How did I get injured?
So, I’m not describing the flight over. The bones of it are on the parent page. But I was in Vienna by late morning. Well, I was at the airport. I wasn’t in Vienna.
I thought I’d get the train into town. It became a bit of an epic. Why? Because a crucial part of the rail network was closed, and as a result the train I caught dropped me in the middle of nowhere. It’s possible I didn’t really understand what I was doing with tickets, but I ended up on a trian that terminated at St Marks Station, which is still some way out of the city centre. As I left the station I was at a bit of a loss as to what to do. There were no obvious metro links, and while there was a tram line, it didn’t go anywhere that was helpful to me.
So I decided to go for a bit of a walk. The plan was to walk to Rennweg metro station. It looked quite close on my phone, but it was a good kilometre away. And while I was walking two things happened to lower my mood. Firstly, it started raining. Secondly, I started limping. Not deliberately. Something had gone “ping” and my left ankle hurt. That pain stayed with me all weekend, and made the whole trip somewhat less than it could have been.
When I eventually got to Rennweg, I discovered it was shut for the same reason other stations were. One of the key suburban and metro rail lines is being upgraded. At this point I was at something of a low ebb, so I decided to stop farting about and just get an Uber. It turned up 2 minutes later and the drive took 5 minutes. A wiser version of me would have got one from the airport.
The Imlauer
The hotel was ready for me, even though it was only lunchtime. So I was able to go straight up to my room and do a quick change and swap of bags to make me ready for an afternoon out caching.
My plan for the afternoon was to go for a walk around Leopoldstadt, up towards Augarten. There seemed to be enough caches in that direction to fill up an afternoon. It started off quite slowly and I quickly hit upon a bit of a theme for the day (if not for the whole weekend). The theme was, sadly, that I struggled with some of the Ad Labs. I could cope with the fact that they were all in German. Why would they be in any other language? No. What got me was that a few of them were very ambiguous in what they asked. So I had a streak of DNFing Ad Labs, and sending messages to that effect. I think what may have happened is that Google Translate introduced some ambiguity.
Around the Gardens
Augarten is designed in the French Baroque style, with ornate planting, tree lined avenues and fancy buildings. Like most parks in the middle of Vienna it is walled/fenced, and closed at night. My walk took me to a theatre on one corner, and then alongside the south wall to the main entrance portal. Here I found my first puzzle cache in Austria, having found a multi a little earlier at Karmeliterplatz. There was a trad by the main portal that took a little thought too. By this stage, I’d probably failed on 5 ad lab stages since I set off.
It’s also worth saying that when I got to the corner of Augarten it started raining really heavily. I toyed with stopping for a cafe, but the only cafe where I was at the time seemed really full. It didn’t have anywhere to sit, and hence would be no use. A takeaway coffee would fill up quicker than I could empty it.
So it’s fair to say I wasn’t really enjoying myself at this point. The run of bad form continued along to the two massive concrete flak towers at the west end of the park. I couldn’t figure the answer for an ad lab at one of them, and I couldn’t find a survey bolt required for the information leading to a letterbox at the other one.
Dejected
I plodded my way back to the east side of the park, existing at Lili Grün Platz, where I did at least manage to find both labs. By this point my ankle was just hurting too much to continue, so I stopped at a pharmacy to buy an elasticated bandage and then started heading back to the hotel. It was getting late anyway. It was well past 6pm, and I’d found all of 35 caches, of which 30 were labs. I’d missed about 10 lab locations.
I hadn’t decided what to do for food, but as it happened there was a pizza place right over the road from the hotel. I didn’t even go back there, to be honest. I went straight in for an adequately good pizza, and then went back to the hotel to take painkillers and go to bed. A day of mixed fortunes, I would say.
