A trip to Vienna, Austria, using a GPS receiver ----------------------------------------------- Thie document was written by Paul Edwards and is released to the public domain. Prior to this trip, I managed to get some waypoints from the internet, but not from any of the sites or searches of newsgroups, but by asking in sci.geo.satellite-nav. This came up trumps as not only did I get a set of waypoints of sights of interest, but Tony Helm was kind enough to even go to where I was staying and get a reading, plus give me precise recommended travel instructions to get there. I was quite confident I would find my way around like a native, nothing could possibly go wrong except my GPS's batteries going flat. On 1999-04-30 we left Heathrow Airport at around 18:30 BST. We were seated near the back, and in the middle, ie no GPS reception. This wasn't a great problem in itself, as I was banking on the pilot having been to Vienna already. By the way, the locals have nicknamed Vienna as "Wien", if it helps in any newsgroup searches. However, it did present a problem in the form of some fussy tourist complaining about how his chair wasn't just like the one he had in his home back in the Good Old X.Y. of Z (country name censored to avoid any offence). Or something like that anyway. The vague bits I snatched were something about "car seat", "children", "only used to these". He was also complaining about the location of the seats, and why didn't they get xyz, and the stewardess was saying there'd be room for negotiation after the plane was airborne. Anyway, the stewardess presumably gave in because before long we were being asked to move to the back seats, which I'd earlier heard her tell the boorish tourist that they weren't the best. A split second before my brain had settled on a response of "Why can't that boorish tourist hold his family reunion at the back of the plane next to the toilets which probably stink by the way and I bet we end up getting served last too, do we have a natural air of people who are easily pushed around and obviously second-class scumbags who can't tell the difference between decent seats and crappochairs" my mouth had blurted out "no worries". And so we continued our journey from the arse-end of the airoplane, with a dead GPS and all. I had been silly enough to not have cleared my waypoints and downloaded the ones from the internet onto my GPS, so I spent the trip entering them manually. For those of you who wish the meridian line passed through their city, it's not quite all it's cracked up to be. It means half of your GPS locations are East, half West, and because Heathrow is West, and I never had another signal, it always defaulted to West for the waypoints. Near the end of the trip I was spotted with it and silly me, in response to "I'm not sure that's allowed" I replied "It doesn't transmit, it only receives" instead of saying "Can you check with the pilot please". Anyway, he went away more confused than when he came in, presumably because there were no satellites showing on the display at the time. We arrived in Vienna International Airport (AIRPRT), which is what it says in big letters, although it is alternatively known as "Schwechat", which is presumably Viennan for "Place where International Aeroplanes both take off and land, many of them carrying boorish tourists", at about 21:50 CET. Before we got off the plane, we were accosted by a stewardess. What now? Can we please move over to the left to give the family in the middle a clear run to the exit? But no, she came bearing gifts. Four small champagne bottles in fact. Obstensibly for being so kind to give up our seats, but I noticed afterwards she had drawn our attention for just long enough for the boorish family to get into the aisle before us. I don't actually drink, but my wife is your typical piss-pot, and it was all I could do to stop her from scoffing the whole lot before I'd even had a chance to find out how many positions in the queue we'd lost. As soon as possible after getting through immigration, I went outside, I went outside to get my own GPS fix, running the gauntlet of the locals who were all getting fixes of their own - the whole place is just one big puff of cigarette smoke, from the moment you step off the aeroplane, ie before you've even got out of the airport. I bet lung cancer specialists even smoke in the operating theatre. Now my precise instructions included the train timetable, but the signs to the trains were woefully sparse. There was one sign that said that the train was not operating, but the dates were not ours, so based on that sign we assumed this was the right way to the trains. No sign of where to go to buy tickets though. We went down anyway, and it turns out that they sell tickets on the platform itself. Except that was closed! They did have a machine to buy them from though - so long as you spoke German! Unbelievable. The one place in the entire country that is most deserving of signs in about 50 languages, at the absolute minimum English, and the only thing they tell you is that the trains will not be running a couple of weeks from now so that maintenance can be done. One thing we did know was how much the ticket should cost in US dollars, since Tony had told me that. Whilst we were examining the machine, with a view to pressing enough buttons until a figure came up that was near enough to 4 USD, an old man approached us carrying boiled lollies. He didn't appear to speak English, but he did speak German, which was great, because the machine only spoke German, but wasn't so great, because a German to German translation would not logically get us any closer to the right ticket. Now the information Tony had given me was that the train ticket *should* be valid on the underground. I wanted to at least be in with a fighting chance by buying the right one, so I told the man I wanted to go to Volkstheater. "Never heard of it". I quickly went searching for my "Tony's guide to Vienna" message, and pointed to where it said "Volkstheater". Incidentally, it seems that the Viennese don't know how to spell "theatre" properly either. Still, at least that's not as atrocious as how badly they spell "jeweller" - "juwelier"!!! Anyway, upon seeing the word "Volkstheater" he suddenly realised what that was, and repeated exactly what I had said, only with more of a "Heil Hitler" ring to it. He then pressed a button and it flashed up 76 (ATS). Unfortunately the maths was too difficult for me to convert into USD with the exchange rates I knew, so all I knew was "megabucks". The Viennan train ticket machines only take coins and 100 ATS notes, but luckily we had 100 ATS notes. Two seconds later I had exchange a piece of paper for a piece of cardboard. Great, this was my ticket outa here - literally! But the old man insisted that there was more to it than that, and I had to stick my precious piece of cardboard into what looked like a cardboard-eating machine. It turned out that the megabuck ticket that we had bought, which was roughly 6 USD, ie more than we had expected, was actually 4 single-zone tickets in one, and to get to the city