Exploring Vienna

Getting to Vienna was pretty straightforward. The flight over the Alps in the rapidly sinking evening sun was spectacular. They didn't lose my luggage (which I hadn't planned to check, but there was an excess of shampoo). I exited the Vienna airport just in time to see that the train to the city was leaving in 25 minutes. May as well relax.

From the station to my hotel, the instructions were clear: take the S-bahn train number 7 to Praterstern, from where you can walk or take a bus two stops. With the entire city block where the airport train stops being under construction, it took me 15 minutes just to find the S-bahn entrance. Lots of trains on the board, but no number 7's. Too late. If I'd known that it went to exactly the same place, just more slowly, I would have hopped on the tram just outside. But I didn't know that, so I took a taxi.

The Austrians have that germanic maniacal attention to detail. They have fabulous maps. There's the detailed map of the area. Alas, it only gets you about two blocks. There's the map of the whole city. Alas, the entire city is on it, in the least detail, on a very modestly sized poster: the overwhelming amount of infomation present (aside from the notably absent "You Are Here" target) means that all of it is useless.

Continuing the attention to detail theme, Vienna is a very neat and clean city. They recycle a lot, and large bins are present on many streetcorners. Here's a bunch. There's a bin for paper, one for glass, one for plastic, etcetera. The sign warns you about what not to discard there. No dumping of green monsters here! No tires, mattresses, washing machines, and No Green Monsters.

In green spaces large and small there are signs to pick up after your dog. The usual sign asks if you think those are sausages.

In the park I spent the morning exploring not even half of, there are zones of different dog-acceptability. This markes a No Dogs at All area. Other areas are either Leash or No Leash zones. Everywhere is a No Dog-Sausage zone.

Just to wrap up the neatness theme, in the park everything is just so, and then there was this pile of disorder. They did what they could and roped it off, so it wouldn't contaminate the passing public.

Pretty pictures on tomorrow's post!