Wiener - How the Austrians Spell Vienna!!

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Vienna
Not the best weather greeted us as we arrived to our campsite in Vienna, terrential rain and crazy winds again ( I thought we had left Ireland!!) Luckily we were able to crash in a bungalow for the first night to avoid having to try and put up our trusty tent in the elements. The weather cleared a little the following day and so we headed into town for the afternoon to check out the sights.

We caught up with a family friend whom I have'nt seen in about eight years or probably more and he just happened to surprise us by bringing my mum over for a visit!! Not expecting to see her again until we arrive back in Oz in October sometime, it was pretty surreal and exciting to say the least. I had booked tickets a few months ago to attend a performance of the Lippizanner Stallions at the Spanish Riding School. Being a horsey person as most of you know me to be I was pretty stoked to be going to see horses perform the most difficult and disciplined of all training known to the equine species. It was a wonderful display of power and agility set to classical music, these wonderful stallions are trained for periods of up to ten years to get to this standard. I absolutely loved it - I think it got all a little too monotonous for Sam ( Though I did tell him not to come in the first place!!)

The next day we got out of the city (Vienna is very arty and full of museums but we could'nt bare stepping foot into another museum for a while!!) and headed to the banks of the Danube River, it was still the same colour it was in Budapest in case you were wondering! but lovely all the same to have lunch next to. We went for a ride on the Weiner Riesnard which is a giant ferris wheel, one of Vienna's most famous sights. She is'nt as big as the London Eye but she's the world's oldest built in 1897, survived natural disasters and the tests of war, been burnt and reconstructed. We even managed to get mum on it for a spin despite her fear of heights, it is the best way to view Vienna definently.

Salzburg
We decided to spend a night in Salzburg and fly out from there to Berlin the following day as it ridiculously expensive to fly out of Vienna to anywhere. Really glad we made the trip, though when we got there we were sad we did'nt have longer to spend in the place. The city itself.....well it's more like a town, took us about three hours to get around, it's really pretty and charming. The mountains where they filmed "The Sound of Music" oh and the birthplace of Mozart, something the Austrians are so very proud of and remind you by placing chocolate shops all over the place dedicated to the man himself, yep - expensive Mozart choccies!!

We went to a beer garden which was kind of hidden by a church and you would'nt know it was there without the help of a map and some scrounging around, we had to walk through these empty halls then were overcome by the smell of cheese and sausage (wiener sausage no doubt) and finally opening up to a massive big garden. Obviously a really local place - you feel that a soon as you walk in. You pick out the size beer you want, pay for it then collect your steine from a shelf, wash it out in the water taps provided, hand it to the man over the bar who fills it up and slides it back to you along the bar as though your a cowboy in a western (Sam's would have gone straight off the bar if his reflexes were'nt so good).

Our bed and breakfast couldnt have been situated in a more beautiful landscape. Right up in the hills only a train ride into town, it was so peaceful and a good change to where we had been sleeping over the last couple of months. There is so much to do in Salzburg and had we looked into it more as a place to tour around rather than a quick stopover we would have definently taken advantage of what it has to offer. Oh well, we did have a fun time there while it lasted though.

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Comments

[Steve]

I'm a geeky twat
Technically "Wiener" means Viennese not Vienna. Pretty damn close though...