To prepare for the long walk to Graz in September, I decided to do some hiking around Vienna. The city’s administration maintains 11 routes called “Stadtwanderwege” (city hiking trails), which are circle routes starting and ending at the same points and can be finished within 3-4 hours each, and 5 routes that consist of multiple stages each. In sum, the city offers about 500 km of hiking trails of easy and medium difficulty.

I did not have any preferences concerning the hiking routes or their areas, so I just decided to check them off according to their numbers, starting of course with number 1 – on the hottest day in June.

Although I had set up a meeting on Couchsurfing, and although I had announced it early enough, nobody joined me – I guess it was because of the weather reports. For once they were completely right …

When I started at 8 am, it was already damn hot. Still, I managed to finish the hike, without taking too many breaks, in under 3 hours. To be completely honest, I took an unintended short-cut somewhere, but only noticed that when I was back on the right track again. I had a great view from Kahlenberg down onto the city, and managed to walk by at least 3 geocache hideouts without remembering to check the app. The way back through the vineyards of Kahlenberg was also nice, but totally exposed to the sun…

The next hike, 3 days later, was number 1a, which shares some parts same with number 1. On this hike too, nobody joined me. One person had signed up for the event, but canceled last-minute – again due to the weather 🙂   I took this opportunity to make up for the shortcut I had taken before and this time took the long way around. The ascent to Leopoldsberg was incredibly exhausting – due to the rain in the morning, and the rapidly raising temperature, I felt like walking in a sauna. For my efforts, I was rewarded with great views on Kahlenbergerdorf and Vienna. With breaks, this hike took me 4 hours.