Vienna
Wien
Belvedere Palace
October 28, 2004
We got into Vienna at about 10:00am, but got off at the wrong bus station. At first,
the city appeared nice, but there seemed to be empty canals that looked like they
were run down.
We exchanged money as soon as we could, and bought brats on the street from a vendor.
We wandered for awhile and got ourselves on the map. At first I wasn’t so fond of
the city, it seemed like the people were unhappy, they were quiet - no one seemed
to be talking. We continued our walk and the city was still less than impressive,
dirty, under construction and the people just seemed down. As the day went on however
it really grew on me, the buildings are beautiful and the palaces indescribable.
One could definitely tell that this was a seat of power and that the ruling family,
the Hapsburgs put a lot of money into their capital; it was a city of power and
prestige.
The food was good and as the sun started brightening the sky the people seemed happier.
The parks were great (especially Stadtpark and Volksgarten) and the construction
which may not look good is really a just keeping up the appearances of the city.
I guess I was a little surprised however because I pictured more of a historical
city, like a medieval city, something like Prague. It was without a doubt a baroque
city, the history (basically built after the Turkish invasion of 1683 through the
next century – Belvedere, Schönbrunn, Mozart, and Beethoven) is much more recent
than I was expecting, hence at first slightly disappointing.
We spend the better half of the day seeing the downtown area, including Volksgarten,
Burggarten, Hofburg, Parliament, and simply wandering around the streets. I misjudged
how large the city was however and thought I could walk to Schloss Schönbrunn, a
palace that looked close on the map… only about seven inches, but turns out… three
hours later that it’s much farther than I had imagined. Next time I'll probably
look at the scale. This was perhaps my greatest mistake though because I got to
see true Wien, not Vienna. It was more real, it went from nice, to ghetto, to china
town and then out of almost nowhere there was this incredibly enormous and decorative
palace with amazing gardens.
I took the subway back to the center of the city and I was shocked and amazed that
as I pulled my map out of my pocket I accidentally dropped some Czech money that
was returned. Granted this wasn’t worth much, especially in Vienna, but this woman
ran after me and gave it to me. I was shocked at this especially since it was about
200 Czech crowns, which, if you don’t know the conversion rate, looks like a lot
of money and she immediately returned it. I think this says a lot about her character
so far as I could tell, the city as a whole.
Once back in the city I met Derek at Belvedere Palace, also very impressive, and
then jumped next door to the train station to try to book a hostel before buying
a ticket to Bratislava; however this came with many difficulties. Every hostel in
Bratislava was booked full, so we settled with a hotel that was expensive, however
still cheaper than any hostel in Vienna. We reserved a room and then bought our
train tickets, another catastrophe - the tickets were 18 Euros, that was more than
our tickets from Krakow to Prague, but this trip was only an hour long.
After planning the next stage of our trip, we met Phil (my old boss from the embassy)
at Stephansdom (the city’s main church), who took us out in the student district;
Phil bought us beers and explained his theory on Germany being the epicenter of
the world’s beer. He says the best beer is from German and the next best is from
the neighboring countries: Czech Republic, Denmark, Austria, the Netherlands, and
Belgium.
After our reunion we departed, grabbed another brat from the train station and jumped
on our train. The border control on the train is fairly lax now that Slovakia is
part of the EU. They simply check to see if you are the person on the passport and
that’s it, nothing else, this is truly a relief after going to Ukraine on a train
numerous times.
Hofburg Palace
Hofburg Palace
Schloss Schonbrunn Palace
Volks Garten