what we needed was 2 single-zone tickets each. And the way to achieve that, was to fold the ticket so that the "2" was exposed, then put it into the machine so that it stamped the time on it, which indicates that the "2" and the blank "1" are together, ie we've just stamped a 2-zoner fare. The "4" was stamped next, which, together with the unstamped "3" formed another 2-zoner. After thanking the old man on the assumption that he hadn't been playing an elaborate joke on us to get us to stamp exactly the right thing for us to be so under-paid that it was a "throw-in-jail" offence, we walked around the station trying to avoid smokers, key in the remaining waypoints, and look closer at the machines and the signs to see if it really was true that there were no signs in English. The train arrived at 22:24, exactly as Tony said it would, and confirmed our belief in "German" punctuality. I was eventually able to get a satellite signal in the train, and I also created a relative waypoint using my improvised ruler which consisted of a piece of paper with markings corresponding to the scale of the map. At the same time my wife was analysing the line map in the train, and matching that to the stations we stopped at. A ticket inspector came and made some annotation on our ticket, which meant we'd managed to jump that particular hurdle. Closer to my relative waypoint, I lost the GPS signal, so we relied on the old fashioned method to get out, by looking for "Wien Mitte". So we got to Wien Mitte (WIENMT) at about 23:00. From my understanding of it, "Wien Mitte" refers to the train station proper, ie for interstate or international trains. The Bus section is properly called "City Air Terminal", but is not used locally. And "Landstrasse" is the name given to the Underground station located there. So after taking a quick breather to get a GPS fix outside (which ended up being 230 metres away from my relative waypoint), we headed down the underground, hoping our ticket was still valid. In just 15 minutes we were standing outside Volkstheater station (VOLKSU) trying to get a GPS reading. We weren't actually checked for our ticket, so couldn't actually prove that our ticket was valid on the underground part of the journey. Getting a GPS fix wasn't easy, and to make matters worse a bloody tram rang his bell at me because it wanted to go on what was quite clearly a pedestrian section. Even had little steel indents in the road to drain away rain so that your feet didn't get wet. Anyway, with a GPS fix, plus the GPS location of approximately where I wanted to go (Tony said the fix was on the nearest crossroad because of the urban canyon my hotel was in), I set off in that direction using my compass. The first thing we passed was parliament house, but we didn't know that that's what it was. It was all lit up at night, very beautiful. We went up what seemed like quite dodgy streets, past more grand buildings, over a busy street, into a brick wall, where I had to make a left/right decision. I opted right, up some cobbled street. My wife incorrectly thought she recognized the arch from some photo in the tourist book. Luckily the GPS signal held, and I was able to tell I was almost upon my intersection. But it didn't look like the right intersection to me. I thought I must have chosen the wrong street, so started walking towards the GPS destination, and then my wife spotted that we were right in front of our hotel, Pension Wild (WILD)! So the GPS had guided us to a better destination than we were expecting, 110 metres away from the intersection according to our respective readings. We then rang the intercom to get in, and the guy told us, yes, we've got a booking for 3 days. No, it's 4 days. No, it's 30th to the 3rd. Yes, that's right, 4 days. No, you leave on the 3rd. So we agreed to speak to the manager in the morning to see what could be done. Admittedly the person I made the booking with didn't seem to be much better at English than I was at German, but I thought we'd made contact. Now in actual fact, when I made the booking he wasn't able to give me a place in Wild for my stay, I had to go to a nearby place (2 minutes walk away), which was the same price (590 ATS), but didn't include breakfast, and not even any indication of whether they were better rooms to justify the breakfastless price. We followed the map he gave us to get to our place (MAHAL), up some lift that looked like it had been built 50 years before the Industrial Revolution, and we were soon in our room. The room had a good view of the nearby church. Permanently good actually, since the curtains were transparent. We went to sleep straight away. The next day we had our experimental breakfast, consisting of food-substitute things we had found in our local supermarket. It was pretty disgusting. My wife had noticed stacks of bread in the kitchen, but we didn't know if that was as a special breakfast-substitute or someone else's. It was soon gone, so we assume it was the latter, so it was lucky we left it alone. So looking forward to an early lunch, we went back to the hotel to check with the manager about the extra night, and he was able to fit us in, but that was back at Wild, which was fine by us. He also asked if we were having breakfast now, and we said that we were on a breakfastless deal. He insisted the price included breakfast, and after a bit of haggling over the exact wording of the over-the-phone agreement, we were soon tucking into cereal (yay - not this "full continental breakfast" which means bread rubbish) and boiled eggs. We then set out in search of local sights as shown in our tourist guide, whilst we found out how much was in walking distance on the first day, so that we could determine what sort of travel pass we needed. Before we'd even got to the first sight a parade went by, since it was now May 1, ie May Day. The first sight we got to see was Josefstadt Theater (JOSEFT), Vienna's oldest theatre. Next on to Maria Treu Kirche (MARIAT). Incidentally, "Kirche" means "Church". Next the Museum fur Volkskunde (VLKMUS), which presumably houses noisy cars that get 10 squillion miles to the gallon. There was no option to go in to most of these things, or go to the shop, since everything was closed due to the public holiday. And then of course, the next day was Sunday, so the shops were still closed. And then Monday was probably going to be a public holiday too, to make up for the fact that May Day fell on a weekend, so it was not a very good decision on that score, although the Monday theory didn't eventuate as far as the local shops were concerned. Next stop was Schonborn Park (SCHNPK). There was a statue of some guy we'd never heard of in there according to the tourist book, but we had a devil of a time finding him. I took a waypoint at the fountain, but when I found out about the mystery man I didn't want to give up so easily, much to the dismay of the wildlife which became homeless as I started clearing the bush to find him. Eventually I found him, behind the tennis court and near the children's playground. After crossing some more scrubland, I eventually got the GPS