As I said in the last post, we woke up early to go see Schönbrunn Schloß (Palace). It wasn’t too far a walk, but it wasn’t very clearly marked where it would be. It was even off the city map the hostel gave us. We eventually found it after crossing through a park.

The building itself was large! The color a bit ugly, but nevertheless impressive. We walked in to see if we could check out the interior, but you had to pay an obscene amount of money for “Tours” or “Passes”. Nicole and Jeremy didn’t have long to stay and the gardens were free so we did those instead! I am glad we did! Again, rooms are rooms. Oh, royalty slept in that bed, eh? I could show you the bed I sleep in for 15 Euro too! I’m definitely well-known, I promise.

If the building was large, the gardens were mammoth, huge, titanic, gargantuan! I have no idea how many acres the gardens, pathways, fountains, and other buildings encompassed other than just “a lot.” We took our time walking to the Obelisk fountain, Neptune’s fountain, and some other ones before heading up a hill to this other building. I am still not quite sure what its purpose was, but it was cool. Maybe for banquets back in the day? It had huge, Austrian coats-of-arms statues on it. There was also a second level to it, which of course you had to pay to visit. We could see over a nice portion of Vienna just from where we stood on the first level, so we didn’t go up. The view was really impressive though! You could see the palace (now a bit smaller) along with the gardens with the rest of western Vienna as a backdrop. It was a great vista with the city, clouds and mountains to be seen!

After seeing that it was about time to head back because Jeremy and Nicole had to leave. We walked back and along the way picked up a tasty danish treat for “take away” (how they say “to-go”) at a Bäckeri and walked back to the hostel. Then we said to Jeremy and Nicole, and they left for the airport to continue the next part of their journey.

We also ate a few sandwiches we made of the stuff we bought the other day at the Spar. The garden at the hostel is really fantastic! It was quite, nicely decorated, and a protected from any winds that might arise. Very pretty! Then we napped for several hours in our beds.

Chuck woke me up and we decided to head out to see some paid sights. We even used the public transportation this time, because they were on the completely opposite side of the city. It still took us nearly 45 minutes to make it over there, but it was probably still a good deal faster than walking. We took the metro as well as the tram to get to KunstHausWien. It’s this ecclectic building with art exhibits. The building is actually very cool because the person who built it was artistic and environmentalist. There are plants all over: the electric lines are covered in vines, trees grow along stairwells, the roofs are actually covered with soil and plants instead of tar or shingles. They only had one exhibit at the time, because they were in the process of switching the second exhibit, but it was okay because we got there around 5:30 and they closed at 7:00.

The exhibit we did see was Hundertwasser. He’s a modern artist who was fairly accomplished. He not only did paintings but also graphic art, eco-friendly-and-pretty architecture, proposed flag designs for countries, and designed stamps for countries in the UN. Some of his stuff was a bit off the wall, but I connected with quite a bit of his pieces. My favorite was “The Occidental”. I would actually like to see if I could get either a print or one of the 238 real edition versions. All in all, I would recommend this to anyone, particularly those who like modern art.

After the KunstHaus, we walked to the Haus Der Musik (Music House). It was a 5 story exhibit that combined music, technology, science, and history. Some exhibits were of Mozart, Bethovan, Vienna Symphony Orchestra, and others were intereactive learning experiences! Some of the exhibits were really cool but a lot of them had the potential to be awesome but came off lackluster because of either really out-dated technology, broken or unresponsive controls, or just lack of cohesive, continuous flow through the exhibit. One of my favorite parts was at the beginning when you hear some spacey sounds and then you find that the speaker is actually this blue piece of plexiglass right in front of you. Touch it and it’s vibrating and creating the sound you hear! Wicked!

We then took the metro toward our hostel and walked to Mozartstube, a restaurant right down the street. Chuck and I both got Wurstknödel mit Sauerkraut (Dumplings filled with meat and set on top of sauerkraut). The dish was huge! One dumpling would have definitely been filling. The price was actually pretty good though! The place itself was definitely interesting. It’s open from 6pm to 6am, and had a lot of antlers and pictures of patrons enjoying themselves on the walls. We didn’t run into any rude waiters there, which was nice, although I did order a Coke, just to make sure that when I did ask for water later that we wouldn’t be harassed. I don’t usually like Sauerkraut but I did manage the meal and it tasted decent enough. I’m still not a fan of it, but I didn’t let the little issue ruin the meal. It was a good Austrian meal! Too bad they didn’t have appel strudel there, or it would have been even more Austrian.

After that we headed back to our hostel and went to sleep. Of course, everyone else in the room was already asleep… well except for the people right next to us. One of whom was click-clicking away on his cell phone. I really wish he would have just left the room if he was going to be emailing/texting/whatever. Oh well, I fell asleep soon enough.

Slept in a bit since we didn’t have to worry about being up for breakfast (because it wasn’t free). After we showered, Charles and I headed out to see the town. It was warm and a bit hot in the sun but nothing as compared to Rome! The cooler climate is so very very nice!

We first walked down Mariahilfer Straße toward the city. We keep making fun of the Dublin cross-walk noises. The sneeze and boop-boop-boop noise! We’ll do it for you when we get back. It’s quite hilarious. Especially when Vienna has cross-walk noise makers that don’t even seem do be directonal. They just beep whenever you can cross some way. Not sure of the purpose there. Unless maybe each side is delayed a bit so you can tell which way to walk.

Our intital stop was the MuseumQuartier. We walked by and admired the statues, architecture and gardens because we didn’t feel like paying the money to go in. We’re to the point that we’ve seen enough old, famous paintings to last us for the rest of the trip. I would much rather look at the architecture than paintings anyway. One of the buildings had the cutest statue of a little elephant. I definitely took a couple pictures! This same building also had some interesting coat-of-arms-like carvings which I also photographed. Also in front was a pillar light post which had the austrian symbol, a with two heads. This bird looks badass, and is enhanced with awesome by the fact that each head is crowned!

