Part X – Austria at Last
I stepped onto the platform at around 8:00pm. It was dark. For the last several hours, I’d heard nothing but the rush of the wind outside the nice ICE Train, the Inter-City Express that took me from Frankfurt to Vienna. I breathed in, looked around, and knew that I was back home.
So, today is going to be another short post. I have arrived in Vienna, but that of course means a few days of adjustment – buying groceries, realizing I’d left my towel at home, registering with the authorities (yes, this is something you must do), and generally trying to sleep off the jetlag. So, I don’t have much research for you.
Next week, I’m going to do some more on-the-ground type research. I think it should be good. But for now I’m just going to dive into what happened last week and what is going to happen this weekend.
Like I said last week, there wasn’t a whole lot going on in Austrian soccer. The national team had a match in the UEFA Nations League B against Bosnia and Herzegovina. Unfortunately they lost at 1-0, putting them at the bottom of the table for the group. I managed to catch some of this match on replay, and Austria looked good with several shots, but they just couldn’t quite get it in the goal. We’ll see how they recover going forward. The next match in this league is on October 12 against Northern Ireland.
The League itself had a break this past weekend, so nothing has really changed there. This weekedn, though, should be a doozy! We have several matchups that have paired two teams that are right next to each other in the table. This is when the table will really start to take shape going forward. We have #1 Red Bull Salzburg vs. #2 St. Pölten, which should be an excellent match on its own. But we also have the Wiener Derby, with #4 Austria Wien facing #5 Rapid Wien. Further down we have #7 vs. #8 with Wolfsberger vs. Wacker and then, desperately trying to avoid relegation, we have the bottom two, Hartberg and Altach, facing each other. Like I said, these should all be great matchups. And for once, I’ll actually get to watch some in person!
The full schedule and my picks are below (picks in bold, game I’ll be watching marked with an *):
Saturday
Hartberg vs. Altach
Admira vs. Sturm Graz
*Red Bull Salzburg vs. St. Pölten
Sunday
Mattersburg vs. LASK
Wolfsberger vs. Wacker Innsbruck
*Rapid Wien vs. Austria Wien
Hopefully next week I’ll be able to have a bit longer post with some more details and fun bits. But for now, Auf Wiedersehen!
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