Boating from Vienna to Bratislava. Almost.
The Danube River connects the two capitals of Austria and Slovakia. You can take a speed-boat shuttle, that connects the two city centres, but thats quite expensive for a round trip. So we brought our own little boat. It wasn't a round trip however, since the Danube has a quite strong current in this section.
The boat
So my family has a boat. No, it's not one of those fancy sailing boats or one that can go fast with a motor, it's an inflatable canoe that fits into the boot of a VW Polo and goes as fast as you can paddle. But thats pretty cool since it allows you to go places that you cannot go with any other type of boat. It's an Adventure by Grabner Boote and quite tough and durable. We have had it for over 10 years now and have been canoeing and also did some white water rafting with it. We even travelled to Finnland with it once and now we are planning to take it to Norway. So it's fair to say I have quite some experience at boating.
Boating the Danube
As I said earlier, the Danube has a quite strong current and its one of the busiest international waterways of Europe. So the fact of floating down that river with in piece of inflated rubber with nothing more than two paddles and your muscles as propellant might seem intimidating. However, its quite save actually, if you know what you are doing and be aware of the risks.
Safety
The rules are quite simple: Stay out of the way of the big ships. No seriously, this is the only thing to worry about, however this can be done quite easily by avoiding the main shipping channel, which is marked by red and green buoys, and being aware of ships when in it. For additional safety we always wear life jackets when on the water. We have done that quite a few times and never had any problems.
The trip
This time however, we wanted to see Vienna from a new perspective. In order to do so, we started our trip in the north of Vienna, near the refuse incinerator Spittelau, which is actually a famous landmark. From there we followed the Donaukanal ("Danube channel"), which is an arm of the main river, that goes right past the historic city centre of Vienna until it met the main river. We stopped along the way to have lunch and as some thunderstorms rolled in, we stopped in Hainburg, the last town before the border with Slovakia and Bratislava.
