Sunday, January 20, 2008

Running in Vienna

I ran in Vienna today, which turned to be a lot less freezing than I had anticipated – the temperature went up to around 50F during the day.

I ran through the historical downtown and then on the bike path that goes by the side of the Donau River. I bet it was the same bike path Lambert had told me about: http://www.radtouren.at/en/radwege/genussradtouren/donauradweg.html
I ended up running 13 miles today.

But here is the fun part. I flew in around noon and as I had some time to spare I decided to find some nearby supermarket and get a pack of Gatorade or – if I am unlucky – water. I spent over an hour in the downtown and did not find any supermarkets, even small ones – only restaurants, boutiques and souvenir shops. Either locals do not eat at all, or always eat out. In any case they did all to hide the supermarkets from those annoying tourists constantly hunting for Gatorade.

I returned to my hotel empty-handed and ask concierge for directions. His reaction was: “Are you nuts? It is Sunday for Christ’s sake! Everything is closed!” There were a couple of hidden supermarkets nearby, but the only open one was located on the other side of the city at the Western railway station.

When we lived in Switzerland it was exactly the same – supermarkets were closed on Sundays and all the holidays And on top of it they were also closed after 6:30PM on weekdays. And we were used to it back then. It is just when you live to US you start taking some things for granted – like Ralphs open 24/7 or Albertson open past midnight – and cannot imagine that it can be otherwise :)

Vienna at night:


1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Hehe...yes, it's all closed over there and gives me panic attacks!!!

But it's always great to run at new places; especially countries.

http://runningparadise.blogspot.com/