July 17

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Woke up at 5 am and made an early start. I arrived at 8 am. The Donauradweg goes right into the centre and I seemed to get tied up in a suburban railway station. Unfortunately I didn’t have a map of Vienna and it was the rush-hour. Good fortune came along in the shape of a very attractive lady, on a sit up and beg bike with a wire basket containing her briefcase, cycling into the city centre and who spoke perfect English. I pedalled after her and marvelled as she strained at her pedals. At one point we were stopped at a traffic light and I looked up and saw the street name to my left. It was, if I am not mistaken, Meldemannstrasse. Here lived Hitler from 1910-13 where he painted those watercolours which now fetch a high price but then sold for a few pennies to pay for his board in the hostel which was for tramps off the street. Here he also practised his demonic argumentative style and read the scurrilous anti-semitic penny pamphlets. In this hostel he spent his “undergraduate years” emerging as an accomplished anti-semite and anti-slav ranter. In the centre I said thank you and goodbye to Frau Jean Brody.
I checked into a pension near to the railway station for Paris and the spent the day being a tourist in Vienna. Thoroughly enjoyed soaking up the atmosphere in Vienna, the city must have been an incredible place in the 1900’s. Freud, Jung, Einstein, even Stalin was a brief visitor but above all it had a galaxy of mathematicians who were to help shape the 20th Century, most of whom fled to the England and the USA in the late 1930’s.
This cycle ride has been a test run to see if I could do it and secondly to cure my knees. The consultant at the hospital said that I had serious hernias behind both knees. I could hardly bend either knee. He said to stop work, I had been installing bathrooms, or be a cripple within 6 months. He advised taking up swimming or cycling. I have taken up the latter and it has cured entirely my left knee and almost cured my right knee. It has been 1700 kilometres and a very steep learning curve!
Shall I come back next year and continue east?
I’ll think long and hard on this question.

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Photos

Tomb of Franz Joseph.
Here lie the Emperors of the Austro-Hungarian Empire once the major power in central Europe until that fateful shot in July of 1914.