Vienna, Austria to Bratislava, Slovakia

Day 67, Thursday, October 31, 2019

We need to return our rental car today.  We rented it in Bratislava, Slovakia, which is about an hour drive from Vienna.  We got the same type of car, from the same car rental company, for half the price we would have paid if we had rented it in Vienna!

It is so foggy that we can not see the tops of the wind turbines.  There are lots and lots of them along the highway.  When we pass some that are close to the road we can see just how enormous these wind turbines are.
As we get closer to Bratislava the fog lifts, but it is still a very grey day. This is the border crossing into Slovakia.  Because of the European Union there are no border checks or stops, but I do miss getting a stamp in our passports though. We return the car, and catch a FlixBus back to Vienna.  Just as the bus pulls up I realize I have lost a pair of sunglasses somewhere in the airport, but there is no time to go back and look for them.  These buildings under construction near the Bratislava bus terminal have scaffolding all the way up to the top!  I can’t imagine having to work on scaffolding that high off the ground. There is lots of construction in Bratislava, which has a population of 425,000.  We get settled into our apartment and then head out to a life drawing session at 6:30.  When we find the Kaffeebar it is in, we find out that the session was cancelled because it is Halloween.  Oh well, we got to figure out the way there and I will try again next Thursday.  Halloween in Austria is a time when adults get dressed up and party but the children do not go door to door for treats like they do at home.

Day 68, Friday, November 1, 2019

We both enjoyed having a quiet day.  I stayed home all day and Bob went for a walk in the afternoon while I made us a yummy chicken dinner.  Then we had popcorn and watched a movie.  It was a nice relaxing day.

Schwechet, Austria to Bratislava, Slovakia

Day 39, Thursday, October 3, 2019

Our new bnb is in Schwechet, which is a suburb of Vienna. Today we are going to Bratislava, which is in Slovakia, to pick up our car rental.  Doing this saves us over 400 euros, renting the exact same car from the same company.  This is certainly worth a few hours of our time. The train we take to the Vienna airport from Schwechet isn’t very busy. We pass refineries that stretch for more than a kilometre. We find our Flixbus at the airport easily and it is just on hour ride to the airport. After stopping in the town centre of Bratislava we are the only ones left on the bus. We asked the driver to make sure we were on the right bus…it seemed strange that no one else was going to the airport. Our first view of the Danube River. When we get to the airport there were maybe a dozen other people there! The place feels almost abandoned, but we do find an English Time magazine with Justin Trudeau on the cover, so we can catch up on the news. We discover why there are so few people here.  There is only one flight every hour or so departing from here. We pick up our car rental, a nice blue Škoda Octavia, and we take a side road back to Austria.  We see several hilltop castles but no time to stop and explore today. This route takes us through many small towns.  We were hoping to see the Danube as we are driving right along side it, but there just isn’t any place we can find to get down to the riverside. Guess that will have to wait for another day. The road narrows to one lane to go through this town gate.  We stop for groceries on the way home and  find a place to park our car on a side street near our apartment.