Abenteuer Achtzehn: Wien (Vienna) Teil Eins

My journey to Vienna started with an overnight train ride.

Most European train companies offer three options for overnight travel: a bed, a cot, or a recliner. Being a cheap college student, I, obviously, had taken the recliner route. However, having never done anything even vaguely similar to this before, I had no idea what the "recliner" route would actually entail.

What I discovered is that on overnight trains, all seating arrangements are divided into small, doored-off sections. In the recliner sections, there are six seats; three on each side, all closely packed together, with overhead compartments for a traveler's things. When I reached my reserved recliner, I found that I was sharing my section with one other person. The young man shot me a quick glance as I stepped inside before returning his focus entirely to his cellular device. Looking at him as our train started out for its ten hour journey, I figured I'd have a quiet ride.

Another woman came along and asked if she could join us. We let her in, thinking she was alone.
We were wrong.

The woman was not alone. She had with her one companion--every traveler's nightmare. The woman's companion was a TFH.

Toddler From Hell.

For the first hour of the journey, the TFH amused himself by screaming, running back and forth,  climbing on the seats, climbing into the overhead compartments, falling into the lap of the young man, climbing on the young man, ignoring his mother, and generally creating a nuisance.

Then, all at once, a dreadful stench filled our compartment. The mother squinted at the toddler for a moment, apprehension written across her face.

"Kaka?" She asked. The toddler (who was at this time dangling himself from the overhead compartment above the young man) beamed, face full of pride.

"Kaka!" he proudly pronounced. "Kaka! Kaka!"

The young man's eyes got very, very wide.

The woman stood and quickly retrieved the child (who had now adopted "Kaka" as a battle chant). Then, she removed his trousers and laid him out...on the seat next to me.

"There's no changing station in the bathroom," she explained. "Is this ok?"

What was I supposed to say? I looked across at the young man, who looked as if he were about to vomit. Then I looked down at the toddler, who was comfortably drooling on my coat.

"Kein Problem," I replied.

As the woman changed her TFH, a stench filled the train car which would accompany us for the rest of the night.

As soon as he was clean, the TFH promptly leapt up and rushed out into the train aisle, where he spent the next several hours running up and down and screaming. When his mother finally got him settled down and we, to our relief, put the lights out, we heard a knock at the door. The customs controllers, checking passports.

The door was opened. Lights were turned on. Th dread TFH was once more awakened, and once more it took up it's mortifying scream.
  Around three in the morning I awoke and looked out the window. We were somewhere high, high in the mountains. The dense snow glistened palely under the light of the full moon.

(I had fallen asleep reading Dracula. Blame that for my writing style).


We arrived at the Bahnhof around 8:00 the next morning and I was immediately greeted with a most welcome sight. Food. Cheap food.

 The prices of things in Vienna would continue to make me extremely happy throughout my trip.

I had expected Vienna to be very classical, old-fashioned, and expensive. When I left the Bahnhof, however, I was surprised to find an area that looked a lot like the Saint Louis U-City Loop.

The street was named Favoritenstrasse. It was lined with noodle bars, Sushi joints, and discount clothing outlets. As I continued down the street, I found a clothing market where you could haggle blouses and dresses down to one Euro.  Needless to say, my wardrobe grew, and I was excited to finally be in a place where I could understand the German that everyone was speaking.

I continued down the street, looking for my hostel (which turned out to be in a completely different direction.) On the way, I found the Church of Saint Anton (Anthony?) von Padua.

I have no idea who that is, but I thought the church was really interesting-looking.

 The mosaics on the front fascinated me especially.
 
After finding the church I came across a lawn ornament shop which had some of the derpiest lawn ornaments I had ever seen.

 

Needless  to say, I decided I'd rather not try and smuggle these atrocities home to my parents.

Around this point, I realized I was going the wrong direction and turned back. After a good deal of wandering, I managed to find my hostel: The Wombat City.

Despite it's questionable outside appearance, the inside was clean and well-kept and the staff, for a bunch of wombats, was really quite friendly. I even got a free drink voucher upon checking in.

Glad to be rid of my backpack (which weighed at least fifteen pounds and which I had been hiking through Vienna nonstop for the last four hours with), I continued exploring. I found the Belvedere Palace/Museum, which had been built for Prince Eugene of Savoy in 1717. 

