DAY 116 THURSDAY JULY 19 WIENER SCHITZELS

We went straight to the Bahnhofreisezentrum and booked our trains to Paris on the 23rd and 24th and bought a Wiener card to get free transport and sightseeing discounts and raided our piggy back for Euros.  Lyn bought 4 novels in English while we were near big bookshops and we went to Aldi to buy food for breakfast for the rest of this week.  Back at the hotel we booked a room at Hotel Schnitt in Heidelberg as our overnight stop on the 23rd.  Quite pleased to have achieved all that before lunch, we took off via the underground to explore the city centre which is halfway between the Station and the Danube.  We surfaced at Stephansplatz and were immediately confronted with the very tall spire of St Stephens church.  It was over 400 feet high, and looked just as tall as Ulm, but clearly was not.  Had to take two shots of it.

Note the printed screen to cover the scaffolding again.

The roof was decorated with colourful tiles symbolic of the town.

Nearby we bought frontrow tickets for a 7.30pm concert presented by musicians in period dress playing Mozart's music as well as Hayden, Schubert and Beethoven. It was booked out tonight so we will go tomorrow.  Passed such a man dressed up as we walked down the street and when he looked at me I addressed him as Wolfgang, but he replied that he was performing in an Opera nearby.  As we walked down to the Info Office we passed St Peter's church which seems to be the other showpiece.

Took some sample photos of statues along the way:

Then climbed on board the openair Red Bus for a Dodgy Bros tour of the city with a woeful commentary prerecorded.  We did get to see many lovely buildings and statues but do not expect us to identify them if we see them again.  It was now 4pm so we did our thing of combining lunch and dinner, settling into openair chairs at The Mozart Cafe which is in the Sacher Hotel after which the world famous (?) Sachertorte was named.  Had to check whether the Wiener Schnitzel was better here than elsewhere and as predicted it was certainly bigger.

Could not resist the dessert menu items.  Lyn had the trio and Malcolm the Mozart Becher.  Wont need much breakfast either after all that.

As we finished eating a heavy rain storm broke so we waited 15 minutes, chatting to a Canadian on holiday.

Got back to the West Bahnhof without getting wet and found another transport sculpture:

This was acelebration of the estimated 10000 children who were sent from this station to Britain in 1938 and 1939 as Germany moved into Austria.  Very sad thought that many never saw their parents again.  Got soaked going from the station to the hotel because the forecast said rain would be tomorrow.