Vienna

Day One

After finding out hostel in Vienna and eating some of our leftover Tesco food for lunch, Nora and I made a plan to only have to buy one 24-hour U-Bahn (metro) pass for our whole time there, which required walking to the palace and gardens near our hostel first, rather than going into the city center right away.  It was a longish walk, but we found the palace, Schönbrunn, and walked around.

Behind the place was a monument, the Gloriette, on a hill, and we climbed it to see the view of the city.

Unfortunately, there was construction going on.

At 6pm we went to a U-Bahn station, activated our passes, and rode into the city center.

courtesy of Wikipedia

We had a frustrating time for a little while because the stop we got off at, Karlsplatz, was supposed to be right in front of the Staatsoper (Opera House), but when we came up that wasn't where we were.  But we got it figured out and found the tourist office and asked about getting standing tickets to the opera, which Nora's guidebook had talked about doing.  We found out that they were only a few euros, and although there was no show that night, Madame Butterfly would be showing the next day.

We found a restaurant both our guidebooks recommended and ate inside in what used to be a wine cellar.  I got rindsuppe with frittaten (beef broth with pancake strips), a soup I'd read about and wanted to try, and it was good.  

After that we walked around and saw two different squares, Am Hof and Freyung, and the famous cathedral, St. Stephansdom.

Last picture I took that night...

...first picture I took the next day.  Completely unintentional!

We got back to our hostel right at 10 and made a list of things to do the next day.  We had the room, a five-bed, to ourselves that night, which was nice.  I'd never really gotten tired, which was impressive after getting only four hours of sleep the night before, and when I went to bed I couldn't fall asleep because it was ridiculously hot.  We were on the 4th floor, and I had a top bunk, which didn't help.  Although we had the window wide open, there was nothing to circulate the air.  But of course I did fall asleep eventually.

Day Two

The next morning I woke up at 8:30, our planned wake-up time, feeling awful.  My nose was stuffy, my throat was scratchy, I had a cough, and I had that dead feeling you (or maybe just I) get when you wake up at the wrong time in your sleep cycle.  I thought maybe I was getting sick from not getting enough sleep, but when I got up and got ready and ate breakfast it wore off.  I was feeling kind of sick of travel, though, and not really looking forward to five more days of it, and ready to just be at home, but that wore off, too.

We went into the city center again and happened upon Maria am Gestade (St. Mary on the Shore), a 12-foot wide church, which we'd wanted to see.  We then went to the Am Hof market, which was basically a few people selling antiques/junk, then to the Freyung market, which was much better.  People were selling produce, food, drinks, and baskets, and in the middle musicians were sitting on giant fake fruits and vegetables and playing.  Nora bought a bottle of Traubensaft, basically grape juice, which she had had at dinner the night before, and I bought a piece of cake, which I think was Sachertorte, the traditional chocolate and apricot jam cake, and we sat on a giant tomato and drank and ate and listened to the music.

We walked around more after that and saw the Spanish Riding School where the Lipizzaner stallions are trained, as well as some of the horses themselves, looking out of their stalls.  There was a video of them performing on a screen on the outside wall, and they were pretty amazing, doing things like jumping and walking on their hind legs.

We tried to ride a tram around the city ring, which Nora's guidebook recommended, but after a little while the guy behind us, who had seen the open guidebook, told us that they'd changed the trams and you couldn't do that anymore.  So we got off, and realized we'd been going the wrong direction anyway.  We took a tram to the Votivkirche (Votive Church), which we only got to see the outside of because it was closed.  There was a park in front where a woman was sunbathing topless, which was weird.

Then we rode the tram to the Ruprechtskirche (St. Rupert's Church), traditionally called the oldest church in Vienna, which we also couldn't go in because there was a wedding going on inside.  We took yet another tram to the Hundertwasserhaus, which Lucie had told us about.  It's an apartment complex designed by this really original architect, Friedensreich Hundertwasser.  It's really colorful and random; it was interesting to see.  We also walked to another building he designed, an art museum.

