Central Europe Part IV

Wednesday: Vienna

None of us were sorry to bid farewell to Bratislava on Wednesday morning. I’m sure the city has a lot more to offer than what we saw, but there was just no salvaging it after the awful rain. We were moving on to bigger and better things: Vienna!

Naturally I had to listen to the Billy Joel song while we were on our way. The weather in Vienna was still cloudy and damp, but not outright raining, so it was bearable. After dropping our stuff of at the hotel, Jiri led us on a loooong march out to Naschmarkt, where we had lunch. Naschmarkt is a big, semi-outdoor market with lots of little mini-restaurants of all sorts of food. Brandon, Anna, Mike and I ate at a Mediterranean food one, and I had really good pasta there. It was cool eating in the little restaurant because there were only three tables, but it was also a bummer to realize that now we were in Euro territory.

After lunch we met our tour guide for the next few days, Wolfgang. Wolfgang was a grad student at the University of Vienna; I have no idea how he knows Jiri but apparently he’s given the tour to CES students before. To be honest he wasn’t a great tour guide, because he tried to show us so many things that he didn’t go into detail about any of them and for the most part none of us remembered what they were. According to the itinerary he gave us, this is what we saw after lunch: Karntner Strasse; Stephansplatz; St. Stephan’s cathedral; Graben; and Kohlmarkt.

Out of those, the only ones I am sure of are St. Stephan’s cathedral and Stephansplatz, the square around it. St. Stephan’s was huge and impressive and Gothic, and I loved it because I love Gothic cathedrals. It was characteristic of Vienna – EVERYTHING is huge and impressive there. You couldn’t walk more than 100 feet without coming across another giant statue, monument or building.

We got out of the cold at around 3:30 pm by going to a Viennese coffeehouse, the Café Central. Viennese coffeehouses are famous, partly because it’s very common for Austrians to buy a cup of coffee and then settle down for hours at a time to read and relax. I ordered a cappuccino even though I don’t like coffee, but the cake I got made up for it. It was called "Mohr im Hemd“, which apparently means "black man in a white shirt“, which according to Wolfgang "isn’t racist“ but I guess I’ll just take his word for it. Anyway it was a delicious chocolate cake with chocolate syrup and whipped cream. Amazing.

The second part of that day’s tour was afterwards and apparently we saw the following: the University of Vienna, city hall, Parliament, the Hofburg (former royal palace), the Museum of Art History, the opera, Heldenplatz, Maria-Theresien-Platz, and the Secession. I recall the university campus as being very typically college-like. Other than that it’s all kind of blur of pretty buildings.

Finally we had some free time, which I chose to use to go shopping. I bought a pair of cute shoes at Humanic, which I realize I could have bought at the store in Prague, but…I have no excuse. The thing we didn’t realize, however, was that almost every store closed at 7 p.m., and we weren’t meeting for dinner until 8. Luckily me, Kristie, Marina and Caroline found a jewelry shop that was still open and went in. The awesome English-speaking shop lady turned up the music, pulled out a bottle and asked us, "Want some champagne?“ Turns out she had worked as an au pair in West Chester, NY for a while and talked to us about how spoiled all the kids there are. The champagne was basically a ploy to make us buy jewelry but it was highly entertaining.

Thursday: Vienna

The next morning we had the next part of our tour. Briefly we visited an old folks‘ home, but not really – we just walked through the lobby to go see the courtyard, which had an old Jewish cemetary in it! A nice reminder of what’s coming for the residents, I guess. Then we went to the Documentation Center of Austrian Resistance, where Wolfgang works. There was an exhibit all about Austria immediately before, during and after the German annexation and occupation, and Wolfgang gave us a presentation on it all. Our final stop was the Belvedere, Vienna’s famous art museum, but all we got to do was look in the lobby, which I thought was weird.

Then we had free time until 9 pm that night. By this point the weather had taken its toll on me: I was definitely sick. Everyone else went to the art museums; I went to the hotel to sleep. It took forever to get a cab and get back there, but I did manage to get some rest until I had to get up and meet Brandon, Mike and Anna so we could go to BURGER KING!

Burger King was delicious, I gotta say. They don’t have them in Prague and they are excellent burgers, after all. So while it is kind of pathetic that I ate Burger King on one of my two nights in Vienna, I do not regret it. At all.

Most of us met Jiri and Wolfgang at 9 that night and Wolfgang took us to a restaurant bar where he laid out some options of where else we could go that night. Since it was such a big group of people, Anna and I decided to strike out on our own, and found a club that was mentioned in her guide book. It ended up being the best decision ever. At first the club was kind of sketchy and lame – we got there around 11 but there was almost no one there. Plus it was expensive. But we sat at our little table anyway – we’d paid friggin‘ €12 just to get in, might as well stay – and when we looked around at 12:30 it was full of people! The entire ethnic population of Vienna, apparently. These were not your typical Europeans…they actually knew how to dance. It was really very impressive.

So basically we spent several hours there blowing all of our remaining Euros on mojitos, wine and beer. I wasn’t really drunk when we left (thank you, Double Whopper with fries) but we were still amazed that we found our way home.

Friday: Vienna and back to Prague

Normally we would have just hopped on the bus and returned to Prague, but there was one last thing left to do before leaving: celebrate the Austrian independence day! We went to Heldenplatz, which I guess is a main square there, and saw some of the celebrations. In comparison to the way Americans celebrate the Fourth of July, it was somewhat unimpressive. A large part of the Austrian army was there, because the Austrian army is tiny and basically comprised of teenagers fulfilling their compulsory service. We saw the president give a speech, but obviously couldn’t understand it because it was all in German. There were a lot of stands set up with information and pictures about the air force. My favorite thing about it was the gigantic donut pretzel I got for €1.50.

And then, it was back to Prague for us. Probably a good thing…somehow we managed to avoid anyone hating each other after the trip, but had we been stuck together a few more days it would have been inevitable. Overall it was an amazing time. I got to see a lot of places and things I never would have otherwise, and I did feel that I learned a lot about Central Europe.