26 July 2006: Morning awake at 8:30. I went to the dining room at the ground floor for my breakfast, in order to get some strength, since I felt I didn’t rest as much as I needed from my yesterday’s big trial. I calculated that my previous day’s driving distance was 780 kilometers. I think that I managed to break my own personal record for a lengthy driving distance.
After my breakfast, the typical daily gathering of my luggage followed, where I can say proudly now that it took me only 15 minutes to take care of! A last minute shower in order to be fresh enough, and left my room to go to the reception to pay. Leaving the hotel, I put a course for Vienna, even though I didn’t actually know if I would manage to succeed to drive so many kilometers in one day, I was still tired from the previous day’s trip. Polish roads were still in a very good shape, thing that actually still impressed me. How wrong could I be about Poland? I reached the Czech Republic’s borders around 1:30. Unfortunately I didn’t use the provincial roads, since it would require more driving time.
A few minutes after 5 pm in the afternoon I was already at the border of Czech Republic and Austria. I stopped for a while to change my GPS maps and started driving again. I was looking for those cheap motels across the road, but the kilometers were passing without finding any. Without even noticing it, I reached Vienna. Either case, the distance from the borders till Vienna is only 85 kilometers! Without doubt, I knew where to stay: At the very same place I stayed on Sunday, when I first came to town, at Pension Hargita. I stopped to put the address on my GPS and headed straight to the city’s center. Reaching the center, I got myself stuck in an amazing traffic jam: 10 minutes of pure hell for only 500 meters distance, my sweat was running down like water. I finally managed to find to the pansion. Price had changed, due to the fact that there were no rooms available: 55 euros this time, but the advantage was that it had a shower and bathroom inside. Unpacking again and straight to the shower!
As for my lunch, I didn’t have the strength to go to the city. There was a small Italian restaurant right opposite to the pension I was staying, so I got there to eat a pizza. It really worth mentioning the following incident: When I asked for the menu, the waiter (that was also the restaurant owner) brought to me one in German language. I told him I wanted to English one. He answered to me that his menu was international, pizzas were pizzas, cutlets were meat-made and not chicken and it doesn’t really require explanation to understand them!
I agreed, thinking that I was very tired and couldn’t read properly, so I ordered a capriccioza pizza. When he brought my lunch, I discovered that it had olives and anchovy inside!! Without having any options – due to starvation – I ate it, even though I knew that during the night I would be desperate for a bottle of water.