Come along with me to my little corner of the world III

Vienna. What is there to say? I've been hearing about it ever since I can remember because of my mother's experience studying there in high school. I've been trying to be "going with the flow" with most of the planning and excursions here, but I've been pushing for Vienna since we arrived. Luckily someone else in the group had the drive to actually, you know, look up buses, trains, maps and hostels, and take some action. A group of four of us ended up actually making the trek.

Here's how it broke down:

Saturday morning: wake up early in Bratislava, head to train station
Saturday early afternoon: arrive in Vienna
Sunday afternoon: leave Vienna
Sunday night: arrive back home in Prague

With travel time, it ended up taking most of the two days. Time spent in Vienna, including sleeping? 26 hours.

How To Spend a Day in Vienna (and not spend all your money. Just most of it)

1. Tram #2

Vienna's public transportation system was the largest of any of the cities I've visited thus far. For instance, Prague has three main metro lines : Vienna has six. Like many European cities, Vienna has an extensive tram and bus system.

The number 2 tram runs in a circle around many of the historic parts of the city. For only the price of the tram ticket and 45 minutes of time, you pass

• the Opera house
• the Parliament
• the Natural History Museum

and countless other historic buildings of importance. We did the cool thing and took pictures from the tram. As we were on the tram, we happened to pass right next to a protest march. Since I was a. on a tram b. unable to understand German c. unable to understand Turkish, I can only derive at what it was from my observations. It looked, however, to be related to Abdullah Ocalan -- Founder of the PKK, an organization on the US terrorist list.


2. Hotel Sacchar and Cafe Mozart
So this excursion actually does not fall into the category of "cheap" but so cool. We had headed over to one of the art museums in the huge complex of Hapsburg palaces - it was right next to the legendary Spanish Riding School (I would have felt bad about missing it since we arrived too late on Saturday except there was no performance on that particular Saturday). I really wanted to see the Van Gogh exhibit, but the line was ridiculous.

Luckily, it took us right to the Hotel Sacher. They hold the secret recipe for the original Saccher cake -- chocolate and orange deliciousness. It's pretty fancy, with the waiters all in tuxedos. I never looked that spiffy as a waiter.

3. Walk around in the Dark

Continuing in the same way as the afternoon, we spent a good part of the night just walking around with absolutely no idea where we were. We ended up say "Dude, we're in VIENNA" a lot -- it did feel somewhat surreal if only because in many ways it feels different from the Europe I've grown used to, with language and architecture. We ended up in a pub that had the most massive portion sizes. I ordered a pasta dish which had perhaps 7-8 servings. The schnitzel that we ordered was about the size of your face. Twice.

4. The Belvedere
This was perhaps one of my most favorite things about the trip, aside from the wonderful company. One of the girls really wanted to see this Museum and since the rest of use didn't have anywhere else we really wanted to go AND it sounded interesting, it was the big project for the day. It ended up conveniently being really close to the train station where we were able to leave our stuff.


The Belvedere houses a large collection of pre-20th century art, including some Monets (ie my favorite painter. Not like that's cliche or anything). It also has the world's largest Klimt collection, including his most famous painting "The Kiss"

That's the barebones of the adventure. It will take me a while to catch up on what's happened SINCE then -- a lot of it has been work related which I can skip over. I'm about to head into finals which is not a pleasant thought. I have a photo essay and analytical essay due, a written cultural final, a czech presentation as well as a Czech oral and written final. I also have to work on finishing up my Independent Study Project. Hopefully I will know more in a few days about where I will be spending the last few weeks of my semester!