Vienna

So after my 36 hour visit to London, I boarded a plane to Vienna and landed there at 10 p.m. Luckily there was no line at customs, I had checked no baggage, the ride to the city was short, and the hostel directions were good, so I arrived at my hostel (which turned out to be in the way outskirts of the city) just before midnight to find Dan awaiting me in the yard. Although our hostel was a 20-minute subway ride outside the city, it was very nice and very clean and we wound up in a 3-bed room with a nice girl from Pennsylvania who was traveling before studying abroad. After babbling for an hour following my arrival, Dan and I went to bed knowing we'd be kicked out of the hostel at 9:30 the next morning.

We left nice and early the next morning, and discovered that when one is out the door by nine-thirty, the day is long and lots can be accomplished. We didn't have any plans for Vienna, only a map and we set off walking around the center of the city. We walked and walked and walked, staring at pretty architecture and museums and lovely parks along the way. We covered half the sites before lunchtime and we ate in a typical (we think) Austrian pub/bistro. I had a omelette/dumpling concoction, and Dan was daring and tried an Austrian weiner.

After lunch we headed to the Prater, Vienna's famous amusement park, and although it was open, the park was completely empty and the majority of the attractions were closed. Very bizarre considering it should be tourist season. We made our way back into the center of the city and walked some more, through parks and down beautiful streets until we reached the Belvedere Palace. We admired the gardens for a bit, then entered the palace, which has been converted into a museum and was a good sampling of Austrian art, with the exception of a bizarre modern art exhibit tossed in randomly that included a video of a woman decorating the palace stairs and windows with red velour hearts and other objects that were still in place. Very strange and not at all fitting with the other art or the palace itself.

Thursday evening was our big spectacle and the most exciting event of the trip. We just happened to be in Vienna on the night that the Viennese Symphony Orchestra gave a free public concert (Concert for Europe) on the grounds of an amazing Viennese palace. The grounds were unbelievably gorgeous and enormous (better than Versailles in my opinion). The picture is of us on the hill looking down at the palace and the lawn where the concert was held. We initially intended to listen from above, but the speakers didn't work that well so we trekked back down to the crowd on the lawn. Bill Clinton and Sharon Stone also attended the concert to receive a check for an AIDS charity foundation. It was quite a to-do. The concert itself was also wonderful. We picnic-ed for dinner on the lawn outside and generally enjoyed our time. Getting home was a slight challenge after they closed the nearest metro stop and we had no idea where to go, but we took a tram and then a taxi and somehow made it back safely.

Friday morning we checked out of the hostel and went down to the nearby bakery to get yummy Austrian pastries for breakfast. This was a slight challenge since the bakers spoke no English and us no German, but we wound up with good pastries. First thing in the morning we went to the Sigmund Freud museum in his former apartment. It was a decent museum with lots and lots of old documents, but not the greatest. We then wandered back to a particular neighborhood in search of one of Beethoven's former apartments and found that by chance. It was very neat to be in a city filled with apartments and houses of most of the great composers. We ate lunch in another typical bistro, and then headed to the bus station so I could catch a shuttle to Bratislava airport to catch my plane. The bus left Vienna on time, but hit traffic and made several stops along the way so I ended up at the airport 35 minutes before my flight was supposed to take off. Nonetheless I made it on and back to Paris safely.