Vienna - Day Forty Eight

Saturday the 20th was a great day. I had been invited to a birthday barbeque, and ended up borrowing a mountain bike and cycling the width of Vienna to reach Donnauinsel - an island in the middle of the Danube that has been turned into a gigantic park. It took the best part of an hour to cycle there, but it was a beautiful sunny day, and after about ten minutes I stopped freaking out about cycling on the wrong side of the road (which is really off-putting by the way) and started to enjoy myself.

When we arrived at Donnauinsel we found a group of about fifteen to twenty people milling around a big circular public barbecue, and a huge feast laid out on two large picnic tables. Gabrielle, an Argentinian guy, had taken charge of the cooking, so I decided to get on with the important job of drinking beer in the sunshine and occaisionally throwing a stick for a yappy, happy and incredibly persistant sausage dog.

If you've never let an Argentinian cook you barbecue food, you're really missing out. Normally my manly pride would have had me poking coals and skewering sausages with the best of them, but I know when I'm outclassed. As if to emphasise his proficiency, Gabrielle pulled out the largest cut of steak I've ever seen (about the size of a small child) and started hacking portions off willy-nilly. He slathered them with a bit of secret recipe marinade and chucked them on the grill alongside the kasekrainer, wurst, halloumi and other assorted treats, and in no time everyone was chewing away happily.

As darkness began to fall, someone suggested we play some games. I got halfway through a drunken but passionate explanation of the rules of British Bulldog (a playground classic), when everybody suddenly broke into a game that was very clearly identical to British Bulldog. I didn't ask, but I'm assuming it was called Austrian Dachshund or something similar.

Missed the last metro home by exactly one minute, and had to repeat the epic bike ride in the dark whilst still slightly tipsy from all the beers. That seemed like a mini disaster at first, but the moon was nearly full and impossibly bright in the sky, the roads were quiet, and Vienna is even more beautiful at night. Various churches and public buildings became more dramatic than ever now they were suddenly backlit by a silver moon and wispy clouds - by the time I got home it wasn't just the cycling that left me breathless.