Votivkirche

Hundertwasserhaus

Ruprechtskirche

(click to view larger)

Next we took a tram to the stop near the Belvedere, another palace.  The palace itself was confusing to get to; we started out in a botanical garden and it wasn't clear how to, or if you could, get to the palace from there.  But after walking around a little while we saw a sign for the palace, and then we found it fine.  Once again there was construction going on, including something to do with the big pond in front of the palace, which meant it was empty.  So it wasn't nearly as pretty as it should have been, which was disappointing.

front of the Upper Belvedere--:(

back of the Upper Belvedere--much better

Lower Belvedere

Anyway, having seen almost everything on our list, we were off to the opera to buy tickets.

The line was already long when we got there, over an hour and a half early, and it wasn't moving yet.  So we stood and waited for a long time.  It was really hot because we were inside with a lot of people, and my feet hurt from walking day.  But the line moved eventually, and we got our tickets.

We had about 50 minutes before it started, and we hadn't eaten dinner (we'd never really eaten lunch, either, unless you count our snack at the market and the drinkable yogurts we bought at Billa, the grocery store around here [now known for the pre-peeled banana fiasco]), so we went to Zam Bettelstudent (the Beggar Student), a nearby restaurant recommended by my guidebook.  The meal took a little longer than we'd expected, though, and at the end we were just sitting around waiting for the bill, so we got to the opera just as it was starting, meaning we had to stand in the back of the standing area.  I could see okay, although at first this guy in front of me kept shifting back and forth, sometimes blocking my view.  It was even hotter there than it had been in line earlier.  A few women left because of the heat, escorted out looking weak by their friends.  That was probably an advantage of being in the back--we weren't completely surrounded by other people.

As for the opera itself, it was pretty cool.  Nora and I had looked up a synopsis earlier, so I had an idea of the story and could somewhat follow it.  When there were long periods of talking, or singing, I guess, it got boring, though, and I was really tired of standing.  And I was continuously fanning myself with a brochure because it was so hot.

At the end of the first act we went outside and decided to stay there and watch act two on the screen on the side of the building, where people could watch the show live for free.  It was cooler, and we could sit, although it was on the hard, dirty ground.  We stayed there for act three, the last act, as well, because it was a lot better than being inside.

The opera was two hours and 45 minutes long, including a 20-minute intermission.  The story felt very dragged out; that much time really wasn't needed to tell it.  I did like seeing it, and I didn't really mind that it was so long, it just seemed kind of unnecessary.

Afterward we went to a nearby cafe and got apple strudel, a traditional treat.  When we got back to the hostel around 11:30, there was a strange man asleep in our room.  It was weird, and a little unsettling.  Of course we'd known that it was a possibility that people would come that day--we could have come back and found the room full--but I'd been hoping no one would.

So I was a little nervous, but I listed to myself all the reasons why we didn't have to worry: it was only one man, while there were two of us; he was already asleep; he was in bed before midnight, meaning he wasn't a crazy partier; he wasn't messy (for some reason, that made him less dangerous); people only came to hostels because they needed a place to spend the night while visiting a foreign city.

Still, I was nervous for Nora while I showered.  But when I came out the man was still asleep, and Nora was too.  Once again I had trouble sleeping because it was hot, but it didn't bother me as much as the night before.  I woke up at 5:50, when the man got up, and kept falling back asleep and waking up as he moved around.  He left sometime before 7.  At 7 my alarm went off, and I turned it off and went right back to sleep.  At 7:15 Nora woke me up again, and then I got up.  I had a cough again, but I didn't feel as bad as I had the morning before.

We had to pack up our stuff and check out, and by the time we did that it was almost 8, so we just grabbed some bread from breakfast and headed to the train station, which was fortunately right by the hostel.  We got there fine and the train left on time, at 8:20, and then we got to enjoy a ride through the beautiful Austrian and German countryside on our way to Munich.

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