DAY 8 – Vienna, Austria – Bazanowice, Poland
June 22th, 2018
Before we continue today to our first destination Bazanowice in Poland, we decide to spend a couple hours here in Vienna, just to get an impression of this Capital City of Austria, with a population of about 1.8 million. It’s the seventh largest city in the European Union. In 2001, the city centre was designated a Unesco World Heritage Site and last year it was moved to the list of World Heritage in Danger. The city’s roots lie in early Celtic and Roman settlements that transformed into a Medieval and Baroque city, and its well known as a leading European music centre, from the great age of Viennese Classicism through the early part of the 20th century with composers such as Brahms, Bruckner, Mahler, Mozart and Richard Strauss.
The historic centre of Vienna is rich in architectural ensembles, including Baroque castles and gardens, grand buildings, monuments and parks.
In 1913 Austrian-born Adolf Hitler and also Stalin lived within a few miles of each other in central Vienna; in fact in 1938, after a triumphant entry into Austria, Hitler spoke from the balcony of the Neue Burg, a part of Hofburg.
During that time Viennese Jews were looted, deported and murdered. So much history here, but our time is so very limited today.
Because of constant traffic jams and difficult parking, we take the hotel shuttle straight to the city centre, just to get an impression of the characteristics of this City, which had become the de facto capital of the Roman Empire already in 1437, and reflects in the buildings, statues, buildings and monuments displayed here, many buildings with writings purposely in Latin, which the common people didn’t understand until the time of the reformation. We can see the operations and expressions of Jezebel’s schemes everywhere around here, and people have no clue, just running to and fro, so busy and drunken with entertainment.
On the road again around 5 p.m. we come through heavy traffic caused by accidents and construction work. In the midst of it all our car navigator stops to work and the phone map brings us through little villages, where we think, we could be on the wrong road, but finding out, it’s actually a short-cut. We start driving partly through Czechia again, and by 9 p.m. we get real hungry, because we only had breakfast this morning, and we exit to a small town to find a restaurant. By now it starts to rain and the wind is blowing real cold, and after a few attempts to find parking and looking into different restaurants, where nobody can speak or understands English, we finally find a decent place to eat, so we can continue our journey another 1.5 hours to our destination for this weekend in Bazanowice, Poland. We arrive safely at the designated hotel just minutes before midnight, and drop to bed immediately.