From there we walked to the Hofburb Palace which contains a lot of things like the library and riding school, because it’s been expanded so much over the centuries. It had an impressive number of statues on the front face of the building from many cultures, countries and eras. I took pictures of some of them but not all as there were quite a few. We walked inside the building to see if we could check it out, but you had to pay so we didn’t go in.

We took a stroll through the garden across the street, where we saw some people on Segways with huge all-terrain tires. I really want to try one of them! You could probably take them off some pretty sweet jumps. The park has some nice gardens. The fountains kindly reminded us to not drink the water, as if we wouldn’t already know that from the fact that it was stagnant and gross!

Then we walked across the street to the Parliment building which has an epic statue of a lady with a golden breastplate and helm holding a gol-tipped spear and a small, golden, winged lady in the other. We walked inside to get a drink of water because this day Chuck and I decided to not take our water with us. We were expecting there to be drinking fountains like there were in Rome, but that was a mistake on our part. We ended up drinking out of the restroom sink faucet!

Right up the street from the Parliment building is the Rathaus, which is their city hall. I believe the architecture style is called Baroque and I do have to so I am a fan! It had a nice tower in the middle along with statues, arches, pillars and other decoration extending off to the sides. There was a huge screen set up right in front of it for a film festival, so we couldn’t get a picture of the entire thing, sadly, but we made due. We also got some pictures of the Hofburg Theater from across the street.

Right nearby the Rathaus is the Universität Wein which is the school of Schrödinger, Doppler and Freud! We walked around the main building a lot. It has a nice courtyard with busts of a lot of famous people who’ve attended/taught/researched there. It’s a prestegious place.

A little further north we came across Sigmund Freud park which is directly in front of a church with two grand epic spires and beautiful architecture! It had flying buttresses and everything! And speaking of churches, we then headed to the heart of downtown to see St Stephen’s Church. It, like a lot of the other buildings and churches we’ve seen, was under renovations to remove the grime from the exterior. It’s interesting because instead of just the scafolding going up the sides, they have it wrapped in a picture of what the building looks like underneath.

We did walk inside and got to see, again, some impressive statues, arches, pillars, paitings, carvings, and other christian related artifacts. Unfortunately, you had to pay to walk around the center of the church to get a good view of the alter and that area, so we didn’t get to see it too closely. We’re poor college kids traveling to get an idea of the world, not spend a ton of money on seeing something for 10-15 minutes! There are student discounts, but they take off a minimal amount. The church does have an interesting pattern in the roofing tiles, which I haven’t seen on any other church. Inside is a large pipe organ, which would have been cool to hear played, but it was silent.

By the way, what constitutes the difference between a church, cathedral and bascilica?! They all look rather large and impressive to me.

After Stephensdom, we headed back to the Hostel. Wien is broken up into districts, something like 13 of them. Downtown is I and the others spiral out. It was one heck of a walk from I to where we stayed. We did get to walk along some major streets and see all the stores around. We’re not much into shopping, so we didn’t stop at any of them. I haven’t seen a single Best Buy in Europe. That breaks my heart. But we did get a picture of a McDonalds, keeping up with our goal of photographing one in every country! Believe it or not, there were 3 McDonalds on the street we walked several times to get downtown. I was impressed with the McD’s density in that area. We also saw a BurgerKing and KFC.

Once we got back we ate at SATO’s, which is a Turkish restaurant right around the corner from the hostel. They offered Hostel Ruthensteiner customers a 10% discount, which was nice. We both ordered the Sato Kebab, which is the first Turkish kebab I’ve ever had. It was fantastic! I didn’t even really notice the eggplant in it (not a fan of eggplant). The rice served alongside was quite good.

Chuck and I are still having a hard time getting used to the restaurant ettiquite. Do we seat ourselves? Do you tip in this country/city? What the hell are these dishes? Will they refill our drinks for us? Can I catch their eye so we can ge the check now? Do we pay at the table or a register? Do they pick up the money if we don’t summon them? Is the check separate or together? These are just a few of the things to think about.

In the restaurants so far I’ve been drinking regular, uncarbonated, un-mineralized water. We specify we don’t want the mineral, carbonated water; tap water is just fine. They’ve usually brought us glasses and a jug of it. This place was different. We got the first glass of water, and I asked for a second, no problem. I had also ordered some honey donuts for dessert, and was waiting for them (was he just going to bring them, or do I have to ask for them now) so I asked for another refill on water. He said something about one glass being fine, two okay, but three was too much. Just this time, he said. I guess he didn’t like that we didn’t pay for a drink. I really don’t know why it was a big issue. And to top it off he had either missed or forgotten my order of honey donuts. This was the first time we really ran into a language barrier. He was a Turk who lived in Germany trying to speak some English to us. A bit difficult to communicate effectively. And when they brought us over the bill, we set it out with our cash to pay but they never came by and picked it up. Two or three other sets of people came in, ate, paid and left before they even brought us the check. We must just be inexperienced. I finally got up and gave them the money so we could get the hell out of there. I didn’t like his attitude after the whole water fiasco. (Reminds me of Uncle Steve’s story of not ordering wine while in France)

We just went back to the hostel room after that and talked some with Jeremy and Nicole before heading to bed. We would wake up early the next morning to do some sight-seeing with those two before they had to leave. I did sleep with my earplugs in because the morning before I had been woken up by people being crazy loud and trucks roaring by on our road. I didn’t hear anything that night and it was glorious!