My bus (again) got in insanely early (approx 5 AM), so after lots of running around involving trying to get into my hotel, discovering that it was locked and I couldn't get in til 9, then riding the U-Bahn across town to the Westbahnhof to drop off my bags, I made it to the city center. The guidebook I got from the library had a whole bunch of walking tours in it, so I did the historical one first. It was a good choice, especially since by this point I have no desire to go in a bunch of churches. Although surprisingly, a lot of them were open!
St. Peter's Church
I went into at least 2 before 7 AM. I hit the big sites, like the opera house, the Hofburg (where the Habsburgs lived for over 600 years), a bunch of churches, a ritzy shopping street, a memorial to the Austrian Jews killed during the Holocaust, and then the big church: Stephansdom. According to my good book it has the third highest church tower in Europe, after the ones in Cologne and Ulm. I didn't go up to the top because 1) I was tired, and 2) I couldn't find the entrance. I looked around the church a little bit but I mostly used it as a place to sit down. It was pretty cool and huge and all, but eh, it's a church.After my historical "tour", I decided that a tour of the Ring (what the streets going around the historical center are called) would be excellent--especially by tram. I walked from the Danube canal down one of the rings (they change names every block or so) past the Urania (still not sure what that is), the government building, the Postsparkasse designed by Otto Wagner in the Jugendstil (dont know what that is in English), to the City Park. Let me take a second to comment on this. Vienna has AMAZING parks. They all look like gardens on the back of castles that are maintained by teams of gardeners, with the exception of Sigmund Freud Park, which is a dump. In the City Park I tried to take a nap, but alas, even though I had almost fallen asleep in the tram, I just couldn't do it.
When I gave up on my non-nap, it was almost 12, so I decided I should eat something despite being really not hungry. Since Vienna is famous for its Sacher Torte (complete with secret recipe, ooo) I went to the Cafe Sacher to eat some. Granted, it was really good, but right after I ordered it I realized that I've had it before (just a knock-off, of course), and that I hadn't loved it. I'm not a big fan of the raspberry jam that is spread between the layers and under the top layer of chocolate. Luckily it was so chocolately that I couldn't taste the raspberry much, and even with that it was pretty good. Not the best cake I've ever had, but good. And not worth 5 euros. But it's pretty cool to eat Sacher Torte at Cafe Sacher in Vienna in view of one of the best opera houses in the world.
Speaking of opera, both the opera and the orchestra take their yearly breaks in July and August!!!! If I had been there just one week before, I would have been able to see a performance by the orchestra, which is what I really wanted. To me, Vienna=great music, so it was a little disappointing to not be able to experience that.
After "lunch" I went to the Naschmarkt, where there is a seriously HUGE flea market every Saturday. There were tons of people there, including several disappointed tourists who thought it was a regular old market. I walked around the stalls for a while, looking at the ridiculous stuff that people were selling (want a tourist-y beer stein from Augsburg?) and debating buying some it. I didn't though, because then I would have had to carry it all day plus bring it back to Germany with me.
Flea market on the Naschmarkt
From the Naschmarkt I continued on to Karlsplatz and the Karlskirche. Karlskirche had unfortunately just been closed for a wedding that was about to start, but looking from the outside was enough. I thought it was a castle from far away. From Karlskirche I went back up to the ring and went to the Alte Hofburg, which I had missed earlier since it had been closed at 7 AM (go figure). Then the Neue Hofburg and some more amazing parks and gardens. From there I had been planning to walk only to the Parliament and the Rathaus, but just my luck there was a huge protest/parade that shut down all public transport on the Ring.View from Parliament
Luckily, since they're German (-speaking), the protest was pretty much a bunch of twentysomethings drinking beer while listening to loud techno music...with a couple protest signs draped on trucks for good measure (not to mention a dude who'd painted himself green....), which meant that they were really slow-moving and by walking at a normal pace I could get way ahead of them. I walked what I thought was all the way around the rest of the ring, and actually turned out to be only halfway. Ugh. But I happened upon an U-Bahn station and rode the rest of the way, then got some dinner and went back to my hotel (I had taken my stuff there after lunch, so I didn't have to bother with going back to the Westbahnhof again).Umm wow, writing up all the stuff I did, I did A LOT. My vacations are NOT relaxing.
The next day I was intending to go to a museum, because that is what I had budgeted for. I decided to pick a composer's house to go to, since I've already been to a ton of art museums in Europe (although Vienna does have a few really good ones). After making another trip to the infamous Westbahnhof to drop my stuff off again, I headed to the house where Haydn lived...and found out that all composers' houses (except maybe Mozart's?) are free on Sundays! Thus began my musical adventure. None of the houses ended up being that exciting. You'd think in Vienna, where all these amazing composers were born and lived and worked, they would have truly amazing collections of objects and writings from their lives. Not so. Most of the houses I could get through in about 15 or 30 minutes. The best part about them: all of them had listening stations where you could listen to full versions of selected compositions. The houses I hit up: where Haydn lived; where Johann Strauß (son) lived; where Schubert was born;
In the courtyard of the house where Schubert was born
where Schubert died. I also went to the Hundertwasser House (house designed by Friedensreich Hundertwasser (not his real name) who also designed the Martin-Luther-Gymnasium in Wittenberg). His stuff is pretty famous mostly because it's CRAZY. I mean, it can't be because it looks good.Hundertwasser House
After visiting Schubert's death house and making a quick trip back to the city park to see the Johann Strauß memorial, I was pretty wiped out. I still had a bunch of time until my bus left, so I took the tram out to the Central Cemetary, where lots of famous people are buried. It's also HUGE. According to my guidebook, it has more than 300,000 graves with about 3 million people buried there. That's a lot. It also has the graves of such famous people as Mozart (who was originally buried in a mass grave so now only his legs occupy his grave spot; apparently the Viennese take a while after your death to realize that they really like you), Beethoven, Schubert, Brahms, Strauß son and Strauß father, and Schönberg. There's also a huge church there, but it was closed by the time I got there. The Vienna airport must also have been practically right next to the graveyard, because literally about every minute a plane would fly over, and most of them were low enough that I could read the Austrian Airlines "AA" on the tail (well, for the ones that were in fact AA).Central Cemetary
After eating dinner, I went to the Donau Insel because I figured I should probably actually see the Donau (Danube) while in Vienna, especially seeing as Strauß, who lived there, had written that song. The river looked pretty cool at night, but there were some shady characters out there.The Danube River at night
Then I almost missed my bus back by taking too long on the Donau Insel, making a stop at the Parliament to see it at night, and not getting to the Westbahnhof until about 10 PM. Parliament at night
I got my bags from the locker as quickly as I could, but I still didn't end up leaving there til about 10:10, which meant I got to the Erdberg station at 10:25, and to the bus stop about 2 mins after that. Luckily the bus was late (it pretty much always is), so I still ended up being there about 15 mins before it arrived.Vienna is a really cool city, also a lot bigger than I thought it would be. I was worried that I wouldn't be able to understand their dialect there, but it's really just a different German dialect. I didn't have problems anywhere else in Germany, so I don't know why I was worried. They do sound different, but most of them speak Hochdeutsch, or at least with me they did, thank goodness.
Only one trip left :-( Next weekend to Stuttgart and Heidelberg, and maybe Worms? Exciting, but also sad!
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