Vienna is doing what Vienna does in November and December (and sometimes in January and February). I like it. I find the mistiness soft and gentle, but, as you can see, it can go on for days at a time without a change. This explains why the Vienneselike to go to the mountains. Anyway, typical.
This time I actually remembered to tune into the ORF reporting 20 minutes or so before the start of the race. The main topic this year is the weather. No one’s going to get heatstroke today. It is beautifully sunny but currently 0°C with winds up to 40 kph(!). (Everyone interviewing, being interviewed, and commentating was in down jackets.) Apparently, 8 to 10 degrees are considered optimal. Maybe the organizers should have thought of that before moving the race up by about two weeks!
Some of the effects of the weather: the wind, of course, will be a major challenge. A prominent former Austrian marathoner, Michael Buchleitner, who was commenting, remarked on the water temperature. No, the runners do not need to swim the Danube – it’s a marathon not a triathlon – but they do need to drink water, and the water has been outside all night and will be very cold. He also mentioned, twice, before and after, that it is the kind of weather where the winners will not necessarily be the ones in top form (so, one kind of “fittest”) but rather the ones who adjust to the conditions most quickly and effectively, partly in terms of what kind of clothing they’re wearing. Survival of the fittest in Darwin’s original sense.
In fact, I immediately noticed the difference in clothing among the top runners in comparison to other years. I saw arm warmers, t-shirts under singlets, longer tighter shorts, some gloves, but, with one exception (and in contrast to the amateur runners) no ski hats among the men. One male runner did wear very large earmuffs, though. (He won.)
A small point, there are always ORF reporters on a motorcycle (now electric, if I remember correctly) reporting from the frontline, and they are concerned about how they will stay warm for the two plus hours they’ll be tootling about.
In spite of the temperatures and wind, there were a record number of runners this year. Over 46,000, if I understood correctly.
Watching this (from the comfort of my sofa, except for the half hour or so when I go down to cheer on the frontrunners) brought the usual joy of familiar landmarks: the Tegetthoff column at Praterstern, the Urania, Vienna River, Schönbrunn, Votiv Church, Prater again with the Lusthaus, (even the Ernst Happel stadium looked good) –and, of course, the glories of the Ringstraße (although I do always worry about the runners and the tram tracks).
The many, many campaign posters of the unpleasantly baby-faced Dominic Neff of the FPÖ lining Lassalle Straße were less enjoyable.
Other kinds of advertising were less disturbing, like the Erste Bank’s #glaubandich (“Believe in yourself”) in huge letters on the asphalt of the Reichs Bridge and the Hervis (sporting goods shop) banner at the halfway mark, telling the runners, who I’m sure had no time to take it in, that it made no sense to turn around now. (Like the old joke of the channel swimmer who got within 50 meters of the other shore and said, “I’m too tired. I can’t,” and turned around to swim back to where she came from.)
Valentin Pfeil, who was the first Austrian and Austrian man to cross the finish line in 2016, had been roped in as a running reporter, wired for sound and expected to comment on how the race was going while he was running it. This seemed kind of brutal to me, but he didn’t seem to mind. At the end, he even said that he experienced “runners’ high” for the first time ever in a marathon and thought that might have been because, knowing that he would be called upon to comment on the race, he wasn’t trying to run 100%. Nonetheless, I found it tactless of his ORF colleagues to ask him a couple of times along the way at which point he knew he was going to make it to the end. He finally deigned to give a clear answer, saying, “I’m passing the Staatsoper now. I think I’ll make it.” (The end is at the Burgtheater, less than a kilometer away.)
Some random points:
Have I mentioned it was really cold? (See the two winners in their down jackets!)
Curious for more? There are some website suggestions below:
The official Vienna City Marathon site: https://www.vienna-marathon.com/?go=welcome
The ORF (Austrian Broadcasting, in German): https://sport.orf.at/stories/3139958
https://wien.orf.at/stories/3273103/
The Wienfluss (Vienna River) is usually a trickle. It is extraordinary to see it looking like this. Even the extensive construction work done a few years ago to ensure that the underground tracks don’t flood has not been enough. The U4 line is only running from Heiligenstadt to Friedensbrücke at the moment, about a quarter of its usual route. And we are the lucky ones (so far)!
The last two mornings I got the faintest whiff and thought I was imagining it because it is very early. This morning, it was clear — the linden trees are flowering again and the air is full of the sweet tantalizing scent.
Since I like to check my perceptions, I decided to go back and see if it really is so early or whether I was making that up. Here are the dates of my previous posts about the linden trees:
2023: Beginning of June
2022: June 2nd
2021: June 7th
2020: June 10th
2017: May 30th
2016: June 4th
2015: June 2nd
2012: May 24th
2011: May 30th
I’ll let you do the math.
My Facebook memories just reminded me of an exchange with colleagues in January 2010 that gave me great pleasure.
First post
I had to work late yesterday and missed going skating. So this morning I went for a walk even though it was snowing pretty heavily.
This haiku is the result (in German first):
Viel Schnee ist heute
In Pötzleinsdorfer Schlosspark
Aber wenig Leut’
… which translates into English more or less like this:
Lots of snow today
In Pötzleinsdorfer Schlosspark
Very few people
Later
As I was waiting for the tram to make its way back into Vienna I sent it by text message to friends and colleagues. One of my colleagues challenged me to write a limerick and I came up with this (long tram ride!):
Eliza went out in the snow
She had nowhere else to go
She slipped on the ice
Said something not nice
And now when she goes she goes slow. 🙂
We woke up to snow yesterday and it has been snowing off and on since then. Beautiful. 😊
These two photos were taken from the same spot on the canal — the dark clouds were upriver and the blue sky was down. Maylo and I did get quite wet as we were walking upriver. It’s a good thing that we are not, as one says in German, made of sugar!
