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Published: August 13th 2008
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I arrived in Vienna a little after 10am on Saturday morning, and met Louise where she was waiting for me on the lawn outside Westbahnhof station. It was great to see her again after over a month apart. We went to the hostel, left our bags and then walked down the shopping strip to the centre of town. On Louise's Lonely Planet guide's recommendation, we took the tram on a circle route around the centre. After seeing many rundown buildings and crappy neighbourhoods we concluded that either the author didn't go to Vienna, or this place is a bit crap. We got off near the museum sector and walked to a market which was really cool, lots of dried fruits and nuts and food stalls and it went on foreve. When we hit the antiques and rugs type stuff we decided to go back and we got some stirfry rice and noodles from a stall which was really good. We spent the rest of the afternoon walking around the centre of Vienna, and then went to a pub for dinner in search of Bratwurst (which is actually a Munich dish, but I figure Germanic is Germanic right?). We found it on
the menu, but ir was a bit strange, little chunks of black stuff (hopefully sausage) and fried potato. The waiter was very persistent in trying to take our plates before we were done. After dinner we went to a cocktail bar and then back to the hostel.
On Sunday morning we went to bakery for breakfast, and then got on a tram to go to Schonbrunn Palace, the former summer residence of the Habsburg Monarchy (Franz Ferdinand was part of the Habsburg Monarchy, the guy that got shot to start WWI). The palace was built as an answer to Versailles, but with it's jaundice yellow facade, Louise and I decided that it didn't quite make it. We did an audioguide tour and spent some time walking the massive gardens. After that we went back to the market from the previous day for some good food, but unfortunately we hadn't done our homework and it was closed. We bought German sausages from a stall instead. Our next mission was to find the Freud Museum, located in the father of psychoanalysis' former apartment. It was a challenge to find it, but after asking several locals we managed it. It was really
cool to ring the bell and walk through the massive wooden door that was Freud's apartment, but from there it was downhill. We were expecting it to be informative, but it was mostly just a bunch of stuff that Freud owned. We were pretty tired so we were both on the brink of unconsciousness after not long. We had a very uninformed conversation about Freud's theories and then left. We walked through the Hofburg Palace (the actual seat of the old Habsburg Monarchy) on the way back to the station to book our tickets for Innsbruck the next day. We got some groceries and cooked up a pretty decent meal of pesto pasta with fried mushrooms and zucchini in the hostel kitchen.
The next mornine we were up really early to catch our 7:40 train to Innsbruck. We arrived to crap weather, and had expensive goulash at a fly infested cafe by the station. Despite the bad weather, we were both struck by the natural beauty of Innsbruck. We then caught the bus to our hostel. The guy at the front desk was not particularly friendly, but we left our bags in our room with no lock, and headed
out. We asked the lady at the hostel for advice on what to see and where to eat and she was pretty abupt. We went to the old town, saw some nice buildings and cobbled streets and then were driven to shelter by the torrential rain. We had a beer and some bread at a pub, and then went to a restaurant where I had Viennese wiener schnitzel and Louise finally got her wish and had bratwurst. That night we did laundry and tied Danish kroners to our shoelaces for no reason. We then had a beer at a pub, played foozball (Louise smashed me) and then went back to the hostel, where we met our roommates, a couple from New Zealand (Louise is also from NZ so i felt a little outnumbered). They were cool and we played cards with them for a while before we went to bed.
The next morning we had only half a day left, so we headed out early (not too early) and took the vernicular up the mountain. The vernicular was built for the winter olympics, so it's pretty flashy. It's not modest though, on the platform is a video screen devoted
to a loop of how awesome the vernicular is (it's not that good really) We were disappointed to find that our three euro each tickets only got us a few minutes and only halfway up the mountain. It's definitely all talk. We trekked slowly back down the hill through the Austrian forest and picked wild berries. It took us about an hor to get back down to the hostel and was a really nice walk. When we got back to the hostel we grabbed our bags and headed to the train station. On the way we stopped at an indoor market and had the best lunch. We had really good figs and dates and sandwiches and it wasn't too expensive. We then walked amicably to the train station and caught the 1:30 to Venice.
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