Advertisement
Published: July 15th 2009
Edit Blog Post
Sooooooooooooooo...we arrived in Vienna after our week in Prague tired, sore and EXCITED about schnitzel!
Smicy was pretty sure his ribs were broken and was in immense pain - I thought he just had bad bruising but I was carrying some stuff for him to ease the pain so we both ended up sore and stiff lol.
We stayed in Vienna for 5 nights but the first half was a bit of a write off as Smic was in no state to do much so we pretty much did what we do best...eat. As usual, we stayed in on our first night and tried to nurse Smic back to better health by getting Schnitzel and chips from a takeaway place down the road which was yummo and chicken, not pork yay. However, our room was not as impressive as our din dins. It was tinyyyy and I think it barely would've fit two bunk beds in there yet they had somehow fit three. To make matters worse, this guy snored from the MOMENT he fell asleep to when he woke up in the morning. Smic couldn't get to sleep and his ribs killed everytime he moved. I tried ear
plugs, my iPod, counting sheep but the snoring vibrated off the freakin' walls. We remained the super tired, in pain and grumpy crew the next day and decided to try a restaurant recommended on our map called 7 Stern Brau.
We had a feeling it might be a tourist trap (due to it being advertised on a free tourist map) but they had lunch specials for 4.80 Euro and beers for 1.10 so we figured we didn't have much to lose. We went there on a Sunday afternoon and the pub was packed with people who had just run the Vienna Spring Marathon so it was really lively. It looked very traditional inside but we grabbed two seats on a bench outside. What Smicy loved was that 7 Stern Brau brews their own beer in the middle of the restaurant. Smic: "They have 6 beers to choose from including a classic pilsner, darker beer, smoked beer, malty beer, hemp beer & chilli beer." He got a goulash stew served with bread dumpling & a classic pilsner. I got a spinach strudel with feta sauce & potatoes - both meals were delicious. Smicy ended up trying their malt & smoked
beer and I had their YUM apple juice - lol, that sounds like crap but it was actually really good...homemade maybe?
We had been discussing the idea of sending some of our stuff home for a few weeks and decided we should do it whilst in Vienna. We ended up sending 12.2 kg's worth of stuff home including a clay beer stein, our good ol' bottles of Absinth & our winter jackets, yay bring on summer! (Funny story...we tracked our stuff online and customs actually detained it then released it...phew, Absinth home safe & sound).
By the time Monday came around Smicy decided that something was seriously wrong with his ribs so we went to the hospital. WOAH. Navigating your way around a hospital back home is hard enough but when the signs are in a foreign language and no one at the help desk speaks english it's just plain scary. We figured out where we were going by the broken hand picture on some of the signs. There were all these little kids in the room with broken bones so I thought we were in the kids area but it turns out just not that many adults
break bones midday Monday in Vienna :P
Smic: "I only had to wait about 10 mins before a doctor saw me who seemed more focused on getting the job done quickly than actually seeing what was wrong. I got X-rays done then went back to the doctor who took about 30 seconds to tell me that luckily, my ribs weren't broken all the way through but that I had small breaks throughout a few of my ribs. The diagnosis: 8 weeks to heal. After this he told me I could leave & when I asked if there was anything I could take to help with the pain, he told me it was nescessary! I couldn't believe it, I was in so much pain & he just shifted me out the door. 130 euro just for that but thankfully travel insurance will pick up the hospital bill."
Now, the snore monster drove me SO crazy that first thing in the morning I went downstairs almost in tears and begged the manager to let us change rooms. Yay, he did! Until our last day, we pretty much spent our time going to 7 Stern Brau, we also walked around the
area the St Stephens Cathedral is in and had a look inside the cathedral too. Whilst Smic was resting I also spent a lot of time window shopping near our hostel and trying on pretty clothes I couldn't afford!
On our last full day there we went to see the Schönbrunn Palace or "summer palace" and its gardens. The summer palace is by far the grandest palace I've ever seen. It has 1,440 rooms. You can do a 40 room tour but we only wanted to see BIGGEST and GRANDDDDEST rooms so we gave that a miss! Man...who needs that much room? It was gigantic.The gardens were as well, I don't think we could've gotten around all of it in one day. It is really gorgeous though, there were lots of locals going for their daily jog through the gardens - how lucky! We walked up to the top of a hill overlooking the palace with some great views of Vienna then headed over to the Imperial Zoo with the little rocks on the path crunching under our feet (I love that sound).
I won't go into much detail about the zoo except for that we were impressed
with how much space there was for the animals AND THAT THERE WERE TWO ADULT PANDAS AND A BABY PANDA!! How do you go from not seeing any pandas to seeing three?!!! Oh it was so cute and such a honour to see them playing and sleeping (mostly sleeping) right in front of us. Sooooooo cute, I felt my asian pride coming out haha. There was also a polar bear and her cubs. We didn't know that they were cubs until we saw them suckling milk...which explained this weird headbanging thing the mum kept doing which we realised must've been some sort of security tactict to protect her babies 😊
Oh and how could I forget? Smic also got to spend a lot of time up close and personal with an elderly oragutuan who was staring at him through the window. Smic reallys love orangutuans lol and it was so sweet that it was just staring at everyone with its cute brown eyes aw. <3
Anyways so that pretty much sums up our time in Vienna. Oh except for I flooded our hostel room at some point when I was having a shower! Also, there was a nerd
convention when we were there. I thought everyone was carrying around telescopes but Smic kindly informed me that the cases would just be holding documents for their presentations haha. Silly me!
Advertisement
Tot: 0.318s; Tpl: 0.015s; cc: 13; qc: 56; dbt: 0.0953s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 2;
; mem: 1.2mb