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Published: August 9th 2008
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Klosterneuberg Saturday, 8/09
I woke up early this morning to get ready for my first real weekend in Vienna! Tiffany and I had planned to go biking along the Danube this weekend, but we also wanted to stop at the monastery at Klosterneuberg (mostly because it apparently has great wine!) Trying to coordinate a meeting time at the monastery with some other classmates who didn't want to bike there, and the rainy forecast for the day lead Tiffany and I to decide that biking was too complicated for our plan. We all settled on meeting at 10am, getting breakfast, stopping by the tourist office for brochures, and heading out to the monastery via public transportation. So when I woke up at 6am (because my roommate finally came home from her night out) I was disoriented and thought I was supposed to wake up that early. I figured out that I set my alarm for 9 for a reason, and fell back asleep. When I woke up at the right time, I had a wonderful sore throat, and discovered that the arch on my right foot was killing me. I dressed for the monastery and put my overnight stuff in my bag (in
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Austrian wine that "doesn't need to be aged to have flavor" case we ended up biking and wanted to stay at a bed and breakfast) but decided to wear my athletic shoes to try and calm my foot down. We met up in the lobby, and jumped on the U-bahn. We weren't sure where to go for breakfast, and decided to head to the tourist office first for a recommendation. We got the maps we needed, but no breakfast location. We decided to just get back on the subway and figure it out. Tiffany saw that the U-bahn line we were on was running right along the Danube, and wanted to get out a few stops early to see if there was a place to eat. We got off the subway at some random neighborhood, walked a ways, and didn't see much. We all pulled out our maps to try to figure out where we were relative to eating places. I was kind of grumpy at this point, not only for being hungry, but for feeling like we would have found a place to eat easier if we had gotten out at the original stop! We oriented ourselves on the map, and took off towards a potential cafe. We passed a
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wine tasting Mexican restaurant, and at the point of hunger that some of us were at, a burrito for breakfast sounded great. We pressed on for a block and I spotted an eatery with the word "Cafe" on its window, and a lady standing outside (this means that it has food and its open). We walked in, and there was a family sitting down at a table. I felt sort of relieved; for some reason there is comfort in knowing that if there are kids, the place is probably not a bar for sketchy old men. We looked at the menu (completely in German) and asked the waitress if she spoke English. She responded with "no" but based on our later interactions, she knew enough for our purposes (I wasn't asking for fluency... just tell me what a gestack is!) I also figured out that the German word for breakfast has a somewhat different definition than our English word for breakfast. To German speakers, "breakfast" is a dish of two rolls with jam and coffee or tea. It's the English equivalent to ordering a specific dish, as opposed to our use of the word as an umbrella term. Anyway, the breakfast on
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Roman stones the menu was the only food option, so all four of us ordered. The coffee servings here are rather small, but the waitress suggested a macchiato (by miming holding a bowl and saying 'grande') to get a bigger drink. We scarfed up our rolls, paid our waitress and continued on our journey. I have noticed in Vienna, it is easier to pay separately at restaurants. The waitresses all have a money wallet and give you change on the spot, eliminating the cash register at all. Finally making it to the end of the U-bahn line, we realized we had to find the right bus to get to the monastery. Melissa asked an information desk, and with the famous Viennese grumpiness, the desk attendant sassed to her that we needed to look for the green bus. The bus line happens to be across the street from the Karl Marx Hof, a huge housing project that extends for blocks after blocks after blocks and is recognizably punctuated by arch walkways. Once we got to the monastery, we saw that there were a ton of stairs to get to the top. Not only was this reminiscent of our hike up to Melk, it
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look familiar? occured to me that the sights in Vienna are far from handicapped-accessible. But in Vienna, there is no sense of liability or political correctness, so everyone in wheelchairs gets to see pictures of monasteries instead. We signed up for the German wine tour (as opposed to the English 'sacred' tour... we are getting burnt out on religious stuff, but not wine). We lucked out, because the tour guide gave us enough English commentary that we knew what was going on. The monks at the monastery apparently spent a lot of time making wine. All the Viennese white wines are aged in steel barrels, with only the red wines aging in French oak barrels. When I went on a Sonoma wine tour in June, I was told that the use of steel barrels was relatively uncommon. After discussing this with the guy who poured the wine at the end of the tour (who spoke fantastic English), he claimed that the difference was that Californian grapes have no flavor and they NEED to age to taste like anything. Okay, Austrians, you can be proud of your wine, but I don't think you can trample all over Californian wine in the process. The
wine was good, but not worth moving to Austria for with Napa an hour away! All four of us were tired (and my throat was still hurting) so we decided to go home. I got off the U-bahn one stop early to see if any grocery stores were still open, since I had no food and the stores aren't open Sunday. The store Billa was open for ten more minutes by the time I got there, so I ran around filling my arms with familiar products (including a can of Stagg chili!) and got enough food to tide me over for a few days. I got home and tried to make some tea, and discovered that my microwave has a spinny bottom but no plate to spin on. Unfortuantely, I figured this out by spilling the cup of water on myself. I was about to call it quits for the rest of the night since I was so tired, but Tiffany asked me to see Mama Mia with her at a theatre nearby. I ended up going with her, and I LOVED the movie! I want to buy it when I get home. I have the soundtrack from the stage
performance I saw a few years ago, and I'm listening to it right now 😊 So not only am I constantly singing the Sound of Music soundtrack to myself, but now I am singing Abba. And today, I perfected the step-up/turn/kick dance move necessary to recreate the Rolf and Liesel scene from the gazebo!
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