Side side-trip to Vienna

For the weekend in Hungary, I arranged to visit my kiting students from Austria and have a customize whirlwind tour of Vienna at the same time. I rented a motorbike (something I just really wanted to do, screw the expense) and cruised the 240kms across the boarder. The drive was uninspiring, but the bike was a lot of run. Max speed 210kph, but it was the acceleration and manoeuvrability that was really enjoyable.
In Vienna, Melanie and Harry were embarrassingly welcoming hosts: as I don’t speak German, they took advantage to make the excuse to prevent my paying my fair share. I actually had to insist before they let me contribute some!
The first and last night we chose the same restaurant – a great brew pub with exceptional beers and traditional dishes. I was quite please to visit the second time around, and even pigged out on two meals as I couldn’t do just the one!
One Saturday, we did all the worthwhile tourist things: all kinds of buildings in the historical district, traditional cheese sausage, and of course beers. But also there were locals-only tips, like eating at the town hall market stands, and chilling at a beach bar alongside the Danube. Then we capped off by visiting the in-town amusement park, replete with all kinds of rollercosters and rides, but with the special distinction of not requiring an entry ticket: you just paid for the rides you wanted. These accomplished, we sat for dinner where I tried another traditional plate of meat, meat, and meat!
For Sunday, we slept in before searching the ‘net for options. We settled on the local cable-park, where you get towed around a circuit on a wakeboard on a flat lake. This spot was awesome: lots of hot girls watching from a bar restaurant, where a mix of hilarious novices and impressive local pros rode (or tried to at least).
While Harry chose to sit on the sidelines and play cameraman while quaffing plenty of beers, Melanie and I had a go for an hour. While she struggled to get to grips with this new variation on wakeboarding, I was successful at launching from the stand-up launch station (the one used by the pros), but found getting all the way around to be quite a challenge. Eventually I was doing it and even trying so little tricks, but it was a little different to kiting. So I was quite content once my hour of riding, and swimming, was over. I could feel in my legs the amount of walking I’d been doing for the past few days, and this sport compounded it. I had earned my beers, so we chilled before returning for a shower, picked up their flatmate (another kite student from Portugal) for a good night out. Just a great time. I look forward to returning the hospitality when they visit NZ sometime in the future…