Vienna Bike Rides

The weather turned on us by the time we got to Vienna, so the bicycle rides represented in this post consist of:

1. Two short rides on our CityBike rentals, split by at least an hour while we watched the bikes get soaked in a hammering downpour while we had cakes and coffee in a café.
2. A 30 second rental half an hour after we turned the first pair of bikes in, just to verify that we could rent another bike the same day and return it within an hour at no cost.
3. A ride we borrowed from UC Davis Professor Mont Hubbard, who visited Vienna earlier this summer and took a long ride into the country at our suggestion.
4. A drive by visit to the Bike Kuche (Kitchen) located in Vienna.

A Mozart and a Mozart-ess selling tickets to the opera.

The sky was threatening when we first decided to rent from CityBike at the famous Stadtopern that is a must-visit for tourists. In the summertime, the regular theater company leaves Vienna for two months to mix some light touring with holiday for the actors. While they leave the opera house vacant, the area around it suddenly populates with clipboard-carrying costumed Mozarts and princesses selling tickets to an attractive alternative. There are nightly shows that are basically a sampler platter of highbrow stuff well suited to a peasant like me: a few arias, some opera bits, orchestra pieces, and classic Viennese comedy sketches. You can even get standing places you claim by looping a scarf over your section of railing. These are quite cheap, and let you unobtrusively tiptoe away if you would rather go find a loud punk band in a cheap dive bar.

Anyway, as described by Emily in the Vienna Bike Rental post, the system is not hard once you fumble through the initial registration. Unfortunately for us, that registration process consumed half an hour that we could have used to ride bikes. Our first goal was to play with the counter-flow bike lanes that are all over the one-way streets in the city center. They were a breeze to use, and allowed us to take short cuts not available to cars. Without fail, drivers respected our right to ride against the flow, raising our comfort level. The core of Vienna has a messy maze of narrow streets, many of them one-way and most of them clogged with cars parked half on the sidewalks and half on the streets. The ability of a cyclist to cut directly through this area riding against the flow of traffic on one-way streets makes biking the most attractive option for getting around the city center.

Bicyclists are allowed to ride counter-flow on most one-way streets.

Hiding from the rain in a cafe.

Not five minutes into our rental, a cloudburst began soaking the streets and anyone out upon them. We ducked into a café we knew had wireless service and settled in at a window table to wait it out. That means 45 minutes of our first (free) hour was spent watching our poor bicycles sitting in the rain two feet away.

Once it cleared up, we used our handy bandanna to dry the seats and wandered aimlessly around the city core for a while. Eventually we dismounted at the big pedestrian zone, and walked the bikes to the plaza in front of St. Stefan’s. It took a while to find the CityBike kiosk, though, because it is off a rear corner of the cathedral, partially obscured by a hedge. Finessing the bikes into the locking mechanisms consumed more time. With experience that will come more easily. But we can say that running at it full speed and using a hard slam don’t work as well as a gentle nudge at the correct angle.

The CityBike kiosk at Stephansdom.

We immediately tried to rent bikes again, but were blocked out of the system because we had just used a free hour. This feature makes it impossible to string multiple free hours together for a longer rental at no cost. That’s understandable, since the purpose of this system is to eliminate short vehicle trips and provide access for visitors. It does that beautifully, as we were able to use the system again half an hour later and pull a bike out of the Mozart-rich kiosk next to the Opera House.

Let’s contrast this bicycle access to our experience driving into Vienna with our car. I know the city fairly well, and thought I would be tricky and navigate to the neighborhood inside the outer ring and northwest of St. Stefan’s cathedral. Unfortunately, when I crossed the Danube on the way in from Georg’s I took a bridge too far (slap me). This put me outside the outer ring, and I compounded my error by turning away from the city center when I thought I was already inside it. After half a mile under heavy tail-gating pressure to get off the street, we came upon an underground parking garage. We found a space, and surfaced at the top of the stairs completely disoriented under a cloudy sky. We did walk off in approximately the right direction, but only got to the city core after help from a local, a long walk, and a streetcar ride.

View of the Danube from an upstairs window at Uferhaus.

