenbrunn. I also looked at the Sissi Museum, Kaiser Apartments and Silber Museum. I loved watching a film about the Austrian Empress Sissi when I was little, so having a look at Wien was great for me. Especially the Schloss Schoenbrunn where the movie was filmed. There where huge gardens around this castle with a few over all Wien and even a maze garden. (Yes Bianka, I finally got to walk through one) The nights in Wien where cold but the days were very pleasant.
Unfortunatley that was it for Austria, as we planned to come back to the western side of Austria when we travel through western Europe.
Hungary was nice and green and warm when we got there. Different buildings and cutlure, and a weird language.
Started in Sopron, cute little town with remaining city walls and old buildings. From here we drove to Fertrod, without much help of our GPS. The navigation system only had main cities and streets, but we managed to find the Castle, Esterhazy Kasthely, and later we looked at a fortress in Komarom.
Esztergom - great little town on the Danube River on the border to Slovakia. Not sure if we pronounced its name right. There was an awesome Dome top church at the top of the hill overlooking the town and river, the most interesting church we'd seen so far. All marble interior. We climbed the tiny winding stairs to the top of the dome and walked around outside. The weather was magnificent, shorts and t-shirt, bring it on. Not sure how safe the construction of the walkways at the top were, guess we are here to tell the story. We walked across the bridge to Slovakia, so we can say that we have been there too :-) for all of 10 minutes.
to be continued ......
