Groom walking his horse across the street (lane, really)
Trainer takes a horse out for morning exercise at the Spanish Riding School, Vienna
מאמן מוציא לאימון בוקר את אחד הסוסים של בי"ס הרכיבה הספרדי, וינה
A courtyard in the Museum Quarter. These were the Imperial Apartments of the Habsburgs.
חצר ברובע המוזיאונים בוינה. אילה היו הדירות של בית הבסבורג
Thursday Morning
Around 6:30am and I wriggle free of my cramped cubby hole AKA sleeping bunk. Actually I have been up almost since we crossed the Austrian border. At the station I first buy a Vienna Card - a three day travelcard. It will serve me today, Friday and Saturday morning. I then leave my case in a locker, take my back pack and go in search of that internet cafe I read about in the guide book. You see, when I called my host in Vienna he told me he had a guest who was checking out this morning, and could I arrive around 10am, so I have a few hours to kill. I take the U-Bahn to where that internet cafe is, and find that in my haste I failed to notice that the time of 6:30, when the highly recommended place opens its doors, was joined by "PM". I have wasted precious walking time on a wild goose chase! Annoyed, I decide to take a trail suggested by another book (Frommer's Guide). It's a stroll around Imperial Vienna. Naturally I start where I should finish, and get lost a few times, but no matter. Vienna is just spectacular. I am stunned by the grandeur of the buildings, and enjoy the almost eerie calm of a city waking up. I happen to pass the Spanish Riding School when out emerge the grooms (or whatever they are called), thin and elegant in riding gear, walking their horses out of the stables, hidden courtyards, across a narrow street into a dark passage, until they all disappear again. To them, a daily routine, to me a sudden flash of a secret world, intensely interesting. I try to capture the moment but my crappy old camera with its relaxed attitude to a fast moving world takes forever to respond to my finger pressing the shutter. All I want to do is take some snapshots, but not with this one. "Eventual shots" would better describe them. I've dragged my feet for some time now on the painful (i.e. costly) subject of a new camera but really, there is a limit!
Wednesday Night
The platform is buzzing with anticipation. Passengers awaiting the arrival of our train, some waiting for the train from the other side of the same platform - a short (only four carriages) old looking Russian train, destination Kiev. The crew, quite a few of them, in smart uniform, milling on the platform, I try to crane my neck to get a good view if the sleeping compartments but fail. They are already late but don't seem bothered. I see my train has arrived, and there is a certain sense of excitement in the air. Everybody start shifting and picking their luggage, and we start boarding. The handsome, bookish conductor collects my ticket as I climb aboard. "you get it back in the morning" he replies to my query. Oh well. Now, where is my couchette? Ah! Found it. It's the top bunk - that is, the top one out of three! My fellow room-mates are a middle-aged Polish man under me, and finally an Italian man in one bottom bunk, his teenager daughter in the other. They trundle an enormous suitcase in, and it completely fills up the gap between the bunks, rendering use of the ladder impossible. That means I have to tread, ever so gingerly on everybody's beds whenever I want to leave or return to my own bunk. The middle bunk above the Italian girl remains empty but I'm fine where I am. It is cramped - impossible to even sit upright, it is hot, but not unbearable, and something just around the head area is squeaking incessantly, but only when the train is in motion. I perform amazing feats of organisation by placing my luggage in the most unobtrusive way possible, and keep my back pack on the shelf near my head for easy access to drink.
The compartment next to mine is full with more Italian girls, I assume they are all school chums with the one in my compartment. She seems resentful for having drawn the shortest straw here. No gabbing with the girls for her. And what if it isn't her father at all but say, her school's headmaster or a teacher?! Nah, that would be illegal, wouldn't it?
To add to my chagrin, my i-Pod froze on me in Krakow, and although I have a few tracks on my new Nokia N80, they are mostly The Dixie Chicks, and Dynamite by Jamiroquai. This is my second i-Pod - the first one started freezing me out while on holiday in Gran Canaria with my friends Jan and Jean-Francois. For 12 agonising hours we were deprived of our breakfast recital, and I had a very quiet day on the beach. It was hell I tell you. That i-Pod kept playing up till it went into a coma, and not even the Apple Store "genius" could unleash any of the 13 GB of music, drama, comedy and pictures I had stored on it, not all of which was backed-up. I had to start afresh with a "new" (reconditioned, actually) unit. This one has been in my possession some 3 months, just over the limited 3 month guarantee it came with. It already had on it 12 GB, and again it slammed the door in my face, just when I needed it most.
The night seems long - I manage to sleep a little, and if not for the constant noise of some mysterious part squeaking I would sleep much better! We are woken up a few times along the journey, by border control upon leaving Poland and entering the Czech Republic, then before entering Austria, and unless I've dreamt it up, somebody must have established another temporary country because there is another passport reading session by severe looking uniformed people, somewhere along the line.
It is morning, I find the Polish man gone - must have left at one of the stops along the way. Seems I slept longer and better than I had imagined. The conductor, who throughout the night stayed in his uniform but kicked off his shoes in favour of homely slippers, emerges from his office at one end of the carriage, and true to his word hands me back my ticket. about half an hour later the train lazily rolls into Vienna South station. I have arrived at my second port of call.
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