location of Edmund Eysler's nose. Next was No 53 Lange Gasse (LG53) which had some supposedly interesting statues, past some Pension, can't remember the name, but the waypoint I called ZIPSER. Then some supposedly good restaurant, Schnattl (SCHNAT) and we'd decided to call that area quits. I wanted to find out our nearest underground, Lerchenfelder (LERCH), although we did not use it to get there since it meant changing lines, not really worth it since we only had backpacks. We then went past some huge building, which didn't appear to be a tourist sight in our book, presumably huge old buildings are 6 for a penny around Vienna. I think it was probably called Justiz Palast (JUSTIZ) from my reading of the map. We then made tracks for Hofburg. Only whilst we were on the way did I realise from "Nearest Waypoints" that I already had a position for it, so we were able to correct our direction of travel, as we really were completely lost. There was about 50 things we thought were the Natural History Museum which would have given us our bearings. The police were out in force that day. Later as we followed the Hofburg waypoint we found out why, the Serbians were protesting, presumably complaining that genocide was no excuse for NATO reprisals. I liked their little "target" stickers, just in case the NATO bombers get very lost one day and decide that Serbs living in Austria are worthy of a 1000-pound bomb. My wife wandered too close to them and wound up with a leaflet written in German complaining about NATO, and it was ages before I managed to find a bin to put it in. I ended up having to put it in my bag lest people thought I was a distributor of the things. So with the Serbs blocking the statue which we incorrectly assumed was Maria's statue, we went to the large building which we now believe to be Neu Berg (NEUBRG), although at the time I marked it down believing it to be Kunsthistorisches Museum, given that there was a sign there that said so! Perhaps they left a "not" out of the sentence?! I mean if they'd had an arrow pointing to the right, it would have made a big difference! Perhaps they don't want people to know that it is Neu Berg, as that is apparently where Hitler stood to pronounce the Anschluss, which is presumably where Austria became part of Germany. We then followed our Hofburg reading (Hofburg is actually a large complex, we didn't know what was considered to be "Hofburg", but were determined to find out!), and went through a couple of doors and ended up in Josefsplatz, where there was a statue of Joseph II (JOESTA) in the middle. I was still trying to find out what everything was, so we wandered back and forth, picking up Amalienburg (AMALIN), Schweizertor (SCHWIZ), which is the gate that leads into the original Hofburg, which i called Schweizerhof. Basically the original Hofburg was incredibly tiny. Next we went back to Josefplatz, where my wife wanted to go to the place which had a "Spanish Riding School" on it. But our tourist book called it the "Winter Riding School", and I still didn't have enough locations to know where everything was, so we decided to continue surveying Hofburg. I especially was trying to reconcile Kunsthistoriches into Neu Berg by gathering as much surrounding data as possible. So we tried going around the outside of Hofburg, finding the curved side of Michaelertrakt (MIKETR), then Michaelkirche (MIKEK) where apparently there are some dead people in open coffins, but we didn't go to Vienna to see dead people, plenty enough of them in Kosovo. I then sat down to try to figure out where the hell the centre of Hofburg was, and what we were supposed to be seeing. There was no sign in Hofburg to say "this is the centre", no sign to say "this is where you buy tickets to see the centre", nothing at all. Whilst I was sitting there, a woman who was trying to sell concert tickets (they are almost as bad as third world countries!) started talking to me. I took the opportunity to ask where the hell the centre was, but she didn't know, hadn't actually toured it herself. I also asked if Austria was a member of NATO, they're not. She recommended Belvedere, and came up with some whacky story about museums being cheaper on Monday. We were actually looking for some sort of English-speaking guided tour of Hofburg, as we had been told such a thing existed. However, we only ever saw groups of non-English speaking people. According to the tourist guide there were some sort of treasures, so we decided to try to find where they were being kept. After a bit more wandering, including going through Michaelertrakt a couple of times, we finally decided to go the other side of the road through Michaelertrakt, and lo and behold, there was a sign in English saying there were guided tours at 2pm. And indeed there was an entrance into the building, where you could buy tickets. Turns out there are two things to see, the main thing is the State Apartments, the other thing is the Silver Collection. And you can get a guided tour of the former in English, but no guided tours of the latter. So we paid 95 for the combined ticket, plus 20 for the guided tour, each. The silver collection is mainly tableware. By the time we had finished it was time for the State Apartments tour, which was given by an Irishman, who told us they are the friendliest people in the world, presumably mainly during the ceasefires. We learnt about the uppity Hungarians and it turned out that the Ostrich that died in vain for WWI turned out to be the King's son or something along those lines. There was the usual "this is the desk that some old fart sat" etc grandeur. We then cast our net wider to find more places on the map, the next being Heldenplatz (HELDEN) which was where the Serbs were protesting. I took a waypoint near the statue they were using, they presumably got sick of chanting slogans after a while. I wonder who they actually think they're convincing? Next we went to Burgtor (BRGTOR), the outer gate. Then after some more travelling, we finally got to see the elusive Maria-Theresian Platz (MARIAT) where I took a waypoint at her statue. This was a crucial discovery, as I had previously been trying to pass one of the statues in Heldenplatz off as her, and I was able to drop my "Very Butch Queen" theory. Down to two buildings either side, and sure enough, one of them was Kunsthistoriches (KUNSTH) according to big letters on the building, the other was the Natural History Museum (NATHIS). Both were shut of course. We then wanted a hot dog of some description, so went wandering. We found one right next to Babenbergerstr underground station (BABENU). We bought two hot dogs, one for 20 ATS, one for 30 ATS and a Pepsi for unknown amount, and I think the mustard and sauce might have been charged separately, I don't read German, the end result was it cost something like 76 ATS. Once again I wanted to map the area properly, so we headed back to Burgarten (BURGAR) where I saw the second dead bird that day. This one being eaten by another bird. Then we went past a large building, not mentioned on the map anywhere, but I thought I'd mark it anyway (BUNDES), must have