Europe 1987
Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan 2018
We were up early for a 7:00am breakfast. Being back in the capitalist West for a couple of days, we decided to do some shopping for necessities before plunging back behind the Iron Curtain for a longer period of time. Thus, the morning was spent shopping for muesli, nappies and other basic supplies, after having changed money and obtained our Austrian schillings of course – another country, another currency and exchange rate to learn.
We had lunch in a playground in a shopping area before taking the car back to the Youth Hostel and then taking a tram into the city centre of Vienna. The weather was a very dull and heavily overcast, but the rain held off. One highlight of our sightseeing was the Hundertwasserhaus, surely one of the weirdest buildings I have ever seen. An apartment block, it is really a work of art that is difficult to describe, other than saying it is brightly coloured, eclectic, and seems to have very few straight lines, or even many true horizontal or vertical lines in its design.
We walked into the old centre of Vienna and then decided to splurge in a big way on a horse and carriage ride around the city at a cost of 500 schillings. The children loved it, and it was a wonderful way of seeing all the sights of the town – and probably the only practical way of doing so as the children were very tired.
We returned to the Youth Hotel and had dinner there followed by an early night for all of us.
Day 13
Vienna
Saturday 25 July 1987
