The sun finally shines

As you may have seen in the news, Central Europe has been under water this week. According to the Austrian weather people, two months of rainfall fell in two days. I missed the worse of the weather, ironically, by escaping to the UK for 4 days, but it was pretty grim the day I left. When I was on my way home from Bratislava on Monday, the train passed over one of the Danube's tributaries on the border with Austria and that was pretty high. Apparently at one point the Danube in Vienna had 11,000 cubic metres of water flowing per second, a new record! To give you an idea, the normal flow is about 2,000 cubic m a second.

So the BBQ festival at the weekend is cancelled, the Sunken City is underwater, and the water is a lovely khaki colour. All a bit ironic for the 25th anniversary of the opening of Donauinsel as a recreation facility - it is a major part of the city's flood defence scheme.

But finally today, the sun came out. It was so nice I decided to walk home from work. It takes about 35 minutes, but the tube journey takes me nearly 25 some days, so when the sun shines I like to get some exercise and walk home. The canal is also very very full; only yesterday did I see some pictures taken just by the bridge at the end of our street where the water was crashing up onto the tow path. The waters are slowly receding now though, the news today reported that they are going down by approximately 1m a day, so in about a week or so, provided there is no more rain, things should be back to normal again. Hermann Strandbar on the canal seems to have resumed business after being closed yesterday, and have opened up as 'Camp Sweden' in preparation for tomorrow's Austria vs Sweden football match at the Ernst Happel Stadium. More on that tomorrow maybe, especially as I'll be a lone England supporter stuck between an Austrian and a Swede!