The last bike rental I’ll discuss here we have second-hand from UC Davis Professor Mont Hubbard, who attended a conference in Vienna early this summer. I had suggested to Mont that he ride out to Uferhaus, a restaurant that sits directly on the banks of the Danube about 20 miles downstream from Vienna. It is owned by Georg Humer, a friend since 1973 who did an exchange in my home town a few years after I went to live in Upper Austria with AFS. I got the Sound of Music and Georg got a blistering wasteland in the California desert. His website is at www.uferhaus.at

There is a 13 mile long island in the Danube that extends the whole distance of metropolitan Vienna. Mont took his private all-day rental bike from his hotel out to that island, and rode downstream all the way to the southeastern tip. Then he crossed to the north side of the Danube, but there encountered a gate across the bike path. (Georg later surmised that the path had been closed due to recent flooding.) He was pondering what to do when another cyclist appeared who was attempting the same route. In a fine example of post cold-war cooperation, the Russian cyclist left his bike and climbed the fence. Mont handed the bikes across then climbed over himself.

Next Mont rode onto an abandoned rail line atop a levee that has been converted to a riding and hiking trail through a national park along the river. Fifteen miles later he was sitting on the patio at Uferhaus chatting with Georg. At the end of a great long meal, Georg loaded Mont and his bike into his van and delivered them back to the hotel in Vienna. Mont said it was the best experience of his week-long trip.

Mont was the third Davis resident I have sent out to Uferhaus on bicycles in the past few years. This is something we can easily do with the more adventurous clients when (not if) Vienna is included on the tours. The return trip to Vienna does not need to rely on Georg's good will, either. You can take the train, assuming the post-meal doldrums have one disinclined to ride back the 20 miles. There is a ferry that crosses the river from Georg's restaurant to the village on the other side of the Danube, where a short ride gets one to the train station and a quick trip back to Vienna. This bike path system Mont used extends on both sides of the Danube the full length of Austria, from Germany to Slovakia.

The entrance to Vienna's Bike Kitchen.

Because of the constant rain that set in after our first day, our final bicycle related activity was not by bike. On our way back west towards Switzerland we stopped by the Bike Kitchen near the museum quarter in Vienna. This radical, pro tolerance, feminist cooperative/repair shop/café is in an unremarkable location that seemed pretty obscure. Then we noticed that all the half-basement windows in one building on the street in question were plastered with stickers and slogans. They were closed, but the bike rack out front had a bunch of home-welded creations that would be at home in Peter Wagner’s collection in Davis. See Peter's pictures for examples. We’ll come back another day for a discussion with these folks.

In all, I was very surprised at the advances in the bikeway system in Vienna, and the different bike rental options. The CityBike system is wonderful for the casual tourist cyclist, and there are several longer term rental options. CityBike can be zero cost if all you do is take short rides. The bikeway system is wonderful, and drivers show a high level of respect for cyclists. This is a city to visit and ride in.

Vienna Bike Rental System

CityBikes lined up near the Vienna Opera House.

On our last day in Vienna, we got up early and went into the city to try out the CityBike rental system. It was early enough that we could park the car on the street in the Altstadt, and parking was free for the weekend.

The CityBike system runs out of a series of kiosks around Vienna. There are over 50 within the city. You can pick up a map at the tourist office that shows the locations of the various kiosks, or you can download an iPhone app that will show you the locations along with the availability of bicycles and parking spaces at each one.

Dad taking the first stab at registering.

We walked to the kiosk near the Vienna Opera house, conveniently located next to an entrance/exit to the subway system, and a big parking garage. There was a machine there, and about 20 posts to park bikes at. There were 5 or 6 bikes there when we arrived.

The machine let us choose a language (German, English, French, or Spanish), and had a button to look at a map of the kiosks. We then selected our method of payment--credit card, Austrian bank card, or Tourist Card. With a credit or bank card, you can only check out one bicycle at a time per card. You can purchase a Tourist Card at the Tourist Office that allows you to take two bikes out of the system. Having the machine work in English was nice, but the instructions on the card reader remained in German, and we struggled to understand what it was asking at times.

