March 2021
Hiking the Donau Auen Nationalpark
Donau Auen National Park is where the Danube leaves the city of Vienna behind. The National Park then begins and forms a green belt between Vienna and Bratislava. The National Park offers an extensive choice of hiking trails and we chose to start in the village “Orth on the Danube”. It is located approximately 30 km from where we live in Vienna. We took our car to get there and found a convenient parking lot close to the village church. From there we walked through the residential area and entered the woods. On this over 10k track, we hardly came across other people and nearly had the whole place to ourselves.
The first part of the walk lead through the woods, then we passed a dam that was once created to protect the village from the potential high water of the Danube. Eventually, we made it to the shores of the river where we met a few other people walking. There is a nice path along the water for a few kilometres until you reach the Alpha house restaurant (currently closed due to the pandemic, but this is hopefully temporary). Once we walked past this restaurant, we turned right back into the woods and back in the direction of the village.
This is not a very eventful hike, but a pleasant one. Very flat, good for dogs, easy to walk, picnic tables around, and not many people that cross your path. It is a good trip year-round, you can take it at any season I imagine. The picnicking might be better when it´s warm though….
When we went: January 2021
Day of the week: Saturday
Length of track: 11k
