Vienna

I only wanted to visit Vienna to see the Ferris wheel used in "The Third Man" - one of my favourite films!

But I must admit, that's about all I can remember about my first visit to Vienna - sorry!

However, I did manage to spend a day in Vienna while making my way back to the UK overland from Syria. I arrived at Wien Westbahnhof at 08:00 on a sleeper train from Belgrade, and was booked on the sleeper to Paris at 20:30 that night!

The Ferris Wheel!

The weather was rather cold, but that didn't seem to be putting off the hoards of pre-Christmas shoppers and tourists. I spent the morning wandering around Vienna city centre, and then took the underground out to Wiener Prater, and took a ride on the Riesenrad.

It was great to re-live part of the Third Man, but I was quite amazed that there was so little about the movie in the museum or the gift shop!

Then it was back into the city where I did a coach tour of the city, and the Schönbrunn Palace where we did a whistle stop tour of a few of the rooms in the palace.

..and I made it to Vienna again on my 'Silk Road' trip in 2008, this really was a whistle stop tour, as I arrived in the morning on the train from Budapest, and was booked on the 'Orient Express' from Vienna to Koln that night!

However that didn't stop me from doing a couple of interesting things - the first was the 'Third Man Sewer Tour' - if you haven't seen it there's a famous film staring Orson Wells and part of it is filmed in the Vienna Sewers. I got my ticket and headed for the rendezvous spot. Which was in the middle of a traffic island. The sewer opening they use is the actual one in the film, and the tour takes in a couple of the places used in the film. It's an unusual claim to say that I've had a tour of Vienna's sewers!

My next port of call was the Third Man museum, a labour of love by a husband and wife team, they have so much stuff about the movie, how it was made, and post war Vienna. If you get the chance to visit the museum it's well worth it.