Chapter 83 - Another Out and About

Living in Klingenbach has enabled us to see many things we'd never have noticed if we had simply come as tourists to Vienna. In this blog I'll highlight a few of the very different things we've seen.

The town of Korneuburg, nine miles northwest of Vienna, located in the state of Lower Austria, was founded in 1136 as a bank settlement. The town suffered through many military campaigns, including the Battle of Vienna, Thirty Years' War, War with Sweden in 1645 when they burned much of the town, French Revolutionary Wars, and the Oil Campaign of World War II.

This is the plague column, something I search for in every town.


Three views of the Rathaus (City Hall)


We were told that this is a new Rathaus; it's dated 1803.


Once again we saw that "new" and "old" mean different things in Europe.


An interesting tower


The inscription reads: "Korneuburg lies under 48 degrees, 20 minutes north latitude and 16 degrees 20 minutes east longitude from Greenwich. The median yearly temperature is 9 degrees Celsius, the median barometer reading is 747 m/m. The time ahead against Vienna is 8 seconds." Go figure - no one seemed to know why this inscription was here.


We happened onto this concert in the parking lot of our grocery store, Merkur - never found out the occasion.


Store patrons seemed to enjoy it.


The Feuerwehr (fire department) in Klingenbach held a festival for the townsfolk with good food and entertainment.




On a hot day what could be more fun than being squirted by the fire hose.


The equipment for the volunteer firefighters


Attracted by screaming sounds one afternoon, I looked out the window and saw this parade of teenagers.


I found out later that they were celebrating a soccer team win.


It reminded me of homecoming parades back home albeit a lot smaller. It was just these two tractors and wagons.


Then they adjourned into Burschi's bar which is unlike America!


Steyr is a manufacturing town in the state of Upper Austria located at the confluence of the rivers Steyr and Enns. It was founded in 980 and has had a varied history, much of it marked by conflict. Besides all the earlier wars, it was the scene of battles between Social Democrats and Nazi fascists during the 1930s, and during World War II one of the sub-camps of the Mauthausen Concentration Camp was located here. Considerable war material was manufactured here during the war which of course attracted Allied bombers.

In 1945 units of the 5th Guards Airborne of the Soviet Army and black troops of the U.S. 761st Tank Battalion met each other on the bridge over the Enns River. Bob's Uncle Karl was a member of the 21st Armored Infantry Battalion, part of the 11th Armored Division, that invaded and occupied the town. Steyr was divided like Berlin and occupied by Soviet and American troops until 1955 when Austria officially declared neutrality.

I loved this old church.


Walking through the dark archway, I found this old inscription. The faded lettering was hard to read and was in Latin so I had to use an online translating site. From what I could tell it's a memorial to an important couple who died of plague. Bubonic plague epidemics were shattering events from 1348 (Black Death) to 1720 (last one in Europe took place in Marseilles). In all our time in Central Europe we haven't seen memorials to people who died of any other disease except plague.


This is another plague memorial.


I previously showed the Austrian/Hungarian border crossing at Klingenbach/Sopron. This is another one - at Pamhagen/Fertod.


This is a traffic sign just past the border.