IN / OUT

One of the bike traveler's bonuses is seeing city suburbs. Instead of entering a city centre by train or taking the underground from the airport, the bike traveler passes rowing schools, dog training parks, housing projects, the dump, authentic neighborhood corner cafes, and ethnic markets.

Vienna is a great example. When I entered the first time, i.e. before my excursion to Bad Blumau, I biked in on the fabulous Donau Insel. The artificial island was built to protect Vienna from flooding but an unplanned result is a 20-km long nature area with beaches and picknick areas, waterside restaurants and canoe rentals.

Entering Vienna the second time I am charmed by the small but well-signed track leading to the big city. But when I cross the city limits I am promptly lost and disoriented. The bicycle signs are gone and I don't know which way is up or down. The social housing flats all look identical: I am lost in the concrete jungle and the tramline zigzag patterns. I circle around enough times to get some curious looks from the veiled women sitting on benches in the sad-looking playgrounds.

When I get to a larger street, lined with kebab stands, Turkish coffee houses and Mediterranean shops, fat rain drops start falling and the sky turns black within seconds. I pass a bar on the corner and quickly throw down my bike and run in. It is not til I am inside that I look up and see the scene in this smoky den. The elderly bar lady with the long bleached hair and wrinkled sunbed decollete, big gaps between all teeth. ''Suuuuuper" she tells me later, super that I am doing this trip alone. "Your legs must look soooo good!" The retired, overweight regular guest with traditional Austrian green jacket and thick eyeglasses, an empty grocery bag dangling from his left hand while the right hand pours glass after glass of red wine in his mouth. When he gets up to look at me up close he drops the bag and trips over the handle, clearly not remembering he was on his way to the market when he came in.

I order a glass of wine that is poured from a huge unmarked bottle. The guy in street worker clothes next to me takes it upon him to show me the way to my destination. At it is 2pm I am not quite sure if he is having beer for lunch or if this is afterwork happy hour but he sure has been here for a while, repeating the exact same directions no less than ten times. This does not help at all as the Viennese dialect makes very little sense to my ears so when I ride off I ask the first person I see for directions. In German!

PS.
Below some pictures of the little entry path to Vienna as well as things I saw when leaving Vienna: the Hundertwasser designed treatment plant, entry to a suburban wine garten (Vienna is the only world capital city with a significant number of vineyards), and a modern art museum that is featured in the stamp series highlighting modern Austrian architecture.