Ahhh Vienna. Can't really say enough wonderful things about it :)
We left Munich, completely exhausted, and were expecting to get a nice rest on the train. The Eurail Pass is really awesome in that you can basically just hop on whichever train you want without a reservation. For some reason, we decided that we needed a reservation for this train- maybe we thought that there was going to be some mad Monday-evening rush to Vienna? Who knows? Anyways we made seat reservations, boarded the train, and walked back to our seats. We booked two window seats and ended up in facing each other with a table in between and a strange man next to Meredith. He was on his phone, with a laptop in front of him, and was dressed in a really nice suit. The rest of the train was fairly empty and we were quite irritated that the one time we made a reservation they happened to put us next to people. Except that man was not supposed to be there at all! When they came around to check tickets, he and his son- I think he said he was 12 or 13- had to purchase tickets. Despite the fact that there were people right next to him and hardly anywhere else, they didn't move. Needless to say we were extremely bitter. Then, the man started talking continuously on the phone and just disrupting any hopes we had of napping!
After a while we abandoned the idea of sleeping or getting rest and I asked Meredith if she might want to play cards. I got my deck of cards and my uno cards out of my backpack and Meredith and I played a few games. After our first game of rummy, the man said something to his son who then asked me, in English, what the game was called. I responded and he smiled- apparently they have this game to! This got the conversation going and Meredith asked the man where they were from. His response? Iran! He then asked us if we'd like to see some card tricks. We said yes and then he proceeded to do a bunch of them! I was super skeptical. Card tricks? Great. Buuuut, I was actually really surprised when the first one worked and the rest were really fun to watch! Eventually the conversation started to flow and I asked them if they knew the game Uno. The little boy had played it before but not the dad, but he wanted to learn. So the next thing you know, Meredith and I are aboard a train from Munich to Vienna, playing Uno with Iranians! Life is so cool!!!
We got into Vienna after 10 I think and went to find our hostel. It was pretty close to the train station so we had very little trouble finding it. The hostel was so nice, cozy, and warm! The hostel bar was full of exciting people and we knew it'd be a nice stay. When we got to the check-in, the woman started talking to us and said that we had booked a mixed dorm and was that what we meant. I said yes but then asked if they had any all female dorms (let's recall the last dorm with the butt incident...) She said that they were all full, but that she could Meredith and I a discounted price on a private room. It was too tempting to turn down and we ended up staying in this really nice, super clean, private room with our own bathroom! Our first decision, then, was to agree on a good night's sleep so that we could wake up refreshed and ready to take on Vienna the next day. We actually ended up booking a second night there instead of heading to Prague!
We got up fairly late in the morning but fully rested for the first time since probably Thursday. Our first order of business- Schonbrunn Palace! According to my always-handy Rick Steve's guidebook, it was the only palace in Europe to rival Versailles. As I am a huge fan of the latter, I had to see Schonbrunn. When we got there, I was impressed. We weren't allowed to take pictures in the inside, but we took a lot of the outside grounds. I'd say the Versailles gardens are much better, but the inside of Schonbrunn might have a slight edge on the Frenchies... at least half of the rooms :)
The Schonbrunn Palace was the summer home of the Hapsburgs. You might recall them from ruling the vast majority of Europe in some way or another... Marie Antoinette herself lived in the rococo palace before moving to Versailles and enjoying French hospitality!
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| By the fountains outside! This picture makes it look so cold because of the ice but really it was nice out!! |
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| Meredith and the 'summer home' |
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| I'm making my grand entrance :) |
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| View of part of the gardens from the palace |
The palace tour took quite a long time, but it was worth it and the audioguide was actually helpful and worth the money! We were both starving after this trip, so we decided to head back into town and find somewhere to eat. We ended up in Vienna's main shopping district- dangerous, I know- but withheld from doing any damage because we were so hungry. We wandered around for quite sometime before settling on "Wienerwald" as our choice. I'd be lying if I said the name didn't have something to do with the choice... This was where I had my first true Austrian Apfelstrudel and it was delicious!!!!!! I decided I'd have to have at least one more before leaving (Don't worry, I did!!). We also decided that we still hadn't recovered from the Beer Challenge so we had Pepsis instead of beer. Pepsi. It was my first Pepsi since I left the United States. I remember Meredith commenting that even the word Pepsi seemed strange after so long of neither saying nor hearing it.
Our next stop was the art museum and we only did a tiny bit of wandering around before we found it! IT was actually a 'twin building' of the natural history museum that is across from it. They are both really cool on the outside and the art museum was beautiful! We only had one major tourist site left on our short list of things to see- the St. Stephen's Cathedral- and we set out to see it as soon as the mildly grumpy Austrian museum people insisted that the museum was closing! We started walking down the street towards a cathedral looking object (great sight-seeing plan, I know) and actually came across the Vienna Rathaus, which is the town hall. After we figured out that it wasn't the cathedral, we were really excited by the fact that they had some pretty inexpensive ice skating going on around it! Though we were tempted to go ice skating, we decided to try and find the cathedral first!
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| Rathaus! Sooo pretty!! |
We kept walking towards another cathedral shape...aaaand it wasn't the right one either! So, we headed back, unable to resist the temptation of ice skating! I think it was the novelty of saying we went ice skating in Vienna that really drove us to participate, because it was surely not because of our ability to ice skate well! I was definitely far superior to wall-hugger Meredith! -Sorry Meredith :) But just because I left the wall doesn't mean I was cruising along. The Austrians were crazy good at ice skating. People of all ages were zooming by, doing tricks, etc etc. Once I got a bit more courage in me, I ventured further out. I was going kind of fast, thinking about how awesome my day had been, how lucky I was to be doing this, and how great life is and then BAM. I fell. No, I didn't fall. I completely wiped out. I skidded forward on the ice right to the wall in front of onlookers that were cringing and laughing. Luckily, other people were falling too! It doesn't really matter that those other people were 5, right? Right?
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| Yay ice skating! |
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| Meredith zooming around the rink! |
We didn't last too long ice skating, surprise surprise, but we definitely had a good time! We turned in our skates and then actually managed to find St. Stephen's Cathedral! It was pretty cool, but I wasn't overly impressed by it. Though, to be fair, a lot of it was hard to see due to construction.
We made it back to the hostel just in time for happy hour! I guess our anti-beer thoughts had worn off at this point as we both enjoyed a half liter! We were in the lounge/bar area and ended up meeting this really nice guy from England who was traveling around alone and on his way to Istanbul! He was really friendly and wanted to know tons of things about the United States. It was funny to see his reactions to some of our answers! He ended up joining us when we ran out to get some Turkish food and bring it back to the hostel. After we ate he took off to go get some sleep, Meredith stayed in the lounge, and I went to the computer room. While I was there I met 3 Americans who were studying abroad in the Netherlands! It was really nice to talk to them. They said they had been to Prague (our next destination) and loved it, so I was quite excited to go!
We went to bed a little late, but it was a wonderful day full of great food, people, and places. All was going wonderfully until the next morning. As it turns out, our little Turkish food run didn't go so well for Meredith. She was sick and we ended up staying in Vienna a few extra hours to give her time to recover! When Meredith was feeling better we packed up and headed to the train station! Destination: Prague!
Stayed turned for Part 3: Praha!
See you all in 49 days :)
Miss you and love you,
Liv
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