Ski Break Part 1: Vienna

Hungarian for the day: Szeretek si szünetet! Pron: Sara-tek shee sooh-ne-tet. "I love ski break!"

Here in Hungary, a country without mountains (the "mountains" to the north being slightly larger than average hills), I was somewhat surprised to find that while spring break is merely a long weekend for Easter, an entire free week from school is given over to skiing. This is ski break, and it is my friend. I'd been looking forward to it for more reasons than just a break from school (and the delightful sleeping in past 6:30 this allows), for I was off to Western Europe in all of its well-organized glamor to visit with an old friend. My friend Michaela, or Micha to her American friends who can't pronounce her name, is an old friend of mine from Germany who I met while we studied together at William and Mary. More specifically, we were in the same study abroad program in St. Petersburg, took Russian courses together for 3 years, and spent a summer traveling together in Europe a few years back. We'd missed each other repeatedly since I moved to her continent but we finally made it work for this break. Taylor came along and the three of us covered a lot of ground over the 9 days of ski break - a whirlwind tour through Austria, Germany, France and Holland! I'm going to post our travels in a few different posts, the first one here for our time in Vienna with more to follow in a few days.

Taylor and I took a bus from Szentes up to Budapest last Saturday, and then left snowy Hungary behind on a bus headed for Vienna. Bus travel being the slowest (though also cheapest!) way to travel, by the time we made it to Vienna it was already mid evening. Micha drove down from her home in Southwestern Germany that day and met us at the bus station. After introductions and some hurried catching up we hopped in the car and punched the address of a friend of Taylor's into the GPS system. These two things, friends living in cool cities and a GPS system, are invaluable when traveling. Taylor's friend Heidi is a charming Finn studying in Vienna on an Erasmus scholarship to get a degree in social work and is living in basically abandoned dorms in northern Vienna. She offered us each a free room in the dormatories and it worked out perfectly. The GPS guided us quickly to her place and we chatted for a while and moved into our rooms. I must admit that we were quite suspicious about this deal - Heidi said that despite a room in the dorms costing only 35 euros a month it was so empty that she just asked a grounds keeper for three keys and he gave them to her. A hotel room in Vienna, even in the suburbs, would generally go for more than twice that a night, so this seemed strange to us. Surely this was some sort of Hostel like plot line, or we were going to wake up sans kidneys. It turns out that it was just a simple good deal - they still exist in Vienna of all places!

At any rate, Micha, Taylor and I set out for downtown Vienna to take in the city and get some dinner. We dined on schnitzel at Wienerwald and did some catching up. After that we braved the incredibly icy weather for a walk around the Ringstrasse. The Viennese buildings are works of art, if sometimes overdone, so the views were grandiose.

The Hapsburg Palace in downtown Vienna was once the nerve center of a great Empire that stretched across Central Europe and included Hungary.

Vienna's Rathouse, or City Hall, all decked out for a "winter wonderland" theme complete with crazy lights, ice skating rink, and stands selling mulled wine.

After the walk we were frozen so we drove back to the dorms and met with Heidi and the other 4 people living in the big creepy dorm building. They decided we were going out, so out we went. The jumped on the nearby U-bahn (metro) and spent the rest of the evening in a bar chatting. Pretty soon, however, heads were drooping and it became apparent that a big night out on the town was not in our future. The U-bahn was closed so we had to wait for not one, but 2 different night buses in the frigid weather. "I think I just froze to death" Micha replied as we finally made it back to the dorms. After facing the Danube's icy winter winds we figured that if a stolen kidney in our sleep was the price we'd pay for the warm free lodging, that was just going to have to be ok.

The next day we got out to see as much of Vienna by day as we could before we had to tackle the 6 hour drive up to Stuttgart. We started in one of the famous Viennese cafes with melange coffees and pastries. After that we spent much of the morning just walking around.

Vienna is the classical music city. Strauss is pictured here, though Beethoven, Mozart, Haydn, and many others have also called the city home at one point or another.

Eventually we decided that having only one real day to explore Vienna we might as well do the most Viennese thing we could think of. We'd already had coffee, weren't feeling up to kinky modern art on a Sunday morning, and didn't want to pay for opera tickets. The solution? A visit to an opulent palace, of course.

Schönbrunn Palace, located a bit outside of the city center, is where the Hapsburgs relaxed when they weren't doing the busy business of ruling. We didn't get to see the interior, and because it's February the famous gardens weren't much to behold, but walking the palace grounds was enough to get a sense of how ridiculously rich these Hapsburg fellows must have been.

Behind the palace and high upon a man made hill is the palace's Gloriette. Obviously we had to get to the top - here Micha and Taylor are feeling confident they will make short work of the hill and look good doing so in their shades.

The Gloriette. I looked up what that is just for this post, and according to wikipedia it is "a building in a garden elevated with respect to its surroundings." I also learned that Vienna's Gloriette is the world's largest and most impressive Gloriette there is. Erected in 1775, it must have made a hell of a breakfast nook for Franz Joseph and Maria Theresa.

View of the palace and Vienna from the Gloriette.

We saw something that looked like a really cool church from the Gloriette and even Taylor, having studied in Vienna for 6 months a couple of years back, didn't know what it was. We set out to find it but miscalculated which U-bahn stop to disembark at and ended up just settling for another tour around beautiful palace grounds, this time at the Belvedere, an old summer residence that now functions as an art museum.

Micha just wanted to show off her new red gloves.

One of the many statues around the Belvedere. A fun, though worthless, doctoral thesis could be written on all of the cool statues in Vienna. This city wins my best statue city award for 2008.

After the palaces it was time to warm up. We went to another cafe and had another Viennese melange coffee. After that more aimless wandering followed, though we ended up at Taylor's favorite kebab place near the Opera House. I must admit that this kebab was better than any of those I had in Turkey, but maybe that's because it was so warm and I was so cold. After our kebabs it was getting on towards late afternoon and we had to make our way back to the dorms to collect the car and be on our way. On the way back to the dorms we saw:

When I think of McDonalds in Ameria I think of scruffy buildings in strip malls, but abroad McDonalds really cleans up its image to deal with more sophisticated clientèle. Even so, this particular location seems a bit overkill for a place with McMuffins on the menu.

Famous architect Hunderwasser designed this ultimately modern, if strange, waste to energy plant in Vienna. I think it's a clever notion, this turning what should be an eye soar and a land-value nightmare into something so weird it's put on tourist brochures.

Regretting that we had only scratched the surface in Vienna we set out for the 6 hour drive up to Ludwigsburg. The next day Micha had to be up very early to fly to Hannover for business meetings and Taylor and I would begin our exploration of Southern Germany, where I will pick up next time. Szia!