 I didn't have much time to explore, however--I was scheduled to meet my Austrian friend at one of the most famous Viennese cathedrals, the Stephansdom, at 4:00.

The Stephansdom is a beautiful Gothic cathedral and the seat of the Archbishop of Vienna. It's construction started in 1137 (I can't believe I'm actually getting used to the ages of some of these things).

I love the tile patterns on the roof. They do that in some German buildings too, but I haven't seen it as much in Switzerland). 

I always post pictures of cathedrals from this angle. My reason is that the plazas around these cathedrals are often kind of small, and sometimes I physically can't get far back enough to fit the fronts in one frame.

The plaza around the Stephansdom was fraught with tourists. As a result, it was also fraught with people peddling touristy goods and services. One of these was horse-drawn carriage rides.
Seeing them made me happy.

Another tourist entrapment was concert tickets--men in wigs and tricorn hats loitered around the area, peddling tickets to a variety of classical performances. I bought a ticket to a mixed show--a combination of symphony, ballet, and opera excerpts. How could I resist?

More on the concert later.

I met up with my Austrian friend in front of the Stephansdom and she was kind enough to give me a guided tour of most of the important sights of the city. Unfortunately, I've forgotten what most of these places actually were, so I'll be spending the next section of this post doing some heavy Wikipedia-ing.

Apparently this commemorates the end of the Great Plague. It's called the Pestsäule. 

The Hofburg Palace. This is where the Spanish riding school is, and apparently where the President of Austria lives (according to Wikipedia)

The Spanish horses. At the moment, they really weren't doing very much.

As far as I can tell, this is the other side of the Hoffburg palace. My Austrian friend told me a funny story about this: apparently, one of the shops directly across from this building was among the first "modern" buildings to be constructed in Vienna. The Emperor, who lived in the palace, woke up every morning to see this new building from his window. He absolutely hated it. To him, this new style of architecture was hideous, a complete abomination (look at where he lived. I mean, can you blame him?). So, in order to please the Emperor, the shopkeepers started putting flower boxes in all the windows of the building. Apparently, you can still see the flower boxes to this day. (Meanwhile, I, the American, was trying to wrap my head around the fact that I was standing in a country that, until 1918, had had an emperor. Sure, you read about these things in school, but you never really think about them...)                                                             

The National Library. And I thought the Library of Congress was big...

Museum of...Natural History?

Art History Museum

Parliament building. It looks like a parliament building, doesn't it?

Votivkirche, another famous church.

The Opera house

The Rathaus--city hall. Apparently you can ice skate here in winter, just like in Switzerland.

From the Rathaus, we stumbled across an Easter market. These are apparently really common around Easter time in Europe (gee, an Easter market for Easter? Who would have guessed?). At an Easter market, there are little stalls where you can buy a wide variety of homemade foods, drinks, and handicrafts. There are also sometimes band stands, so you can enjoy whatever you bought while listening to live music. 

The band was playing American jazz. They weren't bad, either.

At the Easter market, we decided to warm up with Austrian pancakes and (something I've grown to enjoy) prosecco. After all, what's Wien sans Wine?

After the Easter market, my Austrian friend had a few hours left before she had to meet her family, so we decided to try and go find a good, authentic Austrian (vegetarian) dinner. The result? Kafe and Knödel (dumplings cooked with eggs) mit Salat--with Biedermeier Torte for dessert.

After dinner, my Austrian friend and I parted ways--she to meet her family, and I to attend my concert.

The concert I attended was just a little informal chamber concert. The whole thing took place in a medium-sized room near the riding school.

 The audience consisted entirely of tourists. The performers consisted of four musicians, one opera singer, and one male and one female ballerina.

The repertoire was mainly of Mozart, with a bit of Vivaldi and a few other composers thrown in for good measure.

The musicians were from the Vienna philharmonic--I thought, all-in-all, that they were pretty good. The ballerinas were from the Vienna ballet. I thought they were pretty good.

The opera singer was from the Vienna opera. I thought she was completely out of this world. I've never really listened to opera before--now, I think it's high time I started to. I was blown away.

After the concert, I walked back to the Wombat City to receive my free drink. At the bar, I met a Chinese electrical engineering student, an Argentinian lawyer, and a British school teacher. That's the fun of traveling alone, I think--you really get to meet the world.