had "Bundes" written somewhere on it. There was quite a large building opposite too, which I thought might have been important. My wife had crossed over to there to take a photo of Augustinerkirche, but had neglected to actually look at it, so I went over myself. I had my suspicions that it might have been the Opera House. I found what looked like the main entrance, so we took a waypoint and photo, but circumnavigated the building just to be sure. Sure enough, the main entrance to Staatsopera (STAATS) was further around. We noted the times it was open for English tours. We then went to some sort of shopping street, where I sat down whilst my wife went hunting for some sort of food for dinner. She took a while, looking at all the shops to Stephansdom, before turning back and choosing some fruit and water to buy. We then went back to try to find the entrance to Augustinerkirche (AUGUST). It turned out to be in Josefplatz. When we went in, there was a sign saying "Please don't visit when there's a service in progress" or somesuch. Which was very confusing, because it didn't say that there WAS a service in progress, in which case I wouldn't have gone in, but at the same time why display the sign unless there WAS a service in progress. So I didn't leave immediately, I instead snuck up to the door to try to listen. Not hearing anything, I decided to go in, and it didn't appear that there was one, so we sat down. Then some music started playing so we hightailed it out of there in case it was a service. We then went in search of the Burgtheater, for which we had a waypoint. It wasn't very far away at all, all these things are walking distance. I marked down what was quite obviously the main entrance, then we went to the Town Hall (TWNHLL) just over the road, where they were constructing something in front of it, which I had to sneak through to get my waypoint. When we turned around, we found that the main entrance to Burgtheater was not in the previously obvious place, it was in a new obvious place, so I took another waypoint (BURGTH). We then headed for a very nice church we had seen in the distance, one with twin towers, that my wife previously thought was Stephansdom. I took a route that would hopefully take us past the university, another big building, but unfortunately it was the back route and not the best so I missed that. However, Votivkirche (VOTIVK) was well worth the trip, very nice. We got in shortly before closing, ie just before 19:00. One unusual thing in the church was a prayer book, where you could write down your requests for prayers. Someone had written down something which included an end to abortion, but before I had a chance to write my own prayer along the lines of "To make the anti-abortionists realise that their efforts would be better spent keeping the existing starving people of the world alive than forcing others to introduce unwanted children in the world", but they called out closing time before I'd even picked up the pen. Outside there were two parks, one with a strange statue in it, and one other thing I was interested in was the exact site that the attempt was made on the King's life, the Molker-Bastei. The two parks were meant to be Rooseveltplatz and Sigmund Freud Park. In the end, I couldn't determine any of the three locations so no waypoints there. I took a daring route home, which took us past Dreifaltigkeitskirche (DREIFK). I had also wanted to take in Landesgericht, whatever that is, but I managed to somehow miss that, although I did see a very large building, but I don't think they were one and the same thing according to the map. I actually didn't take a relative waypoint to do this, just relying on the compass, which is probably how I managed to get so far out, I'd gone too far west before going south. We then just went home, according to the GPS directions, but on the way we noticed a policeman with a little hut. I asked him what he was doing there, and he gave me directions somewhere. I tried again, still no luck. I pointed at him, and emphasised the "you", when he finally realised that he was there not to visit that strange location around the corner, but instead to guard the American Embassy (AMEMB) which was on the other side of the street. I'm sure my GPS receiver is now well-know in the American Secret Service. We then had to do something about dinner. There was a pizza shop (PIZZA) just opposite our hotel, so I took a look at the menu, and they were reasonably priced, going from 55 ATS to 95 ATS. I wanted something with meat in it, and they are always the expensive ones, so stuck with the 95 ones, and in fact, I was in luck, there was one called "Dynamit", ie German for "dynamite", meaning it was chilli hot, and I could tell from the ingredients that there was pepperoni in it. After confirming they did takeaway, I ordered one and we were off in under 10 minutes. When we got home, we discovered that "dynamit" is actually German for "neither hot nor containing meat". But we ate it and went to sleep. Next day we decided to walk to Belvedere, as we had a waypoint and were prepared to use it! On the way, the first thing I came to was something I can't remember, I called it "CHU" presumably for an unknown church, and from the map I would take a guess that it is Mechit Kirche (CHU), but it isn't significant enough to rate a mention anywhere, even if that is right. Next thing we came to was the real Volkstheater (VOLKST), ie there's more than just an underground station by the same name. We kept on track, and soon saw the gold dome of the Secession building in the distance. But before that there was another big building, which we thought might have been the building in our book, but it wasn't quite that. We found the entrance to it around the back, but no markings. Someone inside the building came out whilst I was taking the reading, and after several attempts at asking him what the building was, he said what sounded like "Akatme", so I initially created a waypoint with that name! I assume from the map that this was Akademie der Bildenden Kunste (AKADBK). We then continued on to the Secession Building (SECESS), which was supposed to be a building with almost no windows. My wife got quite upset about the number of windows it did have, and it was all I could do to stop her throwing rocks to break the few ones that it did have. There was some toy factory nearby, but we instead attempted to get to Naschmarkt (NASHMT). After getting a bit lost we found it, only to find it closed. According to the tourist book the flat where Franz Schubert died was nearby, at number 6. We assumed that we were at least in the right road, so went looking for number 6, but after a while decided to look up the map, found out that it was actually miles away, and decided to let him rest in peace without knowing his exact location. The next thing we came to was the Technical University (TECHUN), yet another nice big building, and one more following the golden rule of Vienna, "look up". I noticed from my "Nearest Waypoints" that I actually had a waypoint for our next destination, but it appeared to be a few hundred