A relatively short day today – ~60km. Vienna and Bratislava are apparently the two closest European capitals. Not much to say about the ride – most of it was pretty samey:
The flood wall was completely straight for maybe 5 miles or so. Some nice flowers in the borders though, and lots of birdsong and crickets
The path was quite a way from the actual river, which has been extensively reshaped since the 1870s:
I stopped for a snack in Hainburg a d Donau, which is the last town before the border. It was another pretty town:
After that, the path again takes you away from the river, and follows the main road into Slovakia. The border was a bit more obvious than when I entered Austria
A few hundred meters further on I came to an old WWII bunker – this had been built just before the war started. It’s a museum, but sadly it was closed
The ride was very quick and I was in Bratislava for lunchtime. I’m staying at a hostel (more on that tomorrow..), which I couldn’t get into until 3. So first stop was Petrzalka, which is a huge area of communist era housing, which someone en route had said was worth seeing.
Despite being the most dense residential area in Europe, according to Wikipedia, it felt quite spacious.
A pole on my tent had broken in the night, so my next job was to get a replacement. Ended up going to about 4 or 5 places before I found somewhere with one. One of tomorrow’s tasks is to find a hacksaw to cut it down to size.
After I’d checked into the hostel I did some more regular sightseeing (as in Germany, the museums are closed Mondays, so they’ll have to wait for tomorrow). There’s an interesting mix of modern and old buildings.
I also went up to Slavin, which is a war memorial to their liberation at the end of WWII
Final stop today was to see Bratislava’s other UFO, which is on a housing estate a few km from the centre. It took a couple of trolleybuses to get there. Not sure it was worth the effort, but interesting to see more than the centre:
So museum time tomorrow..
