beautiful lovely vienna

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Last stop on our own…Vienna

We got into Vienna mid-afternoon and quickly got rid of our packs at our hotel. Sadly our hotel was not as nice as the bed & breakfast in Prague but it was not a huge concern. We were more concerned with the concert by city hall & getting dinner. As meandered down the main street (shopping district…not on purpose) we found a little side street, we walked on down and found a quaint little greek restaurant. We knew that we should really have food from Vienna but we were both tired of the sausage & were ready for something else. It was so good. We had olives with bread & then our main dish wish was a huge block of feta cheese & shrimp grilled in foil…sooo good. I had never actually eaten that much cheese in one sitting either. By that point it was getting pretty close to time for the concert so we headed in the direction we thought the place would be. We walked along museum quarter, which was so beautiful with all the old buildings and the tree lined paths. Again there were so many different pathways, but bikes & walking were next to each other but you had to pay close attention because they would frequently switch over one another. It didn’t take us long to find city hall, there were tents everywhere outside of it that were food booths. We went a little further in and in front of the most gorgeous city hall was a huge screen. It was for the concert (which was actually a movie of a concert). There weren’t many people sitting down yet but we still had about an hour until it began so we picked out our spot & left a blanket to make sure it would be there when we got back. Then we found dessert & drinks. As we had walked through the crowds we saw so many people with tall clear glasses filled with red wine & raspberries, it looked so good. It didn’t take long & I found someone holding one & asked him in which direction he got it. he got all flustered though because he was speaking English & wasn’t really sure if we understood. But it was really good English and we had no problem finding a large bowl of the drink! We each got one & then continued our search for dessert. Across the way was the dessert which looked sorta like donuts but it looked like they added mayonnaise & ketchup to the plate & we were not interested in that at all, but this guy standing nearby quickly informed us that it was delicious & one of the best places to go for dessert & in fact it was raspberries & vanilla!!! As soon as he said that we were ordering one! Thankfully we shared it because it was so rich! The concert that night was an opera, which was really good to see. We watched most of it until it started raining on us & then we quickly left. It didnt take long before we got back & did some laundry in the sink getting ready for roma in a few days.


Our first full day of Vienna was definitely full. We started the day by trying to go to naschmarket which ended up being closed so we found the perfect spot for breakfast. I had my first soft-boiled egg, which is basically a hard-boiled egg but when you get to the center it is runny. It was actually really good and I had rolls with marmalade (a common thing in Europe). Although it was supposed to be a quick breakfast we ended up taking our time & spending most of the morning enjoying our breakfast. Then we headed out to see all our spots on the walking tour. Again we saw so many plazas, parks & museums but each one is so different. One of the plazas actually had a building with a photographers work on it. it was the photographer who takes shots of thousands of people naked at one time. It was so interesting that they would actually put it on the building as well as posters around the area. Very intriguing. Some how or another we ended up near the palace with the art museum so we decided to go on in even though we only had about an hour & half. We ended up only seeing the temporary exhibit of history & paintings of European gardens. It was actually very interesting & we were able to make a connection because of what we had learned in school & what we had recently seen all over Europe. The exhibit itself was strange though because there was no text on the walls or next too the images instead as you reached each wall you would pick up a 11x17 sheet of paper that had all the information on it that correlated to a number by the image. And one of the best parts was the original carriage in the center of the palace when you walked in. it had actually been used & was sitting there in all its glory with gold leafing. It also had a leather straps so basically it had a suspension system so it moved with the bounces. Crazy genius. Then we went on to the music museum, which was fascinating. It was in an old building but the interior was completely modern. The museum started out with giving all the information about a human ear & the way in which we actually hear. It was so interesting & it had all these different hands on activities to help you understand what was going on. Eventually we got to the actual history of the many composers from Vienna. They gave us audio tour guides for free and I learned so much about the different composers & their life. I also learned how many of them actually overlapped & worked with one another. There was Beethoven, Mozart, johann strasse, haden, & few other minor musicians. (Vienna is very proud of the music & performing arts). We got out of the museum and it was much later than we had ever imagined & we were both starving and it was storming outside. We decided that whatever looked good & reasonably cheap was going to be our first stop for food. It didn’t take long…it was directly across the street! It actually turned out to be a very American idea of like a steak house, but we both got very European dishes (mine was sausage & potatoes). We were hoping that by the time we finished dinner that the storm would be over but that was not the case at all. We had to walk a good ways to get back to the hostel and it was pouring down rain! Thankfully we were carrying umbrellas…an every day thing since we started in London.

