Tue 30.Jul.2013
Bratislava, Slovakia
Whee! Heat wave in Bratislava! It broke today, but for the past four or five
days it has been gloriously hot. Highs 100+°F. Me, I rode to the end of a
new (to me) bus line, and started walking. Ended up high in the forest, near
the city TV tower.
The beginning of the Little Tatry mountains, though it would be pedantic to
think of it that way.
The city forest has an extensive network of walking and bicycle trails,
sparsely signed, poorly marked.
I stick with going out more or less the way I came in. Getting lost up there
could be a major hassle.
Back in town, down by the Danube, the little shopping complex called River
Park provides photo opportunities.
No Kangaroos!
More than a hundred countries lack kangaroos, but only one finds it
necessary to explain the fact to visitors now and then. For the rest of this
page, we are in Austria.
Not very far into Austria. Hainburg an der Donau is served by a
Bratislava city bus line, as well as the international bus that continues to
Vienna, an hour up river.
I'm told that Bratislavans come to Hainburg to shop, because prices are
lower here. I didn't do any comparison shopping myself. I doubt that the
price difference would make it worth coming just for a kebap. Maybe
consumer electronics or something.
There are the ruins of a castle on a hill over the town, presumably the
"burg" in Hainburg. I didn't manage any pictures though; too long an uphill
hike for the short afternoon that I was there.
So here we are: a small tidy town square (Hauptplatz - Main Square),
shopping streets run upriver (Vienna Road) and down river (Hungary
Road)
to Vienna Gate and Hungary Gate, respectively. Before the
first world war, the present border with Slovakia was the border with
Hungary.
The
Hainburg municipal web site tells me that the Vienna Gate is
"Europe's largest medieval city gate". In this quiet little city - little
more than a town! Hooda thunk it!
Warning!
Driving onto the stair, rolling of barrels, any treatment at all that
can cause damage to this stair, will be punished!
The stair in question has some history behind it...
The Fishermen's Gate
From the same municipal web page:
The Fishermen's Gate is the smallest and newest gate of Hainburg, and
serves only pedestrian traffic. In 1683, during the second Turkish siege,
it was the scene of terrible carnage, when almost all of Hainburg was
wiped out during an attempt to escape.
Blutgasse ("Bloody Lane") leads to the Fishermen's Gate, and
commemorates the terrible events of 1683.
I walked a foot trail down the Danube for a couple of kilometers. I don't
know what these tunnels through the rock are for; the trail also goes around
them, quite above ground.
A little finger of hills sticks out across the Danube into the plains. The
river flows through a gap called the Devin Gate a mile or two down
stream from Hainburg.
A trans-Europe bicycle trail leaves the river here temporarily, and
crosses the hills through a small canyon, before re-joining the Danube on
the Slovakian side of the border.
The bus runs that same canyon, Wolfsthal, into the plains, past
the abandoned Austrian border station, and the concrete slab where the
Slovakian station isn't, and whisks us back in to Bratislava.