Traveling to Samorin Slovakia via Vienna. No idea what to do.

[rec head]

My wife got accepted to speak at a conference in Samorin Slovakia in mid-September and I'm tagging along. We are going to fly in to Vienna and take a shuttle to Samorin. The conference is only 3 days but we are going to be there from September 13-22.

While my wife is nerding out for 3 days I plan on riding my bike in and around Samorin. Anybody have a clue on this? I saw some routes on Strava but would like more info. My bike will have pretty big tires and I'd like to take advantage of them.

After the conference we plan on heading back to check out Austria. Everywhere I look there seems to be beautiful outdoors scenery in Austria. Where are the best places? Hallstatt looks amazing and would definitely like to check out one of those towns on a lake in the mountains. Most of what we are looking to do is hiking, birding and hopefully more riding.

Whenever we plan a trip there is so much I want to see and I get overwhelmed. Any tips would be great. Thanks for anything.


P.S. We will probably be going to visit my cousin in Prague next year so we don't plan on heading that way on this trip.

[GonaSovereign]

I'm no help with Slovakia.
Friends lived in Vienna, so I’ve been there a few times over the years, with and without bike. All the tourist things are worth doing. See the city. There is good riding just outside the city as well, and easily reachable on bike.

The rest of Austria is pretty different, and completely amazing in its own way. Hallstatt is lovely, but a solid trip from Vienna (as in, a day). If you’re going, I’d do the tour through the lakes are around Attersee, and then into the Tyrol. Salzburg is nice, but slammed with tourists.

[zetroc]

I love Vienna. It's a truly great city. There is so much to see there. But the countryside is beautiful too - my brother went to Salzburg and Bad Ischl, a resort town, a few years ago, and hasn't stopped raving about the scenery.

[Too Tall]

There are more than one VSalonistas who read from Slovakia.

[j44ke]

Pretty sure there is a Danube bike trail that runs all the way to Estergom. In fact, I think it is much longer than that. Here is an overview. There should be inns and the like along it, but using the trains, you can probably go farther afield and then cycle the return trip. Or vice versa. If you haven't seen it, Estergom has a huge cathedral that can be seen from quite a few miles away. It is the seat of the Orthodox church, though which Orthodox church I know not. Hungarian? There are so many it seems. But my general feeling is that Vienna is easy, but Hungary is interesting.

Anyway, in Vienna, go see the Freud museum. Amuse yourself beforehand by asking Viennese where the Freud museum is. Most of them don't know, because well, history. The museum is in the apartment where Freud spent much of his life until June 4, 1938 when he was finally allowed by the Nazis to leave Vienna and go to Paris (and from there to London) after Marie Bonaparte paid the Nazis roughly $2million for his safe passage. Unfortunately there was no money left to save his four sisters, and they were murdered in Treblinka and Terezin. Freud suffered from cancer of the jaw (caused by all those cigars) and died only a year after reaching London. The museum is very interesting, especially if you remember that all of his important cases occurred within those walls. Most of the original parts of his office are in the London museum, but the Vienna museum is where it all happened.

Café Hawelka is my favorite café in Vienna. It is always crowded, but the owners (if still alive, they were ancient when I was there) will grab you and put you at a table with available chairs. They pride themselves in the number of marriages (or just relationships) begun by their approach to seating guests.

A more sedate café is the Café Prückel across from the MAK (Museum of Applied Art) on the ring. This café has the typical mirror at eye level when seated going around the whole café, so that no matter where you are seated almost, you can spy on others at the café. But the coffee is good and so are the pastries. Service is classic Viennese officiousness. Their job is to deliver coffee, not to like you or dislike you.

Since you are over there, go to the MAK. I think it is Vienna's most interesting museums. The collection is focused on arts and crafts and design, but the curation is wide ranging and experimental - not merely for Vienna but just generally for art curation. Check out the music events. They are almost always interesting, challenging and often very good. We saw a performance of Japanoise musicians that was un-effing-believable there.

A very good restaurant near there is XPEDIT on Weisingerstrasse. Italian cooking with fresh pasta and lots of vegetarian options (usually) in fresh market style preparation. Another good restaurant is Kornat on Marc Aurel strasse. Croatian fish and seafood dishes. Really excellent. This is another place that traditional Viennese can't seem to find. Whatever. The food is great.

We like also the café in the MAK and the one in the Palmenhaus.

Vienna is so complicated. There is a lot to like there, especially among the young people who are great artists and designers. But the history of the city layers everything with a dark soot that cannot be forgotten so easily, not even I think by traditional Viennese. I think the best memorial to the Holocaust is by Rachel Whiteread and located in Judenplatz near the Judisches Museum Wien. Her sculpture represents all the books that will not be written, because all the people who would have written them have been exterminated.

My friend, Stefan Templ, is in Austrian jail after being convicted on trumped up charges of having attempted to profit from the Holocaust by fraud, when the true underlying reason is that he and his research partner published a book detailing all the properties stolen from Jews in the late 1930's that were still currently owned by the people who took them originally. Austrian has a law against publishing the provenance of real estate. Many of these buildings and businesses are very popular stops on most tourist's itineraries, and quite a few Austrian laws make restitution nearly impossible. You can read some of the story here in this article from the Guardian.