Another day in beautiful Vienna
We spent the morning at nasch market, which was open! We walked through all the food stands which had anything you could imagine from meats, cheeses, pastries, olives, garlic, spices. We found a great spot to grab our pastries & then we found some cheese & bread for lunch to pack away. We also tasted so much food. I don’t even know why we bought breakfast but we tried all sorts of dried fruits & we bought some mango & almonds for the long train ride to roma. As we were walking through people continued to pass out food and I was always welcoming the delicious treats…well it got me. One guy was handing out garlic and I thought it was mozzarella cheese. I took a big bite and quickly realized it was garlic!!! I guess it serves me right but Katie couldn’t stop laughing, but for the next few hours my hands smelled of garlic.
The afternoon was spent walking through a different part of Vienna where we found one of the largest churches I have seen & another one that had a huge dome! We also found the Georgetown, dc area except it was in Vienna so we just quickly passed through. As we got to the end we came to the haufburg palace. We started through and it just kept going. We came out right where we needed to so that Katie could grab a sketchbook and then we went back to the palace. That afternoon was one of the most relaxing and glorious times. We laid down in the middle of the palace gardens had our cheese & bread and wrote postcards, slept & watched all the different people around us. There were couples, students, hippies, gothics, small groups of friends, high school girls. It was so interesting watching all the different groups interact & imagining them watching us. I don’t even know how long we enjoyed just sitting there. finally I had to go to the bathroom & had to give in and actually pay the .50 cents to go to the bathroom which is really about $1. In Europe you learn to go to the bathroom at any point you can when its free otherwise you are paying to go to the bathroom which is just strange to me, except they are always very clean. We then headed on to the city hall where we got dinner & laid our blanket out again for the perfect spot to see the ballet play on the big screen. We had Indian food, which is not Vienna at all but we were told that’s what the young do in Vienna is taste other cuisine. There was all sorts including American which consisted of chicken wings, hamburgers, & billboards with coca cola logo. A little while later we got the same wine again except this time it had more raspberries in it & then we got a dessert, which was pancakes & some dark purple sauce. The ballet was so beautiful it was done by the national ballet of Canada & it was from 1972 which was comical when it showed the crowds cheering because they were all dressed in the ugly colored 70s suits and had the long hair. Thankfully it didn’t rain that evening and we made it home without much of a do.

Vienna vineyards.

Our country excursion in Vienna was out to the vineyards but before we got started we hit nasch market for breakfast. Sadly we ended up going to a chain type place, but we didn’t know until after we had already ordered & were eating the pastries. But it was good that we were down there because on the way down my button on my shorts popped off & my shorts were loose on me, so not really sure why. But my pants no longer had a button so I needed something to hold them up. I was looking for a safteypin & asked a merchant. He didn’t have a safety pin but he did show me a beautiful broach that would work perfectly. He told me that I sounded desperate so he would give it to me for 10 euro & it was originally 33 euro…good deal on my part. My pants problem was quickly solved and I have a beautiful silver & amber broach which I plan to turn into a necklace! I couldn’t wait to hike through & look out over the countryside. We took a bus all the way up to the top & then started hiking down to a wine garden. It was amazing as we hiked we were looking down over miles of vineyards with little towns dispersed among them. It seemed like forever until we came across the wine garden we were in search for however we were disappointed to find that it was closed & wouldn’t open for another hour & half. We weren’t quite sure what do so we just kept walking down the vineyards. It didn’t take long before we felt like there was no end to the vineyards and we just kept going. We didn’t have much of a choice unless we decided to hike all the way back up the mountain which didn’t seem so reasonable considering we were both becoming pretty hungry & tired. Finally we reached a town & found the perfect wine garden. It was a buffet style & really good food. Of course there was a sausage involved & potatoes. But it was a true Vienna lunch with wine and everything. In fact, the wine was from the restaurants own vineyard & they gave it to us in mug type glasses instead of the typical wine glasses. We had a long relaxing lunch and enjoyed sitting in the sun & no one really minded us at all just let us sip our wine & take our time. We then caught a bus back to the ubahn station (metro station) and headed back into the city. We got out at the karlplaza and checked out another church & then sat by the fountain. It didn’t take long before I fell asleep by the fountain & Katie just sat there & observed. She quickly woke me up though when it looked like it was about to storm - which it did, of course! So we headed back to our hotel to get ready for roma. That night we went to dinner at a greek place where we were informed that hummus is not greek, but we did have some delicious olives, wine, & some sort of spinach & feta pastry. It was a great day to finish up the past 3½ weeks of adventurous travels.

Overall though…Vienna is one of my favorites of all the places we stopped.

Our travels are about over well at least the ones where we are the ones planning & discovering. We have spent the entire day today on a train. We left Vienna to Zurich at about 9:40 this morning. It was a beautiful train ride though. We went all through Switzerland and saw the mountains. I have grown up with mountains but these were so completely different. They went straight up & went into the clouds. The river that ran through was completely white from the snow & there were little towns among it all. We couldn’t decide whether each town was complete with a store, church, & school but it definitely looked like it. it was so unreal & really out in the country. We got to Zurich and I was starving. It took us a while but we realized that they didn’t do euros but instead they used francs. It was strange because when we got off the train in the center of the station was all these tents set up selling food. At first we wanted a place to sit down but then realized that they were all ridiculous in price so we decided on a doing a tent meal which would still be really good. That’s when we realized that they were going to give us change in francs. Our plan changed again and we headed into a restaurant. Luckily we found one where most everyone spoke English & they were excited to talk with us & tell us all about where they were from. Only problem was that it was soo expensive so we spent a small fortune on some food that wasn’t very filling! We did have a great time though. We sat right by the cook & he was from iraq. Our waiters were from Greece & Poland. And our waiter had been to America and was telling us all the different places & the first time he got to new york. We also got water with ice & lemon for the first time since we got to Europe… And we learned that swiss is not part of the EU & depending on which part of swizterland you are in is what language you speak. Even though it was a small dinner it took up quite a bit of time & we were ready to get back on the train…this time a night train. We got on and we actually have “beds” but its pretty packed & there is 4 of us, but I am definitely sleeping because tomorrow we began our crazy 7 weeks of school all over italy & turkey. I cant wait but I know so little!

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