ecbinvienna

We did it! We finally finished the Rundumadum hiking trail. And only 😉 two and a half years or so after we went hiking together the last time, as described here. We managed to pick the perfect day for it, too. It was sleeting and windy and, of course, rather icy under foot with all that sleet. But, as we agreed, there is no such thing as bad weather, only inappropriate clothing, so we pulled on our warm and water-repellent things and went out.

As I mentioned in that post from May 2022, we didn’t manage the whole last stretch in one shot and so just had a couple of kilometers to go this time. We took the 34A bus from Floridsdorf more or less to where we stopped last time and set off from there in the direction of the Danube. Remarkably, given that we had often had trouble with the directions and missing trail signs, we didn’t have to re-trace our steps once. We found the pedestrian overpass that allowed us to cross the Autobahn first try and found ourselves walking along the banks of the Danube where the wind was, if possible, even stronger.

Other than a few hardy dog walkers, some with rather unhappy looking dogs, and a couple of joggers, we were the only ones crazy or driven enough (“We *will* finish it today”) to be out. Oddly enough, I can’t say it was unpleasant. We had enough to talk about, the scenery is always beautiful, and we were about to complete a journey I started alone in November 2018, if my memory serves me correctly. (Here is that first Rundumadum post with some photos of the stretch in friendlier weather.)

We found the Jedlerseer Brücke (bridge) easily and crossed to the Donauinsel, I remembering the first time I did that, with Maylo, who had to be carried part of the way. (He never did get used to bridges.) Then we transversed the Donauinsel, waved to Nussdorf, where we were headed, on the other side of the Danube, and followed the trail southeast to the next bridge and crossed. We came out quite close to the Heiligenstadt U4 station, and it was a little tempting to just stop there. However, we walked out to Heiligenstädter Straße and walked northwest to Nussdorf, the official end of that trail section. We were rewarded with a combination of some of the most famous “Gemeindebauten” or public housing blocks, including the Karl-Marx-Hof, and some beautiful 19th-century privately owned apartment buildings.

In Nussdorf, we congratulated each other and went back to my hiking partner’s place for some much needed Glühwein and Christmas cookies.

Up next — the city’s 14 “city hiking trails” (“Stadwanderwege”), which include some as short as 4 km and one as long as almost 23 km. (I suspect we won’t be walking that long one in one go!) Most of them seem to be between 10 and 12 km.

Below are a few photos from today’s walk, mainly to show the sleety, foggy weather. The last one also shows that we did make it all the way to Nussdorf.

Trail number 24

Distance: 7.8 km (of which we did three or four today)

Time (if you do the whole thing): 2 to 2.5 hrs

Link: https://www.wien.gv.at/umwelt/wald/freizeit/wandern/rundumadum/etappe24.html

Tags: hiking, rundumadum, walking

We are nearing the end of the Rundumadum. In fact, because I started with the last leg of the trail, I have now come full circle. I do still need to get the stamp from the Roter Hiasl restaurant in the Lobau as they were not open when we passed that way. Then I will be eligible for my City of Vienna hiking pin. 🙂

But I am getting ahead of myself, which is a pity because the start of this stretch was so enticing (not just because the bus took us uphill and we only walked downhill ;-)). Here it is, an old “Kellergasse” within the city limits.

What is a “Kellergasse”? Many will already know that a “Keller” is a “cellar” and, in this case, a wine cellar, and a “Gasse” is a narrow street or alley. They are (or were) common in wine-growing regions and were used to store wine before it was sold. Now, many people are buying them up and converting them into weekend retreats. As they are typically in rather green and agricultural areas, they make good retreats.

We followed Krottenhofgasse all the way down into Strebersdorf (one of the many villages that were incorporated into Vienna), oohing and aahing over the many flowering shrubs, which were at least two weeks behind what they are in town.

In Strebersdorf, we linked up with the Marchfeld Canal again, part of which we had seen on one of the earlier stretches, and carried on in even as it started to rain, noting the many places you could go down to the water and presumably swim. I couldn’t say I’d be very tempted as the water was pretty murky, but it might be nice to have the option nearby on a hot day.

On the left is a stretch of the canal that had an unidentified round structure on the shore (barely visible on the lefthand side) and on the right is a view still of the canal, although it looks like a lake or pond, with a glimpse of the church at the top of Leopoldsberg on the other side of the Danube (not visible). You can see from the photos that the weather was not bright, to employ a bit of understatement.

As has happened before, we at some point lost track of the Rundumadum signs and had to find our own way. We navigated, rather unusually, by checking out the bus route and managed to find our way to the 34A, which took us back to Floridsdorf. And just in time. By the time the bus pulled into Franz-Jonas-Platz in front of the U6 station at Floridsdorf it was coming down pretty heavily.

Trail number 23

Distance: 3.8 km

Time: 1 hour to 1 hour 15 minutes

Link: https://www.wien.gv.at/umwelt/wald/freizeit/wandern/rundumadum/etappe23.html

Trail number 24

We did 2 to 3 kms of this one, getting in the bus at Am Hubertusdamm.

Link: https://www.wien.gv.at/umwelt/wald/freizeit/wandern/rundumadum/etappe24.html

Tags: hiking, rundumadum, walking