One of our colder walks took us, along with our friend Keval, to Vienna's 18th district and the woods surrounding the Pötzleinsdorfer Schloßpark (no dogs allowed in the actual park, unfortunately). The colors were just past their peak, though the grey light made it hard to capture in photos.
Even late in the day the paths were fairly crowded, but Pan got to run off the lead a bit. Chasing sticks up the hills and bringing them down again made for some good exercise.
A few weeks later our friend James visited us from London. The weather wasn't on our side, with more grey, misty afternoons, but we still ventured out to the countryside to show James the Wachau (the wine-growing region along the Danube, upstream from Vienna). Autumn means game season in Austria, with venison, pheasant, and goose filling the menus, as well as lots of pumpkin soup. We stopped for a late lunch at one of our favorite places in the Wachau region, Restaurant Loibnerhof, which belongs to the Knoll wine-producing family. In addition to maintaining an extensive cellar of their own wines--allowing us to taste Austrian Rieslings from the past 20+ years, the food is traditional and top-notch.
Pan managed to behave through the meal, but he was ready for some exercise afterward, and we desperately needed to burn off some indulgent strudel. Above the town of Durnstein are the ruins of a medieval castle where, legend has it, Richard the Lionheart was captured and held on his journey back from the Crusades. His trusty servant, Blondel, found and rescued him, apparently by singing a song only the two of them knew. On a foggy afternoon along the Danube one could see how Blondel was left with few other options.
The walk up to the castle was steep and empty, a perfect chance for Pan to scamper up and down and generally use a lot of energy. I was doing a bit less scampering, but did manage to make it to the top, a bit behind Mike, James, and Pan.
The view up and down the Danube valley, and over the roofs of the town of Durnstein, with it's very blue and very Baroque church, was eerie and beautiful in the last of the afternoon light. We headed down the hill just in time, as it was 5pm and dark by the time we reached the bottom.
By mid-November, most of the leaves had fallen, but it was actually one of the warmest weekends in months. Sunny and in the mid-50s, it seemed like all of Vienna had the same idea as we did and had headed out to the 16th district and the Wiener Stadtwanderweg 4a. Vienna has the good fortune to be surrounded by hills and forests on several sides, and the city utilizes this to full effect. Official city walking paths ("wanderweg"s) are clearly signposted through all of the woodlands. The Viennese love to hike and enjoy the outdoors, preferably with their dogs. On this, at least, we agree.
Once the path wandered a bit farther into the woods, we finally had some space to ourselves to let Pan off the lead. We had some more good stick-chasing while I attempted to get a few shots of our handsome red-brown dog among all the brown-red leaves. He's getting too fast, though, and most shots came out a bit blurry. Here are a few.
By now, it's Thanksgiving and I haven't yet posted this. Because I know some of my family is together and wanting to see this, I'll go ahead and get it online. Dad arrives this Saturday, hopefully with his new camera in tow, and we can get some better photos of little P.
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