When in Wien, do as the Wieners do

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Okay, maybe that title was just a cheap excuse to use the word "Wiener." We arrived in Vienna on Friday after a short one hour train ride from Bratislava and found our way to Hostel Ruthensteiner. The hostel was great - really clean and bright and well-run, and best of all, they had washers and dryers. We spent our first morning/early afternoon in Vienna just doing laundry (first time we've had a dryer since we went home for Christmas!) and catching up on email. Later in the afternoon we ventured into the city and headed to the Kunsthistoriches Museum, which holds the Hapsburgs' collection of European art, as well as an Egyptian art section that we didn't have time to see. The museum was great, if a bit expensive.

That night we walked around for awhile looking for a place to eat and ended up at a Japanese restaurant, which while it sounded really good was kind of beyond our budget, so we ended up just eating a bowl of noodles each and sharing one tiny sushi roll, oh well.

The next day we visited the two palaces that belonged to the Hapsburgs - the Hofburg, which was the winter palace and is in the center of the city, and the Schönbrunn, which was the summer palace and was near our hostel. The winter palace had a surprisingly interesting exhibit showing all of the family's china, glassware, and silver, as well as a rather strange and personality cult-ish museum about Empress Elisabeth.

In the afternoon we headed out to the Schönbrunn Palace, which was pretty incredible. The inside of the palace was interesting, but the real highlight was the immense grounds. The landscaping was beautiful and there were tree-lined paths leading to fountains, a maze (which we wanted to do but ironically couldn't figure out how to get to - maybe it’s just as well we never found it), and even a zoo.

That night we used the hostel’s kitchen and made dinner, which was a nice break from restaurant food. The hostel had a bar that was open in the evenings with good happy hour prices on beer, so we each had a couple of pints of our new favorite Austrian beer, Ottakringer.

Overall, I had fun in Vienna but I don’t know if I would put it on my list of favorite cities. Our hostel was great, all of the sights that we saw were really worthwhile, but it seemed like as soon as we got out of the central tourist area, it was kind of just a big city, and not a terribly charming one at that. I’m not sure if my expectations were too high or if I was just starting to get burned out on being in big cities, but I just felt like I never really "got" the city. At any rate, I’m glad to have gone but I think that two nights was enough.

- Lindsay

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Photos

Street performers on Kärntner Straße
Kärntner Straße is a pedestrian street that's very popular with shoppers and tourists.

St. Stephan
Kind of gloomy on the inside.

Rathaus
City Hall

St. Peter's Church
We walked by just in time for the daily organ performance.

Hofburg Palace
This one looks kind of funny because Jason stitched three photos together.