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I arrived in Vienna with absolutely no hotel or any sort of accomodations planned. Went to the city center and I strolled into the Hilton and got a suite because i felt so gross and needed to wash up after hiking all over prague and staying up the whole night before. Vienna is made up of rings around the center of the town-St. Stephens Cathedral. Tired from all the hiking, i took a tourist bus tour to get my bearings of all the landmarks, the danube (which is definitely not blue), the ring, the opera, hofburgs place, the belvedere palace, the Cathedral, town hall, etc. The bus tour was very informative and a good opportunity to figure out what i wanted to go visit on foot. The tour ended at the Schonbruun Palace. THis was the summer residence of the Hapsburgs. (Something funny to me about one of the paintings featuring a huge important wedding-every guest had to be in the paining and somebody unimportant was painted over to feature a young mozart even though he wasn´t there (to the queen´s liking) and everyone of the royal family always looked the same because even if they were ugly they had to
be portrayed as royal and beautiful. My favorite was the young girl princess-i forget her name- that defied all of them and partied. She was beautiful, thin and always high on cocaine) THe hapsburgs ruled Vienna and the Viennese empire from the 13th century until 1918. Vienna was a city of the rich. Every big family had a palace-like mansion for a home because everything was about status. Now all these elaborate homes in the first district are offices or hotels. The Schonbruun palace was huge and built with lots of gold. THe outside and the courtyard was huge as well, with fountains at the very end, and now the city zoo rests on the other side. We left the Schonbruun palace and were dropped off right in front of the opera. I decided to take in an opera that evening-since this is not something i would normally do or see- as a bit of my viennese cultural experience. I saw Siegfried, where the hero who doesn´t know what fear feels like slays the dragon Fafner and finds true love in Brunhilde( i believe this opera is part III of a long series about the ring of power-i wonder where
J.R. Tolkein got the idea for Lord of the Rings...hmmmm). It was entertaining, but definitely not my bag. But hey, how often do you get to see an opera in the most famous opera house in the world!
The next morning, i went straight to the center of Vienna and climbed to the top of St. Stephan´s cathedral for a view of Vienna. From here, i walked around the ring visiting and taking pics of the City Hall (which was about to host the life ball- a huge gay formal event-too bad i was to be in Budapest by then!), the belvedere palace, the Russian War memorial (this is a huge memorial that Austria had to agree to build and never take down thanking the russians for liberating Austria from Germany in WWII), the Parliament (featuring a beautiful huge statue of Athena), a statue of Goethe, and the hofburg grounds. I also visited a soccer exhibition put on in honor of the Euro Cup (which croatia will win!!). Austria and Switzerland play hosts of the Cup this year (begins in June), and i learned that even though Austria and Switzerland technically didn´t qualify for the finals-they get to play
because the hosts always automatically qualify....hmmm
Sick of sight seeing, i went back to gather my things and switch accomodations. I learned of this website called ebab.de where gay men with spare rooms host other gay travelers. I stayed my last night in Vienna with a nice man name Alexander who lived right in the gay district of Vienna. Than night i checked out the scene going to about 4 different bars and visiting with the locals. I met a cute young man from Cyprus, and two rowdy drunk polish boys who i ended up partying the rest of the night with until the bars closed. I also tried Wiener schnitzel, which is fantastic! In the morning, i was off to Budapest!
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