Operetic gardens

Vienna was different than i expected it to be. very city-like. there's so much musical history, not to mention other history too, and i think i imagined it more--exciting. we did enjoy ourselves though, exploring the Stephenplatz center and doing some fun side trips.

Our train ride in was packed with people...we barely found two seats in the same compartment. i sat with my luggage pushed up against my knees while the australian girl in our compartment asked about american politics--whether we liked obama and whether emily in particular liked bush because shes from texas. our hotel room was a double bed private with its own shower and bathroom and privacy which was a nice change from the dorm atmosphere. the Ubahn was just down the street so we rode that everywhere we needed to go. that first night we went into stephenplatz square at the center of town, looked around a bit, then decided to have dinner at an Australian Pub. it was good food, and reminded me a little of TGIFridays, but with australian stuff like kangaroo and alligator meat. we also tried a drink called a snake bite (which was really just raspberry flavored beer).

The next day we spent much of our time at shonebrunne castle (i'm sure i didnt spell that right) which is famous for its extravagent gardens. the palace itself is huge and the gardens stretch as far as you can see. we had a picnic on one of the benches by a fountain and ate our peanutbutter bread, fruit and yogurt. there was a structure up on top of the hill that looked back on the gardens so we hiked up the mountain and had a beautiful view of the palace and the city of vienna. the gardens weren't fully planted yet, so there were a lot of places that were still dirt, but the patterns looked like they would have been really cool if there had been flowers there. aside from the gardens we also saw the wildly overrated ferris wheel in town that looked like a bunch of train cars strung up around a circle. needless to say, we didnt ride it. what was fun, however, was going to the opera that night. After looking at the list of theater and concert performances happening that day, we decided to attend La Boheme playing at the Volksoper. we got dressed up in our "best" attire and rushed off to the show, sneaking in right after the curtain opened. it was an interesting opera--we didnt understand a word of it (which was in German, by the way), but enjoyed it nonetheless.

We also visited the main church in the center of the square that was beautiful inside. it had one of the largest pipe organs ive ever seen and was decorated very meticulously. the outside was very gothic with pointed spires and spiky sides, yet it had a mosaic-colored roof tile pattern. the church wasnt too far from a great gelato place that was swarming with people so we figured we should probably get some! :)

The next morning we got up, packed our stuff (much of it is now strapped to the outside making us look like traveling street performers), and hurried to the train station. the hotels wifi hadnt been working so we were unable to look up train times until right before we left, so when we discovered the train left in 45 min from the station half way across town, we hightailed it out of there. we walked to the metro station, took the metro to the west trainstation, took a tram across town to the south station, only to get there 3 minutes late! the next train didnt leave until 4 hrs later and we had all of our stuff with us. so we went across the street and got lunch at a little italian place and used their wifi for a couple of hours. it really turned out to be a good thing we missed the train because the next one went all the way to krakow without any stops and got in only an hour and a half later. it was nice to relax on the 6 1/2 hour train ride, read, listen to music, watch some greys anatomy and eat dinner.