metres off, and I put more faith in the vision of Karlskirche (KARLSK) that appeared before me. This is another really big and elaborate church. One thing we didn't actually go to that was nearby were the Karlsplatz Pavilions, we just looked at them from the distance as we went by. We thought Karlskirche was closed, but according to the tourist book it was even meant to be having a service or something on now, so we went around the corner and found the entrance. There was a guy selling trinkets, but it didn't appear to be an entrance fee, so we just went in, had a gawk and went out. There was a service in progress, so we didn't wander around. We then proceeded up the street we were on, basically deciding to see what was at the end of it that we could see, even though we knew that Belvedere was off to the left. On the way we went past the Greek Embassy (GRKEMB), which had a policewoman guarding it, until we finally got to the building at the top, which was a church, that I later found out was Elisabethkirche (ELISK). All in all this was probably not a very good route, as we were to go past there later anyway, and it meant that we missed most of Belvedere since the waypoint we had was for Upper Belvedere. So anyway, we eventually arrived at Upper Belvedere (BELVDU), or "Oberes Belvedere" as the locals call it at 10:41. It cost 100 ATS each for entrance. The entrance ticket actually covers Upper Belvedere, Lower Belvedere, plus one other place which turned out to be on the other side of town (presumably they're running some sort of scam with the transport authority!). It was quite confusing inside, half of it being due to some special "American Exhibition". First of all I was directed to leave my backpack at the cloakroom, where I noticed 20-odd ATS on the counter. I looked around to see who it belonged to but it didn't seem to belong to anyone. I was wondering how long that would stay there for! We went up half a level and bought an audio guid. Only after we asked if it covered Lower Belvedere as well did we find out that it didn't even cover Upper Belveder, it only covered the American Exhibition! He was happy to give us a refund, and directed us downstairs. It still wasn't obvious where to get the guide from, so we asked the guy in charge, and he directed us to a desk that had no obvious sign, at least in English, that I could see. That cost 40 ATS, but we only got one, as I wasn't expecting to be particularly interested. Sure enough, the first level was a pathetic collection of what were quite obviously plagiarisms of "Austrian Penthouse" (note - I only read it for the articles myself). It was even difficult to know what level we were on, until I discovered that the system they were using were to draw all the levels, and then shade the one we were on. So we moved on to the next level, which was a collection of normal paintings. At least I had some appreciation for these, as it provides a record of what buildings etc looked like before the advent of the camera. That was about it, but there seemed to be more things on the map. One being the chapel. Since we'd obviously missed it, we tried again. Nope, missed again, maybe we had the map around the wrong way? Tried the other end. Nope. Looked closer and it all came down to the definition of the marble hall. We decided that we had confused the staircase with the marble hall, and sure enough we had, so we double-checked that, tried again, still no chapel. I resorted to asking the lady near the marble hall who was peddling something-or-other where the chapel was, and she said it was down the end, which I'd already been to about 4 times. I said that there was a door down there, do I open it? She said yes, so off I went again. Back in the porno section, I was reluctant to open the door that no-one else seemed to be game to open. I took my chance, and voila, there was indeed a chapel. How you were supposed to know that, I have no idea, but nevermind, I was there now. Suddenly I was surrounded by the securitate, who told me it was closed and quickly shut the door. I insisted that the lady down the hall told me that it was open, and this one told the now gathered crowd that it wasn't open until 1pm because there was a service underway. Sorry luv, but my ESP ain't what it used to be. We spent a bit more time trying to get to other things listed on the map, but they were either under development or closed off. I think they have done their maps the same way that councils do their road maps, ie 10-year plans, rather than describing what they've currently got. Anyway, I went back to get my backpack to leave. Guess what? The money was still there! I thought it was incredible that they would leave "lost property" lying around for so long waiting for whoever left it to remember that they'd left it and reclaim it. It was only later that I realised what it was - a hint for you to give them tips. That is unbelievably disgusting. They force you to leave your backpack there, and then expect to get tipped for it? What a scam! And not only that, but they've even got the hide to salt their begging bowl! Why not go the whole hog and erect a sign saying "alms for the poor", whilst playing the guitar and buying a scabby dog? I also remembered reading something along those lines in the tourist book, although I think it was to do with coats. Next we walked down the hill, past the elaborate crop circles, to Lower Belvedere (BELVDL). Once again I had to hand in my backpack, but they didn't have a begging bowl down there. This was another motley collection of paintings and other things too boring to even mention. Don't be discouraged from going there just because I think it's a complete waste of time, remember that this is the place that came recommended by some woman selling concert tickets in Hofburg. Belvedere used to belong to some general, it wasn't a royal dwelling. There were a lot of things mentioned in the tourist book near Lower Belvedere (actually the street called Rennweg), so we went past some of them. First there was Salesianerinnenkirche (SALESK), then the Lower Belvedere Gate (BLVGAT), Gardekirche (GARDKI), the Yugoslav Embassy (YUGEMB), Schwarzenberg Palace (SCHWZP), although I just went to the gate to take a GPS location, didn't go up. We rested at the nearby park, then headed to the Opera House which was due to have an English tour soon. We could actually see the Opera House, so it was pretty straightforward to get there, or so we thought. On the way we bought a hot dog, not as good as the previous hot dog as it had a small sausage, lost sight of the Opera House for some unknown reason, eventually getting to the some little shopping mall professing to be "Ringstrasse" or similar, but I gave it a different name (RINGSH), so as it was not to be confused with the Ringstrasse that was a large boulevard! There was quite a queue for the tours, tickets started selling at 14:40, and the tour at 15:00. It was certainly a nice place, although most of it got destroyed just a few days before the end of WWII. They sell some really cheap tickets (from something like 30 ATS for standing positions), which