When we first arrived at the Venice train station, the local people call it Ferovio, I inquired as to how much was the reservation cost for the night train. After taking two trips and seeing how empty were the 1st class wagons, we decided to take a chance by not taking the sleeping wagon and thus saved 50 Euros. I had once taken the sleeping couchette on the train from Lourdes (Tarbes) to Paris in France. It was crammy and unless you sleep, it is not comfortable. If our compartment could be 'monopolized', Cecilia and I would be able to sleep even better than in a sleeping couchette.
The train for Vienna started quite on time at 20:46 and I took the time to check the two wagons earlier. They had about 30% occupancy rate, pretty safe :-). We forgot that even though it was weekday, we were not the only ones from Italy who wanted to go to Vienna. At every station thereafter, whenever people boarded and entered our wagon, we held our breath :-). We didn't want to arrive in Vienna without having slept at all because it would be in the morning. After several stations and about an hour passed by, we knew that our gamble paid off. We had one bench each in the compartment to snore as we pleased :-).
There were two nuisances despite the comfy 'bed' we had on that night. The Austrian passport officer who dared to wake us up :-) and the train conductor later-on checking again our train tickets. I woke up quite early, as soon as the light from the sun started to creep in. When I glanced outside the window, I had to hold my breath again because it was very scenic. I think it was around Echberg, still in the Alps region as our train was still 1.5 hours from Vienna. The train arrived precisely at 6:27 in Wien's Suedbahnhof (Vienna South-station). We spent about an hour sipping coffee at the station while studying the Vienna's public transportation and how could we go to our campground, Wien West. After the self-study crash-course, we purchased two 72 hours ticket for a total of 21.20 Euros, about US $ 3.50 per day. From the map that we got, we figured out that we needed 2 transfers to reach our campground. First, we had to take what they call the S-Bahn, their rapid transit train from Suedbahnhof to a station called Karlsplatz. Then we had to take their U-Bahn or their subway system to a station at the west end called Huetteldorf. Finally, a bus number 148 or 152 should be there waiting to take us another 3 km to the campground. We became very familiar with all the U-Bahn (there are four lines) as well as the train and tram during our stay in Vienna. In my opinion, it is much more efficient than our poor Toronto Transit Comm. :-). Toronto tourist wouldn't be able with just Cdn $ 5 to do a city tour for 24 hours. The trains and buses frequency also beats ours.
When we arrived at Wien West campground, finally, we were very pleased with everything. Surely it is not a scenic campsite, what do you expect of a campsite inside a city. However, it was very clean, we could take shower for 24 hours if we wanted to :-). The all-you-can-shower camping fee was 13 Euros per night cheap. On top of that, we learned later that we could also use the kitchen facility. We took advantage to wash our clothes here because the dryer was also free and we still knew how to wash clothes by hands. (There was a special sink that had grooves just like Indonesian washing board). As usual, we took an early "siesta" for 1 hour after we cooked our breakfast and thus made our stomach happy.
Not wanting to waste time in this great city of Europe, having mastered the public transportation system, we went downtown. We chosed first to stroll along the famous street in Vienna, Kaerntner Strasze. Like Bahnhofstrasse in Zurich, Kaerntner is also an exclusive street, meaning expensive items sold there. Not too far walking, we came across an information booth that also sold opera tickets. We were told that the cheapest seat for Romeo and Juliette was 120 Euros. We had lots of excuses, we wouldn't be able to understand the German translation anyway and we didn't bring our suits, only cycling short and jersey :-). As dusk fell, we went back to the city after our real siesta at the campground. Even though Wien West is quite a distance from the city centre, because of the efficient public transportation we were not tired going back and forth several times per day. Having been serenaded a few times by the Blue Danube song in San Marco piazza in Venice, we wanted to see that famous river. Upon seeing for the very first time, one of its tributaries near the U-Bahn station Schwedenplatz, we were quite disappointed because the water was very brown and not blue at all :-). The same brown water was there to see when we checked the main river for the second time on the next day. Well, I then realized, had Cecilia and I seen the river after we married for 27 hours and not 27 years, I was sure the river would have looked blue :-). Take care my friends, till the next episode where we will share the excitement of biking around Vienna. Auf wiederschreiben.