Today is almost like the November days I remember from 30 years ago — gray, damp, chilly. It isn’t raining, but the pavements are damp with condensation; it isn’t that cold in temperature (about 4°C), but it is a penetrating chill. The air, as always on these days, is a bit acrid because the cloud cover holds in all the exhaust. And it may be a bit warmer than back then. Certainly it is somewhat brighter as the buildings are for the most part cleaner and this year’s spectacular foliage, in yellow and gold, is not yet completely gone.
Just a quick post today to say that two aspects of this coronavirus crisis are particularly disorienting here in Vienna.
One is that we are going through this in considerable comfort. As the child of two Europeans, both of whom grew up in war zones during the Second World War, I have always assumed that a crisis would be accompanied by severe rationing (=hunger, for years), cold, long stretches without water or electricity, not to mention the fear of having a bomb dropped on your head or the head of someone you loved. It is almost disturbing to have everything, including, so far, excellent internet, phone service, and so on. It seems it should be more painful!
Come to think of it, that is not only the impression I got from my parents. When you grow up in New England, as I did, you know there can be snowstorms that take out the power and telephone for days on end and therefore make sure you have food, wood, and water on hand. You know that you will have lots of time to read (provided you have alternative sources of light), but you don’t expect it to be really comfortable.
The second factor contributing to this sense of disorientation is the exquisite early spring weather we’re experiencing. How can something bad be happening when the sun is shining the way it is and blossoms and flowers are coming out?
It doesn’t seem possible–and yet it is.
(We walked this on 5 January 2020. I’m only now getting around to fleshing out my notes on it and posting.)
I was going to write the title of this post with a question mark, but by the end I figured we had come close enough to walking the right route that I didn’t need to.
Attentive readers will notice that there is no blog post (yet) for the 8th stretch of the Rundumadum trail. I’m saving that one to walk with my friend B.
The first thing I noticed–and probably Maylo, too–was how cold it was when we got off the U6 at Alterlaa to start Trail Nr. 9. It was especially the wind that went right through us. I almost turned around and got us back on the underground. Then I reminded myself that I am from New England and made of sterner stuff. 😉 Nonetheless, I felt compelled to take a photo of these ducks along the Liesing River. They were huddled into themselves and their feathers were all puffed up. I realized I wasn’t the only one feeling the cold.
It is very interesting for me to get into this part of the Rundumadum trail because I am now on new territory. Everything up until now I have hiked in one form or another, and I also know the public transportation for those earlier bits fairly well. As far as this new stretch goes, I have been to Wienerberg before, but I approached it from a different direction and so felt somewhat lost from the beginning. (It didn’t help that so much time has gone between this hike and the one before it that I forgot to look for the Rundumadum signs! I was relying heavily on the very general map and directions the City of Vienna provides and that was not easy.)
As instructed, we went along with the Liesing River on our left (ducks!) and the Steinsee, a manmade lake, on our right–that much was pretty clear. After the Steinsee, we crossed a big street with no visible street sign and kept going with the Liesing on our right. We came to a bridge with no clear idea (did I mention that the directions were very general?) whether we should cross. We decided (well, actually, I decided–poor Maylo has no say in any of this) to stay on our side, thinking that there would have been a sign if we should cross over.
After 7 minutes or so, we came to landscape that is representative of this part of Vienna–an enormous flyover (overpass) in the middle of what tries otherwise to be a green and natural part of the city. The noise from the cars is not too bad because sound barriers were put up, but there’s no hiding the fact that thousands of cars an hour are driving through this part of Vienna. It does take some of the charm away …
Given the fact that there was no way through (there were railway tracks on the ground and they were fenced off), we had to turn back and try the bridge after all. After about half an hour of uncertainty whether we were on the right path there came deliverance. We were very relieved to see this sign.
From then on it was somewhat easier, but by then I had lost some of my spirit of adventure. (Did I mention that it was cold and I had no idea where we were going? I also was starting to feel sorry for Maylo, who was being very game but not obviously enjoying our walk. He does seem to prefer walks on which I know where we’re going. Probably this has something to do with my being–at least when it suits him–the alpha dog. ;-))
At some point, I realized that we had overshot the end of this stretch and started the next. I wasn’t thrilled that this was because the map I downloaded from the internet (link below) right before leaving home was still orienting itself around the number 67 tram, which no longer exists. Warning: That route is now served by the number 11 tram. We did a good bit of the beginning of the next stretch and then gave up, turned around, and went home.
Not all bad–I’m happy to get to know another part of Vienna and test my navigation skills–but not the most fun we’ve had on this journey. I certainly failed at being curious, which really is something of a failure as three years ago I took a year to train my curiosity skills (and, of course, blogged about it) : ayearoflivingcuriously.wordpress.com
I will endeavor to do better–i.e., enjoy the whole process more–the next time!
Distance: 4.1 km (we probably did almost 3 km extra)
Time: 1 – 1 1/2 hours
Route: https://www.wien.gv.at/umwelt/wald/freizeit/wandern/rundumadum/etappe9.html
ecbinvienna 