of course means that there's long queues instead, even overnight sometimes. We went around to see where we needed to go to get some, and found a queue. I went to the front of the queue, no obvious sign that that was the right place, asked an old lady whether this was where to buy tickets to the Opera, but I'm not sure what the reply was, I don't think it was English though. I got the impression that the people who stood in this queue were brain-dead, and all that went through their mind was "must get tickets, must stand in queue", as if it were a substitute for having a home to go to. Next we started going to Stephansdom, as we had 3 waypoints for the place, it must have been important! One of the waypoints had the place down as "St Stephan", which was quite confusing really, as it was nowhere to be found in my tourist book, assuming that is a valid translation, it isn't translated. On the way, we went past Kapuzinerkirche und Kaisergruft (KAPUZK). One good thing about Vienna is they've got these little white signs under a flag on most places, so that you can distinguish them. I attempted to go past the American Bar, which appears on several maps, sounded pretty important. But I missed it, so my next stop was the Stephansplatz Underground (SPLTZU), then on to Stephansdom (STPHDM), the centre of Vienna. It was certainly an impressive place, but by this time (16:26) we were exhausted, so just sat in there for a while and left. I marked down Haas Haus (HAASHS) a modern building they were quite wary of building near their pride & joy, then we made our way homewards, but I was determined to find this bloody American Bar. Once again I failed, but I turned around and went back. I was sort of running out of streets to go down, and finally found one, tried it, and found it (AMBAR). I can't say it was worth the effort, but I did find out that the map we were using had it drawn on the wrong side of the road, and quite madly out of proportion. Why it's such a landmark on the map I have no idea. We attempted to take as direct-as-possible route back home, which took us through unchartered territory. First we passed Evangelical Church (EVANGC), then we presumably went through Volksgarten and came across what looked like a Roman ruin (ROME), which I presume was actually the Temple of Theseus. Then after my wife directed us out of the northern exit instead of the westerly exit, and going past the back of Burgtheater again, we came to Parlament (PARMNT), which is the parliament, which we had previously only walked by at night. Before we got home I marked Trautson Palace (TRAUTS), then some unmapped church (GOTTES). We bought a pizza again, this time I asked for something with meat, and he gave us a choice of salami and beef, so we chose salami. I also told him his GPS location in case he wanted to put it on his takeaway menu etc, and he said "yes" and asked what his location was about 10 times, and long after the pizza had been cooked, before he realised it was his location and wrote it down. So we went to sleep even though there was daylight left. The next day we had to change hotels, this time to the main Pension, "Wild", who's rooms were smaller but nicer. We were lucky that the room was free that early in the morning, so that we didn't have to leave our stuff outside or take it with us. The local shops were actually open today, so we attempted to buy some 3-in-1 (shampoo, conditioner and soap) from a couple of them. The first one we went to didn't have anything remotely right, the second one had quite a variety of stuff, but all in German. We found one that said "3 fur zoich" or something, which I assumed meant "3 in 1". I asked the shop assistant if that meant "3 in 1" and she said yes. I verified "shampoo, conditioner and soap", and she agreed. I was convinced, plenty of evidence, but my wife wasn't so sure. I then remembered my training from Fiji, where the answer to every question was "yes", if you want to actually know something, ask a question that requires more than "yes". So I asked the checkout counter what "3 fur zoich" meant, and she said something about "power wash". And no, those 3 lines didn't mean "shampoo, conditioner, soap". We left empty handed, but luckily the next morning one of the showers had just enough shampoo left. We then went to Schonbrunn Palace by tram. We had a hell of a time doing this. First of all we needed to know what ticket to buy, so went to the Volkstheater underground station and attempted to look it up on the list. It wasn't on the list. There were lots of other things on the list, which I had no idea of, even things that looked similar. We bought a 4-ticket card, just like we used to get from the airport, in the knowledge that if it were the wrong one, we'd at least be able to use it to go back to the airport later, and in the hope that we could ask the tram driver how many needed to be stamped, if it were the right card. Whilst we were still debating whether to buy another one, someone came up to us and said something in German, and, getting a blank look, switched to English, asking if I had two 10 schilling coins for his 20 schilling note. This was a great breakthrough, for in exchange for some coins, we were able to ask him where Schonbrunn wasn't on the list. He said he didn't know, he didn't use the list, but it should be, but he couldn't find it either, and at least we knew we hadn't just missed the synonym. He then went on to describe the machines on the trams, but we explained we wanted to know how many times to stamp, and he insisted it was just a single stamp each, because Schonbrunn was in the same zone. He also said I could change between tram, bus and underground, so long as I didn't break my journey, which meant, or maybe also meant, that I couldn't go back on my journey. And that theoretically I could go around the whole of Vienna in some big ring. I never really understood what the requirements were, never mind rings, what about a spiral! I mean, a ring to me means that you start off going say west, then you go north, and then as soon as you start going east, you've changed your direction to be opposite, and thus you should be fined. Anyway, we went up again, then started looking for the right tram, which from the map was 49, as we were going to go on tram 49 then 10. Find the 49 was not easy, as there appear to be two entrances to Volkstheater underground, and we were not at the one we thought we were at, and the Natural History Museum kept moving with the theories. We did have a waypoint, but it still required a judgement by us on how far the buildings were away, and whether the 100 metre accuracy was within range. We eventually realised we were at the other entrance, and found the 49. I set a relative waypoint, whilst my wife found where the stop names were on the signs outside, and mapped them to the map in the tram. So my wife found the place to get out, but then we needed to find the number 10, and we could go in either direction. Whilst my wife was heading in the wrong direction, I noticed a tram go down the other street, and I could see it was the right direction according