Advertisement
Published: June 16th 2011
Vienna is one of the most beautiful cities I have ever been to! I loved everything that I saw...the city center, the country side, the food, and most importantly the people I met.
You may be wondering why we went to Vienna since we don't speak German at all. Well I had heard that Vienna was a beautiful place and we have a friend there, Florian, who was an international student at our school, that we wanted to visit. Billy Joel's Vienna may or may not have influenced our decision as well.
We left Madrid at around 3:30 pm on Wednesday (the 8th) and got to Zurich for our layover at about 5:30 pm. We had a three hour layover in Zurich so we just wandered around the airport for a while and then sat by our gate waiting. I didn't know much about Switzerland before going there but once we got there I learned two very important things. 1) They speak German and 2) they use the Swiss Franc instead of the Euro. Other than that I still don't know much about Switzerland. We got on the plane at around 8:00 and flew to Vienna. The flights were
not that bad and we got to sit close to each other on both of them. We slept a little while, Nia and Lidia listened to music and I just people watched.
We arrived on at about 11 pm. Florian was waiting there to take us to his mom's apartment, where we were staying. When we got there she had a delicious dinner of pasta bolognese ready for us. Right away, we all got along and even though his mom's English is limited we were able to understand each other. We only stayed up for a little while after dinner since we were all so tired from the day of flying.
The next day Florian showed us around the area where he lives, which is on the outskirts of Vienna, in the suburbs. We went grocery shopping and ran into his dad so afterwards we went to his house to see where Florian grew up. Then we went to his family's winery, Wieselthaler Wein (wine). His family owns a restaurant and a winery which is only about 10 minutes from Florian's apartment. We met his grandmother, who runs the restaurant, and his uncle and grandfather, who run the
winery. After we saw where they make the wine, his grandfather gave us a taste of some of their wine. Then we went next door to another family restaurant (Florian's family's is closed for the month of June) and had some schnitzel and potato salad. His aunt works at the restaurant so we got to meet her and one of his cousins stopped by as well. After that Florian took us to his apartment and we hung out there for a while. Then we went back to his Mom's apartment and she made us another really good dinner, baked chicken and stuffing. Then we went to one of Florian's friends houses and hung out.
The next day we got up early (ish) and went to the center of Vienna. Florian's cousin, Frankie, was with us so Florian wouldn't be the only guy. We walked around one of the major shopping streets, Kärntner Strasse, and then went to see Stephansdom, the main cathedral in Vienna. It was such a pretty church with all of the colors and the stained glass. There was a service going on so we could only walk around the back part but it was still so
pretty. We then tried an Austrian dessert, krapfen. It was so good. It is a soft, flaky pastry with powder sugar on top and apricot jam in the middle. We walked all around the church and there were a lot of carriages pulled by horses surrounding the church. We decided to climb to the top of the tower of the cathedral so we could see the city. It is 343 steps to the top and is was definitely a workout. The view from the top of the tower was amazing, and you could see all of Vienna. After we had recovered from walking up we had to go back down. It wouldn't have been that bad but the steps went in a spiral and I was so dizzy by the time I got to the bottom. Doing all of that walking had made us hungry so we stopped and got some lunch. Afterwards, we got on the Ring tram, a tram that goes in a circle around the center of Vienna so you can see all of the monuments and sites. You get a pair of headphones and there is a listening part that goes with it where you select
your language and hear the history of the places you are seeing. In between the sites, or if we were stopped at a traffic light, Mozart was playing. Next, we went to another major shopping street, Mariahilfer. On the way home, we stopped at a small kiosk/restaurant type thing and got some sausage with curry, ketchup and onions on it. After all of the walking we were very tired so we went back to Florian's mom's and took a nap. Then we went to his cousin's, Frankie, apartment and watched 2 Fast 2 Furious and part of Knocked Up.
The next day we went to his aunt's house to hang out by her pool. Most of Florian's family lives about 10 minutes away from each other so they are all really close. His aunt made soccer cake for us, which is a traditional Austrian dessert, and it was so good. It is chocolate cake with jam in the middle. We stayed there for a few hours just talking and hanging out in the sun. They all spoke a little English so we were able to laugh and joke around. When they were speaking German I was just listening and
trying to understand what was being said but my knowledge of the German language is limited to about 10 or so phrases. We didn't have bathing suits but both Nia and I sat on pool floats in the pool. I got a little wet when I sat on the pool float but I got a lot more wet when they pushed Florian's uncle in. It was a fun day. We went back to Florian's moms apartment to get changed and cleaned up and then went to a friend of Florian's for a barbeque. There were about 15 of us total and they made so much food. The guys cooked the sausages and chicken on the grill while the girls made dishes to go with it like fries, creamed corn, and tomato salad. We stayed there until about midnight and then we went back to Florian's mom's apartment to pack and get ready to leave for the airport.
Our flight was at 7 am the next morning but Florian had to be somewhere so he dropped us off the night before at about 1:30 am and we spent the night in the airport. We just made ourselves as comfortable as
possible and just talked about the trip. Once we were able to check in we slept a little while until our flight boarded. We stopped over in Zurich again and had a four hour layover this time. We just slept the whole time though. We arrived back in Madrid around 3 pm.
Overall, it was a great trip. We got to see both the sites of Vienna and got to know the culture through the people. I definitely want to learn German and go back and visit again.
Advertisement
Tot: 0.09s; Tpl: 0.013s; cc: 10; qc: 51; dbt: 0.0455s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.2mb