Struggling with the machine.

Dad put his credit card into the machine, and it prompted us to register because we were new users. The touch-screen was rather difficult to use, and Dad gave up after a few minutes because his fingers hurt. The screen liked me better, so I gave it a shot. It timed us out once because we were trying to take too many pictures, and then I messed up and had to start over, but we eventually got Dad registered. You create a password when you sign up that you use to access the system later.

Once we got through the registration process, it gave us the option to start renting bikes. We were shown a diagram of which of the numbered posts at the kiosk had bikes available to rent and we could select one. We looked over the bikes that were there and made our selection, and the computer freed that bike from its post and we could pull it out.

We then repeated the process on my card to create an account for me, and checked out a second bike. All of the bikes were equipped with baskets, but the baskets were plastered with flapping advertisements that screamed "I'm a tourist, and this is a rental!" They also had mechanisms to lock the front wheel, but had no lights.

Just as we got on our bikes and started to ride, the sky opened up and it began pouring rain. We ducked into a cafe to hide, and watched our newly rented bikes get wet through the window while we had coffee and wrote postcards home. When it started to let up, we got back on the bikes and rode through the old city for a bit. Without consulting the map, we guessed that there would probably be another kiosk near St. Stephan's cathedral (there is one near just about every major landmark in the city, along with many other locations) so we set off for the church. We had to walk our bikes when we got close, because the plaza was thick with pedestrians.

When we found the second kiosk, it was simple to turn the bikes in. You just have to slide a bar on the frame into a slot on a free kiosk post, and then a light turns green and you're done. Well, it's simple unless you're us, I suppose. It took us several tries to get the bar all the way into the slot, and was a rather finicky process. Finesse is required over force, and a little patience, but it would be frustrating if you watched the bus you wanted to be on drive away as you were still struggling to turn the bike in.

If you stop for coffee or lunch and there isn't a kiosk nearby, you can lock your bike's wheel so it's not easily portable. You rotate the front wheel 90 degrees, turn a key in its slot near the front wheel, and push the metal flap down so it fits around an arm of the fork on the front wheel. Then remove the key, and the bike is locked. It will only go in circles, unless the front of the rather heavy bike is carried. To unlock it, you simply put the key back in and turn it, and the flap pops back up.

Once you're registered, checking out bikes is fast and easy. You just insert the card you registered with, type in your password, and select a bike.

The system is designed to encourage short rentals, and discourage people from checking out a bike all day long. When you pull a bike out of a kiosk, the first hour is free. That means if you ride from St. Stephan's to Schoenbrunn Palace, which is less than an hour, and turn the bike back in to the kiosk at Schoenbrunn when you get there, you don't pay. Then you can tour the palace for as long as you like, and when you come out check out another bike. You then start another free hour of riding time, and so on. If you keep the bike out for more than an hour, the price rises steeply. Two hours is 1 Euro for each commenced hour. Three hours is 2 Euros for each commenced hour. So in one hour, your rental fee jumps from 2 Euros to 6. 4 to 120 hours is 4 Euros for each commenced hour, and beyond that you pay a flat rate of 600 Euros--the same price charged for a lost bicycle.

We did find out that the system thwarts people trying to 'hopscotch' bikes across the city by just checking in and out at each kiosk along the way so they always stay under the one hour mark. At St. Stephan's when we tried to check out another set of bikes just to see how the system worked once we were registered, we encountered a ten-minute waiting period before our rental time would reset to 0.

The bikes appeared to be well maintained, for the most part. When we looked at the bikes on Friday, one of the cycles in the kiosk had a flat tire. By the time we came back the next morning, it had been either taken for repair, or fixed on the spot.

Vienna's CityBike system, similar to Munich's DeutscheBahn system that we explored earlier, was an absolutely wonderful system for tourists exploring the city or residents commuting across town. It's not a viable option for larger tour groups, though, because the odds of finding 20 bikes at a single kiosk are low and the time involved in registering 20 separate credit cards would make the whole endeavor a nightmare. But for a casual user taking short trips, it's absolutely free.