to my compass. So we went back to the intersection, took a waypoint at the intersection, then chose to walk in the direction of travel. Later we found out that we should have gone the opposite direction, as that was where the nearest stop was. Anyway, on the way we realised that we did have a waypoint for Schonbrunn, it had been misspelt by two different people! Both of them had put an extra "e" and called the waypoint "SCHOEN". I then remembered something vaguely from the past, that when converting letters from their own language, they will add an extra character, and that "O" with two dots above it, probably got converted to "OE". I thought this was pretty funny for an English-speaker, as if I wouldn't be able to read the name of a place if I had lost the dots above the "O"!!! Needless to say, I didn't feel it necessary to put an extra "E" in my own waypoints, although mine ended up being too specific for that anyway. We got out of the tram stop nearest Schonbrunn (TM10S), then went through Schonbrunn Gates (SCHGAT), over to the entrance where you buy tickets (SCHENT), which cost 120 each for the Grand Tour. We went from there to the internal entrance, where there were stacks of people milling around. We finally got through them, only to be rejected by the machine. Someone showed us the reason why, there's a "valid time" on it!!! This was not pointed out to us when we bought the ticket, for reasons best known to management. I was also told I needed to leave my backpack behind. So I went back to the main entrance, left my backpack, then we sat down outside in the park until the due time (I know it's sporting to mill around, but hey, it might as well NOT be me). When we came back there were a new set of millers, but we were the proud owners of valid tickets and broke through the crowd. Schonbrunn was the summer palace of the king, and there were lots of nice rooms basically. Some were even Chinese flavour. I am thinking of making my bed just like a royal one one day, as I can't see that they really have anything that's too expensive for the average person of today. Anyway, we then decided to return to the grounds, and see if we could find the Palm House. We managed to get lost in the woods, ended up arriving at the Zoo (ZOO) first. I wasn't sure if our ticket was valid for that, so I asked, showing them my tram ticket by mistake. They said that wasn't valid, and the cost was 60 ATS from memory, and I wasn't going to ask again with the right ticket, and I wasn't actually particularly interested anyway. The Palm House (PALM) was nearby, which wasn't part of Schonbrunn either, and there was some weird scheme we didn't investigate closely but sounded like it might have been if you go to the Palm House first, you get a discount on the surrounding attractions. We then headed back to find the fake roman ruins (ROMANR). We found them, but they were being refurbished! I don't understand the concept behind refurbishing ruins, especially not fake ones! We believe we managed to leave behind our water bottle here, which disrupted us a little bit. We'll probably pick it up next time we're back there. Then we went back to the tram stop, got off near the intersection (TM10J), walked around the corner to catch the 49 (TM49J) back to Volkstheater, our favourite station. On the way we had been tossing up as to whether going halfway around the ring was part of the same journey, or indeed, the whole way. In the end we decided to get on to the Ringstrasse by taking the number 2 tram around the whole way. On the way I marked some big building (UNKBLD), no idea what that was, perhaps the Austrian Museum of Applied Arts, and I also marked Schwedenplace (SCHWPL), which was where we had at one point decided to get out as part of our continuous journey because "that's the closest place to Stephansdom". Back at Volkstheater we changed to the underground to get to Stephenslplatz. We then spent a lot more time at Stephansdom, looking for all the things our tourist book mentioned, e.g. "05" for the Austrian Resistance movement (some fringe group by the sound of it), the tiles on the roof and many other things. We then went back to our hotel, but on the way we attempted to withdraw the 1500 ATS we needed to pay the hotel from a bank (BANK) that displayed the Cirrus sign, but last time I had tried it told me my bank was "not within call". Unfortunately it did it again, and I recorded the location so that I could ring up my bank and complain, although I doubt they can figure out which bank it is from it's GPS location. Our home-grown hotel map included the location of some other banks, so we tried them, and on the very last one, I had partial success. Although I couldn't get 1500 like I wanted, I tried again with 1000, and had success. I didn't wish to tempt the machine again, so we calculated how much we had, and it was just enough. The hotel bill was 2360, so we paid that, and then had just 171 ATS to our name. Rather than get more ATS, we decided that the next day we would try to change countries, to get a new set of currency, by going to Bratislava, in Slovakia, since it was so close and so cheap. The next day I donned my "Bratislava or bust" T-shirt, but it was going to be really tight. The train fare was from memory about 5 GBP, and hopefully that was return, so we could then get two one-way tickets for 5 GBP, which would have been within our budget. But I didn't want to put all our eggs in one very dodgy basket by expecting we could even get there (visa situation was unknown), and also to conserve our ATS, so wanted to see more things in Vienna whilst walking the fair distance to Sudbahnoff, which I created a relative waypoint for. So we set off at about 08:12, leaving 2 of the 4 champagne bottles behind, mainly to reduce weight. We then went past some place I can't remember or find the name of, some palace from memory (AUERS). I then found the Lercherfelder Underground again, but a different entrance I think (LERCHU), then past Stiftskaserne (STIFTS) and Stiftskirche (STIFTK). I was also trying to see Amerlinghaus, but somehow managed to miss it. We then went to St Josef Kirche (STJOEK), which took a hell of a lot of finding. Continued on past Theresianum (THERES), finally arriving at Sudbahnhof (SUDBAN) at 09:29. There I found out that the train cost 120 ATS each one-way, but the real showstopper was that the next train wasn't until 12:15, the previous one was 08:15!!! The only way we could have got there was by having woken up at least half an hour earlier, and catching the underground. Even then we would have needed to allow time to find an ATM to get the extra money. We decided to use our train ticket to catch a tram to Wien Mitte, for which we had a waypoint, but even with the waypoint, we had a hell of a time trying to find that place again. We walked around the complex, past a bank, saw some coaches, followed the signs to more coaches, that led us out into the street, we were lost again. Couldn't find the tram where we'd gotten off anymore either, seemed like the tram people had taken the tracks off the road. Went past the Hilton (HILTON), until