Vienna

After Bratislava we made another venture out of the Eastern Europe, and into another German speaking country.  As I mentioned before, we did not plan a visit to Vienna (admittedly, we really have not planned much of our trip at all), but it was so damn close to where we were, and kind of on the way to where we wanted to be.  So, we took a train from Bratislava, and were in Vienna in about an hour.  

Vienna is a large city, unlike most of the ones we are visiting.  Suffices to say that our hostel was more like a hotel that tries to save on human labor – it housed easily over 250 residents on 5 floors, had a bar downstairs, offered rooms with bathrooms in-suite, and the only difference between it and a cheap hotel was that you probably shared a room with other folks, and had to take care of making your own bed.   The downside of a large city is there’s too much to do and see, and you can’t possibly cover it in a couple of days; so we had to compromise.  

We arrived to the hostel late afternoon, and after a steak dinner (I cooked stake on a frying pan while Julie made a salad) we set out to see Vienna at night.  After walking for well over a mile we established that my very manly decision to go left out the hostel door was completely unfounded, and in fact 100% wrong (I still do not know why I was so certain that we had to go left; it’s not like I misread the map, I did not even look at the map I was so sure.)  So we turned around, and a short 1 hour walk later we were observing some of Vienna’s old town.  Unfortunately we were quite tired by the time we got to the old town, and it was getting much too cold for our taste, so after just a bit of site seeing we went back to the hostel with the resolution to get an early start the next day.

In the morning we turned right from the hostel, and reached the old town in just 30 mins or so.  We were greeted by one of the many distributors of the tickets to various music performances.  Julie was enthusiastic about the full-on orchestra, as well as some opera performance, but my face must’ve been much less so, so the girl kept lowering the price without us even asking for it.  After 5 minutes or so we settled on something acceptable.  The concert was to take place at Schonbrunn palace that had a very nice park around it.  We would check out the park, the fountains, the zoo if we wanted to, and later see the concert.  We then proceeded to walk about Vienna by ourselves using a self-guide since we missed the walking tour.  

The performance was good as far as I was concerned, but Julie was a bit upset about the fact that it was not held in a proper music hall, and the sound was not as encompassing as it would otherwise be.  

The next day we made it to the walking tour.  It was easily the oddest walking tour we’ve ever been on.  The lady that was our guide was probably around 70 years old, and knew a lot of Vienna’s history, however could not remember anything of what we told her a couple of minutes ago.  She gave us so much information that we barely had time to move from place to place; our first move from the starting point was 40 minutes after the tour started.  I was seriously concerned that our walking tour would not make it past the first square.  After about an hour, and roughly 300 meters of distance she insisted that we all had to sit down on a bench while she was standing because unlike her we had to be tired by then.  Julie and the other couple our age complied out of fear that the tour might become even stranger.  In another 30 minutes we were asked to sit by the fountain next to the library, because our lagging behind her to chat among ourselves was misinterpreted as inability to keep up with her.  “I could be your grandmother, you know!” she said.  After the library she walked right past the ancient ruins without as much as mentioning what’s there, and straight into what she called a “surprise” – a very nice and old bakery shop that used to cater to lords and counts, and had a small “museum” downstairs.  She pointed out her favorite cookies, mentioned that the shop doesn’t give her any concessions, took us to the basement of the shop with the museum, and left us there having thanked for attending the tour.  That was it… The upside was that after Prague’s prices this bakery shop did not appear all that expensive, and we got a couple of nice enough pieces of cake to go.

2011.09.05 Vienna