The events that occured around 3 in the morning were a little hazy when I woke up. Something about bed bugs. For some reason, I was waking up in a completely different room. It looked like we got upgraded from a 6 person room to a 4 person room. I was really loving the hospitatlity...
My roommate, who had gotten the worst of the bed bug bites was already up and gone. I felt bad for her.
I only had one little itchy bump on the small of my back.
I looked around and noticed that we were given a free breakfast as well as a bag of fifty-cent coins and free drinks. So Mickey and I headed downstairs to get our free cafateria breakfast. It was nothing like the Sir Toby's breakfast.
We planned out our day very vaugely. It started with us going to one of the many palaces still around form the Austro-Hungarian Empire, the Schönbrunn Palace, which was pretty far south from the city center.
As the capital of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, Vienna maintains its imperial monuments in the same way Rome maintains its monuments from the Roman Empire. They use these monuments to help associate thier national identity. Besides the difference in architectural style, the main difference between the monuments is their age. This means that the monuments in Vienna are in much better condition than the ones in Rome.
In both cases, there are many private palaces, occupied over the years by many famous, rich families. These palaces have only recently been transformed into public areas. This is neat because the places which were originally exclusive to the elite are now available for kids to play, peole to exercise, and familes to go on picnics.
Schönbrunn Palace does that very well. The actual palace is a paid-entry museum but the massive garden and hill behind it is freely open to the public. It takes over nearly 500 acres of land and includes hundreds of statues, multiple fountains, stone roads, hedge mazes, trees, flower gardens, and even its own zoo.
This is the view from atop the hill with the palace and the park in the background.
We hung around here for a little while and checked out a really cool sundial on the way out. It displayed the day, time, month, and season.
When I was reading about Vienna on the train, I discovered that, historically, they have a pretty strong German influence. Although many people speak Austrian its similar to German. In fact, German is one of their official languages.
Not only have they adopted the German language, they have also adopted one of my favorite German traditions which I remember learning about in high school, kaffee und kuchen!
It was my specific goal that day to fully experience kaffee und kuchen.
Since we were a good distance away from the city center, it was a good place to try kaffee und kuchen. The city centers of most tourist destinations tend to over charge and under prepare at cafes and restaurants, providing a less authentic experience.
The place we ended up at seemed like the corner cafe of a little Austrian suburb. I knew that we were still in the city, but the way the buildings and streets around us were constructed made it feel that way.
I ordered the famous Vienna coffee, Melange. It was pretty good, but the schokoladenkuchen that I had was amazing!
Finally, a picture without beer in it! Looks like I was getting a little scruffy at this point. I had went true traveler mode, refusing to shave and occasionally refusing to shower until I was so gross looking that it actually looked good. You know how a disgusting backpacker eventually reaches the perfect level of disgusting so that he's super sexy? No, you don't? Well, that's where I was headed.
After the wonderful, Austrian kaffee und kuchen, we headed back to the Naschmarkt. I was looking for something for lunch and maybe a souvenir. I'm not very good at buying souvenirs. Mostly because they are overpriced and silly. I prefer my pictures and my blog as my souvenirs.
I ended up purchasing some hummus and some sort of bread thing for lunch. I also picked up some curry powder since Carly Stingl recently taught me how to make vegetable curry.
We headed to the same area we were last night to consume our products. The park we settled in was dedicated to the great composer Mozart. An Austrian, he composed most of his best works while living in Vienna. They are pretty proud of this guy and I don't blame them. I feel like I had to give my best composer impression.
This park was full of college students just hanging out and having a good time. Vienna appeared to have a high population of college students. One of the universities there was a dedicated monument. There are a lot of museums there as well. I got the impression that Vienna was a very academic town with a good culture scene. Because of Mozart, the attention to music, classical and modern, is still taken quite seriously.
We wandered the Ringstrasse a little and grabbed one of the trams to a park on the other side of the river. These trams looked quite a bit different from the ones in Prague. They looked meaner, tougher and ready to do business. Whereas, the trams in Prague looked like over-sized hippie vans attached to wires.
The park on the north side of the river was really active today. I got the feeling that the weather had just gotten nice out. This usually gets everyone out of their homes and into the parks for a picnic or a bike ride.
We had gone here with the original goal of checking out The Wiener Riesenrad, which literally means Viennese giant wheel. You gotta love German. It's a nineteenth century ferris wheel built in one of Europe's first amusement parks. We checked it out but we were feeling that to ride it for 12 euro was a little ridiculous.
It was getting a bit later so we headed back to the river to start looking for dinner. The sun was setting and the skyline over the river looked really nice.
Along the river, every square inch of embankment is covered in graffiti. The graffiti in Vienna is hands down the most impressive and respectable graffiti I've seen in Europe. What's more is that it seemed like most of the graffiti of the city was focused in this one area leaving the majority of the buildings nice and clean. Here are two of my favorites.
As it got dark, we just walked around the pedestrian only walkways. I particularly enjoyed people watching. The street performers in Vienna are also the best I've seen in Europe. First, there was a street dancing team who were pretty talented.
Then, there was your classic, classical music playing group of teenagers.
Finally, there was a guy playing classical music with forks and bottles.
As we were walking by all of the designer shops, we ran into a impromptu fashion show. What a genius way to sell your clothes!
I was getting a little tired of walking around so it was time for dinner and then time for bed. It's not that we had an early train the next day, but, between miles of walking and a bed bug interrupted sleep the night before, I was ready for bed.
