Day Twenty Two

DAY TWENTY-TWO

After getting to bed a bit late last night after my afternoon Turkish Coffee, this morning’s 6am wake-up was a bit rough – but nothing a good cup of coffee couldn’t sort out. Without a shower or a cooked breakfast we were on the road by 7am with a 468km drive ahead of us from Krakow Poland through Moravia in the Check Republic to Vienna in Austria.

At this point I must mention that Kurt and I have really had God’s providence with the weather thus far on the trip. Every single day we’ve gone exploring the sun has come out and the day has been clear for photographs – no small fact given the nature of winter weather in Europe. The inverse of this however has been that our travelling days have invariably had bad weather and today was no exception. No sooner had we left Krakow we drove into near gale force winds and a snow storm. As we headed south the snow abated but the winds buffeted Betsy the whole way to Vienna. Given that the drive took six hours this was a really hard stretch for Kurt but he managed to wrestle our three tone wind catcher into the yard at A&O Hostel by early afternoon. If you’re wondering why we’re camped in the front yard of a youth hostel, it’s because all of Vienna’s seven camping grounds are closed for winter.. another one of those mysteries. We’ve had to rent a two bed ‘dorm’ since there are no public ablutions, but given the soft foam mattresses on offer we’ve chosen to continue sleeping in Betsy during our planned three night stay in the capital.

What did I think of the Check Republic? Well it’s not really fair to comment given we only spent a few hours driving through but from the surface it looks very similar to Poland, just not quite as prosperous. The old Soviet buildings are all mostly repainted with bright colours, advertising is everywhere, new cars abound and new houses and factories are common. The road system is a bit disappointing after the new highways we’ve driven on in Slovenia through Poland, with some potholes and sections of concrete highway with really bad corrugations. I did enjoy driving through the abandoned border post – having read Brother Andrews ‘God’s smuggler’ it’s given me a great appreciation of the freedoms now available to Eastern Europeans after the fall of the iron curtain.

Back in Austria we tended to Betsy’s water needs, our long overdue washing and also the internet. We decided to look for sushi but found the nearest restaurant overcrowded and went for Schnitzel instead. For what ever reason non smoking laws don’t seem to have reached Europe, and it was really unpleasant having to eat in a crowd of smokers. The schnitzel at least was very good.

Editors Note: I have just returned from my shower in room 108 of the hostel. It must seem kindof strange to the staff at the hostel since we shower at the hostel and keep going back to the camper. We now at least have our own changing room with 15 German TV Channels and CNN.