Europe 2025, Part Two: Thursday 12th June - Sun 15th June

leenaphoto .
Jun 15
5 min read

Thursday 12th June

Gooood morning, it’s 6am and my body feels that’s a good time to wake up. Lee & Angel are still asleep, grateful for that as I think Lee has a bit of driving to do today.

We’ve just left the campsite in Salzburg (it’s 10:10am) we had breakfast, a little bit of route planning and now we’re making our way to Mondsee.

Mondsee was a beautiful little stop off, we have a wander around, grabbed some cakes then wandered back to the van. Angel made us all lunch, once we chowed that down I inhaled a tiramisu.

We’re now on our way to Linz!

…okay Hulk (the van) is testing our patience. We’re just about 20 mins away from Linz but popped into a garage to get the wheels balanced as Lee and Angel noticed a bit of shuddering when we were driving, best to get it checked - fingers crossed that’s what it is!

Okay that only took about 20-30 minutes to sort, but we’re good now wooo! So I think Linz is out now.

Seems like rebalancing the wheels wasn’t the issue, eek. We’re at a campsite now, then I think tomorrow morning we need to head to Linz to get it looked at properly. Will we make it to Vienna? Stay tuned and send positive vibes. In the meantime, this is my brother in law getting the tools required for the wheels.

As we need this van checked, we decided the best option was to get into a campsite for the evening - Camping Au an der Donau. Then, when the local VW garage opens at 730am tomorrow we will go from there. Fingers crossed everyone.

My nails match the van! I do love green.

We had mushroom tortellini with grated Gouda for dinner, sipped some beers and then set the van up to sleep.

Friday 13th June

Just going to manifest some positive vibes into this date. We’re heading to the VW garage as a first stop…fingers crossed.

They’ve taken the van in, so we’re sipping coffees whilst we await the news. Hopefully whatever it is they can fix and we can make our way to Vienna.

The drive shaft is the issue! Apparently it’s very rare for then to work over a weekend, but they will it done by 1130am tomorrow, so grateful! They’ve been so nice, even dropped us to the nearest little town so we didn’t have to walk.

We’ve met some very friendly people on this trip, we are excited to get the van sorted tomorrow and carry on our travels.

We’re in Perg & just grabbed a feast for breakfast.

We’ll check into a hotel next and plan out what we’ll do today.

After checking out all the hotels in the area 🤣 we settled for the EEE one.

Pretty decent hotel, self check in - not the cheapest (60€ -90€ ish per night. One single room and one double). Not bad all things considered and at least we had somewhere to stay,

I believe we walked around the majority of Perg, cafe hopping, looking around the shops & then pub hopping. We found a really nice spot for the eve, where we spent 5 hours sipping on beer, Riesling, mojitos & playing a few games of uno flip, our latest purchase from the nearby Spar.

After a couple episodes of The Big Door Prize (and a bag of paprika crisps) I left Angel and Lee’s room and headed back to my own. Feels weird not being in a van with them, but a bit of a lie in tomorrow, unless my body decides that I need to wake up at 5am again. We’ve said we’ll meet at 930am for breakfast, so I’ll check back in with you guys in the morning!

Tschüss! 🤟🏾

Saturday 14th June

Morning! Just as I expected, I woke up at 5am 🤣 it was pretty hot & there were people leaving their rooms really early too. It’s now 630am, I’ve pooped and opened a window (the window is for air, not for 💩)

I’m going to read this for a bit - which we picked up in the hip hop museum and I’ve not had a chance to read it yet

Then I’ll make a coffee and get back into bed.

We headed out for breakfast and then Lee had a phone call to say the van was ready, wooo!! We walked about 25 mins to the garage, grabbed some groceries from the shop next door and now we’re on our way towards Vienna!!

I found a vineyard for us to check out, and it was great - Domäne Wachau.

Myself and Angel enjoyed sampling many a Riesling, we got a bottle so Lee could try it later on after driving for the day. We’re just refuelling now, and have an hours journey left before we arrive at the campsite.

We just got to Donaupark Camping in Klosterneuburg. We’ll stay here as a base for the next two nights, tomorrow we’ll have a day in Vienna - yes!!! Originally we would have been here on Monday, so pleased that we’ve finally made it.

We had a little walk around, now we’re back at the van cooking up our dinner. Here’s our chef

After dinner, we had showers and got into our PJs, watched a couple of episodes of The Big Door Prize, sipped decaf coffees & peppermint tea and then got ready for bed. It’s 11:36pm so think I’ll stop writing for now.

See you tomorrow Vienna!

Sunday 15th June

Woo finally I woke up at 730, not 5am! Today is the day we see Vienna yay!! It’s going to be scorchio today, 30C!

If you want to know if you can do Vienna in a day, the answer is yes - we did a solid 12 hours! We made the most of it, I have questionable tan lines but my face hurts from smiling and laughing all day and my feet hurt from walking.

After breakfast in the van we made our way to the train (two trains from the campsite). It was about 30/40 mins away, not bad! One thing I rate about our travels so far is their transport system, it’s so efficient and tidy - I envy it a little.

First stop was the Sigmund Freud Museum. We had a wander around & stopped for a drink in the cafe afterwards

We stopped at a place called Fat Monk for lunch, walked around and enjoyed some ice cream before making our way to the State Hall,

If you do ever find yourself here, check out The National History Museum - it’s epic. You’ll want to spend 2-4 hours here, we did 2.5hrs but it needs as long as you can give it, it’s the biggest museum I’ve ever been in - loved it.

We made our way to Mel’s Diner for drinks & food. We went to check out a rooftop bar afterwards, but it was a bit stuffy up there and no tables available so we decided to head back to the campsite. We stopped off for cocktails and beer at the Hard Rock Cafe on the way to the station. Note to all - beer was only €5 here, cocktails are €12…but I fancied something sweeter by this point.