Not to be a downer! Anna Freud, after her experience with the Nazis (she negotiated the release of her father) and the loss of her four aunts (among others) returned to Vienna and became one of the pre-eminent authorities on the psychological development of children and methods of their education. So if Anna Freud can enjoy Vienna with all of its complex and largely unresolved history, that should be possible for us too.

[j44ke]

My wife reminded me I should have said was, not is. Stefan got out of jail in the middle of last year. Which is a good thing to remember!

Jewish author Stephan Templ released from Austrian jail, vows to fight fraud conviction - Europe - Haaretz.com

[maunahaole]

We visited Bratislava last summer. It's a beautiful area. Figure that it will be mostly flat. There's some nice country out to the north of Bratislava towards Stupava/Devin castle area that is pretty cyclist friendly. Traffic is light, etc.

For fun, book a tour with Authentic Slovakia. It's run by some young guys who make it fun. They have some hiking and low impact cycling options.

I can't help you at all with Samorin, as we didn't go there.

[rec head]

Thanks for the guidance salonistas. Especially the bikemap.net link

[JoB]

Thanks for the guidance salonistas. Especially the bikemap.net link

I grew up about halfway between Salzburg and Hallstatt. if you end up in central Austria let me know and I'll help you sort it out. Salzburg can be done in a day or two unless you sprinkle in some culture (heavy on Mozart).

[ericpmoss]

I asked a friend who lived in Vienna and still has cycling friends in the area. I'll just paste what she told me after she asked them for ideas. I hope it helps.

-------

Ok, I have a range of suggestions for different types of biking. He said there are few actual bike trails, but the roads are mostly in fine condition for riding.

Flatter regions:
1. From Vienna to Bratislava
2. In S.Moravia, Brno area is quite flat (to Czechs, at least, I remember parts of Brno being kinda hilly, but not sure about the environs). It sounded like one could ride from Bratislava to Brno rather easily.
3. Záhorie - Zahorie - Wikipedia - this area was Radim's first suggestion, but it is kinda far from where they will be.
4. From Bratislava or Šamorín to Neusiedler See (in Austria)

Hillier rides:
1. Between Bratislava and the Zlín and Kroměříž area (Kroměříž has a cool palace that was used in filming of things like Amadeus, etc). This will take them through the White Carpathians (Bilé Karpaty). In this region is Trenčín, which is supposed to have some cool sites: Visit Trenčin |. Or if you want to see a town built for industry (along the lines of Pullman), there is Zlín - it was literally built for the shoe manufacturing empire of Tomáš Baťa, sill going strong today. The factory buildings and worker housing still stands, even though production has moved around the globe.
2. To places like the Bojnice Castle. To me it looks like one is getting up into the mountains, but Radim said this wasn't so challenging.

Mountain rides:
As I was looking up one of the regions she mentioned (Maly Fatra), I came across this page...as you scroll down, you see "Slovakia by Bike"
Bicycle touring - Slovakia.travel
and this: cyclistswelcome.com - or Cyclists Welcome - Certified services on the route These might be good resources to find places to stay, etc.

Anyway, both the lesser and greater Fatra ranges are supposed to be beautiful: http://www.slovak-republic.org/greater-fatra/
Then they mentioned the low and high Tatras: http://www.nizketatry.sk/en.html, but I think the Tatras ranges are farther from where they will be: http://www.vysoketatry.com/en.html

They do spas really well in that part of the world and they are more easily accessible to people who aren't wealthy. Petra said that S. Slovakia has a bunch of warm springs. Of course, they look like combos of spas and water parks, but she says that some of the spas are quite nice and separate enough from the commotion of the water parks. She couldn't remember any names off the top of her head, though. Here's the country's webpage listing their spas (and the medical conditions the waters are supposed to help - they take these things very seriously): http://www.slovakia.com/spas/

Ok, I need to get going, but I hope this helps. Petra and Radim really focused on the biking part, so hopefully bikes will be available.

And going through photos of these places...argh! I want to be back there!!!

[j44ke]

That's a really good list of things in Slovakia. Here is an article on Zlin. Very interesting place. Tomáš Baťa was a visionary and followed some of the ideals communism promised but failed to deliver within a capitalistic context. So of course as soon as the Communists took over, the Bat'a family found themselves exiled to Canada after having moved there in 1939 to escape control of Czechoslovakia by the Nazi's and resulting destruction of World War II.

[maunahaole]

If you're traveling from Vienna to Bratislava on the train be aware that some of the later trains do not take you to the central station, but to the Petralzka [sp?] station which is a bit out of the center. It may be difficult to make connections from this spot. There will be cabs available, but this has its catches. There is a different rate schedule if you hail from the curb as opposed to calling and ordering. If you are using a cell with a data plan, download the hop in app and you can order a cab and get the lower price. The price differences can be significant. It works much like the Uber app and is pretty efficient. There is also a hydrofoil from Vienna to Bratislava on the Danube. We did not ride that, so I can't comment on connections or price.