Advertisement
Published: January 7th 2007
Edit Blog Post
Happy Reunion!
Great to be back together after a year! Thanks to Clara for the great picture! Arrival in Vienna
It is hard to believe that Michael (who had only arrived back in Perth two days earlier after spending the year in India and Thailand) and I arrived in Vienna two weeks ago today! It was with great excitement that we started our 34 hour journey from Perth with only 22.5kg of luggage between us! When you know you will be carrying your luggage yourself for three months it helps to only take the bare necessities! Our luggage even contained quite a few presents for Joel's friends! What a great reunion we had at the airport with Joel (whom I hadn't seen for a year) and Clara, Joel's buddy, who had kindly brought her car! Joel looked so well and it was amazing to be together again. Now we just await Colin's arrival in two weeks! After literally dropping our bags at Joel's room (a very comfortable double room with bathroom facilities which Joel shares with Cameron, a New Zealander) we set off for the famous Christkindlemarkts that are set up all through the streets of Vienna before Christmas. Small wooden stalls are set up selling Christmas decorations and mugs of delicious Glühwein, a hot drink made from
Rathaus Christmas lights
Clara with Joel and Michael wine, tea and spices. We made our way through the brightly lit streets to the Rathaus (Town Hall) which looked magnificent with all the Christmas lights. It was a great start to our time in Vienna!
Christmas Day and Boxing Day
We spent Christmas Day in Joel's room as unfortunately I had a headache! The boys cooked a great Christmas dinner of roast duck, potatoes, carrots, onions and mushrooms. I was impressed! I felt a lot better the next day so we made our way into town and met up with Joy, from New Zealand and Morgan (whom Joel had travelled with to Morocco and Finland) and her mum who was visiting from Texas. We went to a famous Viennese restaurant called Figlmüller, which serves the biggest schnitzel in Vienna. These literally filled the whole plate! Later we went to Cafe Central, a famous coffee house and enjoyed coffee and cake in amazing surroundings! Vienna is a beautiful city and I have been very impressed with how neat and orderly everything is here. It has been very special meeting up with Joel's friends who are a great group of people.
Spanische Hofreitschule
One of the highlights so far
Joel and Clara buying Gluhwein
Some of the Christkindlemarkts near Joel's students'dorm. has been going to a performance of the famous Lipizzaner stallions at the Spanish Riding School in Vienna. It was the only thing we had booked from Perth and the tickets cost us E45 for standing room. The performance goes for one and a half hours and we managed to find a really good place to stand so had a great view. The horses perform to classical music in an ornate arena below the spectators and what an incredible sight it was! I had tears in my eyes watching them as I have always been a fan of these horses and it was such a treat to actually see them in Vienna. Classical riding in its pure form can be traced back to the 4th century BC. Originally the unconditional trust developed between the horse and its rider was the basis of success in the military and strategical field. The partnership between horse and rider is the most amazing thing to witness. The stallions are so powerful and eager and yet it is such a controlled power as they respond to their riders. I was especially impresed with a solo performance on the long rein. The horse is not ridden
and is controlled by "the rider" who walks behind him. Only exceptional stallions are suitable to be used in solo performances. It was amazing that the man's feet never once tripped over the horse's feet as they moved through the performance, walking so closely together! We were treated to displays of the capriole, the courbette, the levade and the piaffe. I wish I had photos to show you just how good it was!
Salzburg
Michael and I decided to take a train trip to Salzburg for a couple of days. We stayed in the Yoho Youth Hostel, which is ranked as one of the top youth hostels in the world. We went for the cheapest option which was an 8-bed mixed dorm at E16 each. The room was great and we shared it with three delightful girls from South Korea. Salzburg is famous for being the birth place of Mozart and also as the setting for the film 'The Sound of Music.' While Michael wandered the streets of Salzburg I took a special, 4-hour Sound of Music coach tour. We visited the Mirabell Gardens where Maria and the children had danced and the Leopoldskron Castle, the exterior of which
had been used as the family home. The lake near the house that Maria and the children had fallen into was frozen! We passed the Nonnberg Abbey, where Maria had been a novice and saw the Glass Pavilion, which is now housed in the grounds of Hellbrun Castle. We saw the most amazing scenery and visited the small town of Mondsee and St Michael's Church where Maria and the Captain had married. In the evening Michael and I went through the old town area and next day we visited Mozarts Geburtshaus Museum (the house where Mozart was born). There were some fascinating things on display including some score music that Mozart had hand-written as a boy. On the train trip back we unwittingly sat in first class for half an hour until the conductor kindly asked us to move!
New Year's Eve
New Year's Eve is called Silvester in Austria and again the streets are lined with the little wooden stalls this time selling all sorts of things that symbolise good luck for the New Year. The most common item is a pink pig and you can buy minute ones through to huge stuffed animals and even pig hats!
You can also buy biscuits and marzipan sweets all in the shape of pigs. Other symbols of good luck are toadstools, ladybirds, chimney sweeps, horse shoes and four leaf clovers. On New Year's Eve the streets of Vienna are thronged with people taking part in the Silvester Walk. Stages with all sorts of different musical entertainment are set up throughout the city and you walk from one to the other drinking Gluhwein amongst people who are letting off fire crackers and fireworks at random!! It gets very noisy and extremely congested. We had gone to a student party with Joel earlier in the evening and then Michael, Justin (Joel's good friend from Perth who had spent an exchange year in Finland and is now visiting Joel) and I decided to do some of the walk and then meet up with Joel and his frends for the count-down near the Rathaus (Town Hall). Unfortunately we got caught up in a huge crowd near Stephansplatz (the centre of town) where we could hardly move!! With great difficulty we extricated ourselves from the crowd and took a "short-cut" to avoid getting caught up again. By now it was 11.40pm and so we set
Viennese Schnitzel
See what I mean about it covering the whole plate! off running through the streets in what we thought was the direction of the Rathaus!!! We soon realised that we may be lost so asked a few people for directions. The trouble was that everyone pointed us in a different direction and so at midnight we found ourselves far from the Rathaus and actually not sure where we were!!! We ended up having to take a tram and finally met up with Joel at 12.15! Thank goodness for mobile phones! Things were still in full swing there and we joined in the festivities!
We have had a day trip to Bratislava, the capital of Slovakia and also a three day skiing trip but that will have to wait until the next blog which I hope to get up soon!
Advertisement
Tot: 0.062s; Tpl: 0.019s; cc: 10; qc: 23; dbt: 0.0186s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.1mb
Penny
non-member comment
Hi Barbara, wonderful blog. I am so inspired to get to Vienna someday. So lovely to see you all having such a good time - I am very impressed with the boys cooking! Ian and Sophie spent Christmas in Patagonia hiking and NY in Buenos Aries where celebrations are marked by small gatherings at home with lots of backyard fireworks set off by very young children apparently. Look forward to the next episode, Lots of love, Penny.