Vienna

We boarded our train for Vienna from Prague and left at 8:30am on Thursday, October 9th. The ride was a little over four hours and when we arrived, John and I parted ways with the 31 other students, teachers, and members of our group and found our way to the hotel that we were staying in with my parents. We were excited because this was the first nice hotel (not a hostel!) we were staying in since we left for our trip at the end of August. We checked in and then went walking around to find lunch. After lunch John was sleepy so he decided to take a nap while I went shopping since our hotel was located on one of the best shopping streets in Vienna, Mariahilfer Strasse. My parents were not getting into Vienna until around 8pm and they were coming from Munich so after John napped we walked around a bit to see some of the buildings lit up, like the Hofburg Palace, and tried to find a place to eat dinner when they arrived. At about 8pm we were waiting in the lobby and my parents walked in. We showed them the room and then walked down to a local spot that John and I had found for dinner. They had typical Austrian food like Wienerschnitzel and Goulash. The food was very good and John and I heard all about my parent's trip to Munich over the previous two days.

The next day we woke up and went to the buffet downstairs in the hotel. After breakfast we all got ready and then headed to the Hofburg Palace. This palace is where the Hapsburg family lived during the winter and also where the President of Austria currently resides. We walked through a lot of the large complex and then went inside to see the collection inside the Treasury which consisted of crowns, jewels, cloaks, scepters, shrines, and other jewelry and clothes. It was really cool to see the real crowns and jewelry that were worn and how big the stones actually were. I had not been to a museum yet that had a collection like this.

After the Hofburg we all walked to St. Stephan's cathedral, the main church in the center of downtown Vienna. On the way we were able to go into St. Peter's church as well. When we arrived at St. Stephan's the top of the main steeple was unfortunately covered in scaffolding. The roof was very colorful and had patterns and symbols tiled into it, very different from any of the other churches that I had seen before. The inside was huge and I really liked a small staircase that went halfway up one of the interior columns. After walking through the church, we made our way to the water and then walked around the ring to the Rathaus, which houses the mayor and the city council of Vienna. This building was really big and ornate and unfortunately a huge stage and was being set up right in front of it. Regardless, we took some pictures and continued to walk along the ring, back towards Mariahilfer Strasse and our hotel. On the way we also came upon the Austrian Parliament building and the huge Athena statue outside.

After walking around all day we headed back to the hotel and to take some short naps before dinner. A little later we jumped on a tram that went around the ring downtown to the part we had not walked through earlier that day. We took it all the way back to the Rathaus and got off to go see it under lights. From here we walked to an Italian restaurant where we had dinner. We had bruschetta and I had tortellini and then tiramisu for desert. The whole meal was really good and afterwards we walked back through the Hofburg complex and my parents were able to see it lit up as well. It was getting late and we were all tired so we headed back to the hotel for bed.

The next morning Dad knocked on our door to tell us they were going to breakfast around 9:30am and I said we would be down in five minutes. John and I got ready and when we went to leave the hotel room, the door was locked. Dad had locked the door from the outside when they left, not realizing that he had the only key and it locked us in from the inside. Realizing we were stuck in the room and couldn't really do much, we took showers and waited for them to get back from breakfast so we could be freed. When they came in we told them what happened. They had thought we were just sleeping in really late. We all got ready and left the room for the day. The only place we had plans to see was a series of four buildings called the Gasometers. The Gasometers are four huge cylindrical towers clad in brick that were used to store gas for the city of Vienna for about 80 years. Presently the only part left of the original structure is the brick exteriors. The interiors are now occupied by shopping on the lower levels and apartments on the upper levels. We were only able to go into the lower public shopping portion which wasn't very interesting but when you looked up you could see the apartments above. Each Gasometer interior was designed by a different architect. The most interesting part about them was probably the extension of offices built off of Gasometer B, designed by Coop Himmeblau (who also did the movie theater in Dresden).

After we left the Gasometer complex, Dad really wanted to do something related to music so we looked through some of our options in some brochures and decided to go to the Mozart museum, located in his actual house in downtown. When we got there we were given audio devices that went with the exhibits and took the elevator to the top floor. The audio told us the story of Mozart's life and how he was a child prodigy that came to Vienna and was accepted into the music elite. We learned about his family life and also how he died at the age of 36, possibly from being poisoned by one of his musical rivals. We were able to walk through the space that he and his family actually lived in and also hear several of the pieces of music that he wrote.

After the Mozart museum, we decided to eat lunch at a Chinese restaurant that we spotted. The meal was very good, I had sweet and sour chicken, and at the end the Chinese women brought out four small shot glasses with a red liquid each of them. We asked her was it was but were not able to understand what she said. I thought it tasted like cherry juice, but it defiantly had some alcohol in it. After lunch we headed over to the Hundertwasserhaus. This is an extremely colorful apartment building with a little park area with a fountain and the Hundertwasser Village (home to several souvenir shops and a bathroom that costs .60 Euro to use) right in front of it. This area reminded me a little bit of Park Guell in Barcelona because of all the colorful tile and undulating surfaces everywhere. From here, we took the tram back around the ring and then to the hotel to rest up before dinner.

For dinner we went back to the local Austrian restaurant that we went to on the first night. We sat down at the same table that were we sat on Thursday and when the waiter came over, the same one from Thursday also, he immediately remembered us and was happy that we were back. We all got Ottakringer beer, which I had at the Chinese restaurant and liked a lot. I decided to be brave and order the wienerschinitzel even though it was veal because John had it the last time and said it was really good, plus I had also already had the only non-meat meal on the menu. The meal was good and we had crepes for desert. The waiter shook Dad and John's hands on the way out and kissed Mom and I on the cheeks.

The next morning, we checked out of our hotel at 11:00am and left our bags so we could walk around without them since our train wasn't leaving until 3:30pm. I really wanted to go to a museum so we walked over to the Museum Quartier, right near our hotel, and looked at our choices. There was a modern art museum, the MOMUK, and also the Architekturzentrum Wien, an architecture museum. The architecture museum looked good but they were between exhibits so we decided to go to the MOMUK. This building was covered on the exterior and interior with gray slate and had a small atrium going through all of the levels. I liked the galleries on the top couple of levels; they had a Picasso sculpture and a Mondrian painting. They also had an interesting show about bad paintings that were painted badly on purpose to make good art. After walking through the museum and the outside courtyard we had to head back to the hotel to get our bags and then take the metro to the train station. We arrived and were waiting around when all of the other students from my program showed up to catch the train. It was good to hear what everyone had done all weekend and as always it was good to make our way back to Prague. It was also good to spend time with Mom and Dad and they also came back to Prague to spend two more nights before heading back to North Carolina.