The Prater Park

A lot of people seemed to be looking at my walking sandals today – I’d considered my hiking boots to go exploring the Prater, but with a high of 21C (13 when I left), I was glad I wore my open-toed footwear.  Fall/winter will be here soon enough and my poor toes will then again have to be closed in.  I love these shoes!  Sure, they’re a bit inconvenient when a pebble gets caught in there, but a bit of yoga balance and a practiced finger does the trick.  This time, however, my brain registered it as strange that my hand was wet after handling my shoe and yet the pathways were dry … yuk! I’d stepped in doggy doo-doo! Try finding a place to wash your hands in these parks! I did find a toilet (free, surprisingly!), but there were no sinks.  Later on, though, I found a water pump that did the trick after using grass and a pond in between.  But I’m getting ahead of myself…

I had put it up in the school’s Facebook group that I’d be leaving the Prater fairgrounds entrance gate at 11am if anyone wanted to go on a hike, but as I had anticipated, I was on my own. That gave me a chance to do another 3 hours of learning German with my iPhone as I wandered around, sometimes in circles, in the Prater park, a huge space with the Hauptalle (Main Alley) in the centre (with lanes for bicycles/in-line skaters, pedestrians, horses, and dirt paths for dog walkers/joggers) and paths going off in all directions through all sorts of terrains and attractions.  I mostly stuck to the bigger pathways on the lower side of the map, simply because I didn’t know how safe it would be to wander into the woods on my own, but I still got a good taste of nature.  I brought my real camera this time, but alas, dear fans who complained that I didn’t have a photo of the squirrels at Shönbrunn, there were none here.

After 3 hours, when I spotted a sign for the underground, I decided that I’d had enough.  Once I found my way there, I learned that the Eurolines buses to Brno, Czech Republic are only 7.60 EUR instead of the 30 train ticket.  They leave every day at 17:30 from the Prater… a bit of a problem with my 18:00 end of classes.  I’ll keep exploring options.  I got off the U3 at a station that was new to me, but whose name I recognized as being a street that connects to mine. It turns out that it starts on Mariahilfestrasse (the big shopping street), which gave me the chance to get a pistachio gelato cone for my walk home.  When I arrived at 3pm, one of my roommates was still sleeping – they came in at 5am.  They start 2 weeks of German classes tomorrow, so we’ll be on a more similar schedule then.