Saturday, May 22, 2010

15 May: A day at the races

No, not another Marx Brother's film but a day out at Fontana, a major development about 25 km south of Vienna.

I came back from Namibia just in time to be in Vienna to greet Clare when she arrived for another weekend in Vienna.  But before she arrived we had a disappointment as the impending BA strike had led BA to re-book Clare home on the Monday evening flight rather than the Tuesday flight she had planned to use.
Anyway we had been invited out to Fontana for ther races on Saturday with friends Elizabeth (who tried to teach me German  when I first arrived here) and her husband James who is an architect who works with Magna Corporation the conglomerate who own, amongst other  operations, the race course at Fontana - it is called the Magna Racino!
On Saturday the weather was  grey and threatening but not actually raining. We drove out to Fontana in James's car and were seated in the prime table in the restaurant actually overlooking the finish line.

L-R: Peter, Clare, Elizabeth and James  at THE table

The racing is  alternately flat racing and trotting on concentric tracks, quite unusual for me to see as in Australia these are always separate activities  at different venues. The meal was really good buffet witha superb range of dishes and we were able to graze all the aftrnoon between races  ( and bets).


The start of the trots

The close finish of a trotting race

We bet on most events and despite some remarkable ups and downs the day ended more or less even. A really "grand day out" as Wallace would have said!

No comments:

Post a Comment