finally finding the right place to go (BUSBRA), and got to the coach section, where we found the cost was also 120 SEK, the departure was in about an hour, and allowing for time to get back, we would have only had 2 hours in Bratislava! Return trip was 220 SEK. We decided we hadn't broken our journey yet, so hopped on the underground to Stephansdom to explore the rest of the area. The whole trip was a bit too much for us by this stage, probably should have just done a 3-day trip. I have no idea how old people manage to do trips like this, we were completely knackered every day, especially with sore feet. There's no point saying "why not use public transport instead", because the sights are right next to each other, there isn't actually any saving to be made. Everywhere you go there's something. So the last day more or less turned into a waypoint collection day. We went to Peterskirche (PETERK), then some statue of "Deo" (DEOSTA), then into Am Hof square where we saw Kirch am Hof (AMHOFK), then the Collalto Palace (COLPAL) where Mozart made his first public appearance at the age of 6, then a a place with a statue on the roof called Burgerliche Zeughaus (BURZEU), which is now a fire station, then we went into Judenplatz and there was some building I marked down (BOHHOF), another place (UHREN), Altes Rathaus (ALTESR), Hoher Markt (HOHER) which has a brilliant clock in it, pity we weren't around at midday for the figures to all come out. In this place was also meant to be some Roman ruins. I couldn't see any, but there was some sort of building work going on, so I asked them if they knew where it was (showing them the picture), but he'd never heard of it, which presumably means he wasn't working on excavating them, so they had to be elsewhere. I asked someone else, and found they were nearby, almost like in the shop window. My wife had actually said that she saw a rock in the shop window, but I had already decided to ask someone by that stage. Regardless, it was closed. Oh, whilst in Judenplatz we had also gone past Grimm's bakery, the doll museum and the clock museum, but weren't willing to pay for the latter two, and we're not really into bread either. We then went past a place with a cannonball in it, which was very close to Ruprechtskirche (RUPREC), the oldest church in Vienna, which was nice as well. We then finally found a place which had both seats AND a rubbish bin, which we believe to be Morzinplatz (MORZIN), so we ate some food we still had. We went past what we believe was a Jewish Synagogue (SYNGOG), although we didn't see an obvious way to get in. We made one final waypoint, for Guttenburg (GUTENB), but I can't remember whether that was a building or a statue, I just knew the name due to "Project Gutenburg", which is an internet project to get public domain books online, so presumably there was some famous guy called Gutenburg involved with books. We then bought a 30 ATS hot dog, bringing us down to 141 ATS. We then decided to buy the required ticket to get back to the airport, which was 38 ATS for a 2-zoner (we already had 2 zones left on our 4-zoner), leaving us with 103 ATS. I suggested my wife should wander around the shops finding something suitable to buy that came to that, and she found some chocolate she wanted, but nothing that would make it add up to 103. I was wondering if I should try to bargain the hot dog man (as I saw someone do to another hot dog man!) down to 67 ATS for a large hot dog and a coke (instead of 70 ATS), but in the end we just decided to buy 2 hot dogs and a coke, for 30 + 50 + 20, leaving us with 3 ATS. There was a free toilet in Stephansplatz where I had seen some money in a bowl (with no-one attending it!!!) but I figured if someone pinched my 3 ATS they were welcome to it. But when I actually went to the station, I must have gone through a different entrance, because the toilet had disappeared, and so we just kept going. It was also useful to keep the money lest we get busted for vagrancy. So then it was all-aboard for the airport, which meant back to Wien Mitte, the continually-changing station. There was a "plane" symbol somewhere that guided us to the right platform, and then another plane symbol on the overhead platform sign, but unfortunately there was also another sign which looked like two different trains left the station, and we were meant to look out for the destination on the train or something. Either that or the fact that the plane one was on top meant that it was coming first. But first, we needed to find somewhere to go to avoid the smokers. Unfortunately, they had lined themselves up at regular intervals, the entire length of the platform, so that there was no respite. Even right down the end, where only the rats go, there was one stationed. Even pretending to be using a mobile phone so she had an excuse to be near the end which was close to the sky. We were debating whether or not to go off the platform and down the track a bit, but realised that the smoke was travelling that direction anyway, so decided to walk back. On the way we momentarily found a niche, but anyway, the train soon arrived fortunately, and we took it regardless of where it was going. It became apparent that it was not the same as the one we had come in, the seats were different, and it wasn't stopping very often. We were getting closer to our destination though, so hopefully it was an express train that was going more-or-less straight to the airport. And it was! When we arrived at the airport we were pretty early so they asked us what seats we would like. Quick as a flash, my wife replied "in the middle of a family of loud tourists". Unfortunately we were too early to get those seats, so we didn't score any more champage. There was nothing at the airport going for 3 ATS, so we still own more ATS than we want to. In hindsight I don't know that we did too much wrong, except I suppose we should have withdrawn the ATS earlier, running the obvious risks. We bought the right tickets. We don't know how much the Vienna Card would have saved on entrance fees, they didn't publish that wherever we went, or even in the Vienna Card Guide itself! We didn't want to go into any more places than we did already anyway, and we know for sure that the Opera didn't take it because there was a sign saying so. If I'd know the train timetable to Bratislava, I would have got up even earlier, and brought a guide book along too! There's also an impossibly long list of things to do in Vienna, I think we should have halved the amount of stuff we did, it was too much to take in, building after building. We would have taken 3-in-1 shampoo with us to, bought in an English-speaking country! One other thing is that Vienna is not London or Paris. Although it may not be as famous, and not have it's things of interest as widely known as the others, when you actually get there, you can't move for historical and fancy buildings. In London and Paris there appears to be relatively few, and you can actually get in public transport to go between them. In Vienna it's just non-stop. This can be good or bad depending on your attitude.