Vienna, Austria

The weekend of April 4-6th my friends and I went to Vienna, Austria. It was GORGEOUS. The city is so beautiful, classy, and clean.  Everyone we had contact with spoke English and was very eager to help us navigate the city.  Vienna is full of amazing architecture and magnificent buildings, and is home to some of the most incredible palaces ever.  The downtown area was full of people and full of FUN. 

We visited the Hofburg Palace, the Belvedere Palace, the Schönbrunn Palace, the Stephensdom Cathedral, and the Prater Amusement Park which holds the famous Riesenrad Ferris Wheel.  The palaces were absolutely exquisite!  I went into the Fine Arts Museum inside the Belvedere Palace and saw in REAL LIFE some paintings that I have studied in my Art History class at UCSB.  It was such a weird and amazing feeling being face to face with these paintings that I have studied in books and lectures.  Two of the most widely known that I saw are Napoleon Crossing the Alps and The Kiss.  The art was breath-taking, as was the inside of the building, including the ceilings of the rooms that were decorated with incredible murals.  The palaces I visited are indescribable, especially the Schönbrunn Palace, which happened to be my favorite.  I could have spent the entire day there, but we got there somewhat later in the day and had more things to see before closing time.  The palaces are enormous and have massive, colorful, beautiful gardens.  We rode the Riesenrad Ferris Wheel at night, which was really neat because we got to see the city at night.  The ferris wheel is an historical monument established in 1897 and tells the history of Vienna via its Panorama at the entrance.  It was burned in 1944 on account of fires from World War 2, but reconstruction commenced soon after in 1947.  The ferris wheel is 65 meters at its highest point and only moves at a speed of 2.7km/hr.  The cars on the ferris wheel are not normal ferris wheel gondolas, but rather large wooden cabins.  There were originally 30 cabins on the ferris wheel before World War 2, but when it was reconstructed in 1947 it was only adorned with 15.  The ferris wheel has appeared in many movies including The Third Man and The Living Daylights.

While in Vienna we also walked around an outside, open air market.  On one side of the market there were vendors much like the ones here in Barcelona, selling fresh fruits, vegetables, meat, dried fruits, candies, and chocolates.  There were also vendors making fresh sandwiches cutting slices of meat off of large legs and slices of cheese off of large smelly blocks.  There were cheeses of all sorts that possessed different smells, colors, and textures.  We also passed flower vendors and little wine and/or beer tasting stands.  On the other side of the market there were restaurants with outdoor seating and foods of all kinds, even sushi!  You don't come across much sushi here in Barcelona. 

Vienna was the first place I had ever stayed in a hostel.  The experience wasn't too shabby!  The people are so nice and willing to recommend activities, tours, restaurants, etc to you all the time.  The first night in our hostel there was a boy there traveling by himself around Europe while studying abroad.  Lisa, Sarah, Lauren, and I stayed in that room.  There were 3 bunk beds (6 beds total) and one bathroom.  The beds were so much more comfortable than the mattresses we sleep on here in Barcelona, where we can literally feel the boards under ours backs when we sleep or sit down on them.  The second night we stayed in the hostel the bathroom light went out, so we had to pee, wash our faces, brush our teeth, and even shower with the door open.  No one was present besides us girls when we came home that night, but when we awoke in the morning two travelers had joined us in the bunk beds next to ours.  I had to shower with the door open, but thankfully the strangers were sleeping. 

We visited a famous cafe called Demel to enjoy cafe con leche and a sweet, luxurious pastry for breakfast.  One night we ate at a Wiener Wurstl stand and got some sausages in hot dog form with large glasses of Austrian beer.  Sarah, Lauren, and I bought a 14% alcohol by volume Austrian beer which is supposedly the strongest beer in the world.  The three of us drank them during our last night in Vienna on a park bench next to a fountain while admiring the City Hall lit up at night.   We definitely did not enjoy the beers because they were extremely SWEET.  You would expect a beer that strong to taste bitter, maybe somewhat similar to a dark beer, but it was waaaay too sweet and tasted as if someone had poured all the Splenda they could find in one tiny bottle.  However we finished them and kept the bottles as souveniers.  This night was one of my favorite nights of my entire abroad experience because I was with two amazing people, sitting in Vienna, Austria, admiring a gorgeous building lit up at night, and sharing embarrassing and hilarious stories from high school and our first years in college.  We told each other countless stories from the dorm rooms our freshman year and had such a great time laughing.  It was such an amazing night. 

Lauren's step sister lives in Vienna, studying at a University there and has a boyfriend from a city outside of Vienna, so we met up with them eat a true Austrian meal at a small pub near the city center.  It was really great getting to know them and hearing them talk about life in Vienna.  Her sister studied abroad as an undergraduate, so it was fun to exchange stories about our experiences in relation to hers.  She fell in love with her Austrian boyfriend and made the decision to move out there to be with him while she completed her Master's program at the University in Vienna.  He is an amazing and well-known (and modest) musician who plays the violin.  They were so sweet and helped us order our food by suggesting what to get since we didn't really know what the items on the menu were (they both speak German fluently).  I have no idea what the name of the dish I ordered was, but it was SO good.  It looked like mashed up peas with bacon bits inside of it.  After eating that dish the Austrian boyfriend explained to us that the food expands in your stomach because of the ingredients, and so it is customary to drink a Schnopps afterwards to break it down.  Austrian Schnopps is different from what we know in America as Schnopps.  It is a flavored alcohol, but you sip it and it is really sweet and good.  It is meant to be taken after eating a meal like we did for the sole purpose of breaking down the food in your belly.  Really good Schnopps are those in which you cannot taste the alcohol.  The Austrian boyfriend ordered them in peach and raspberry (after testing them first to see if they were actually real Schnopps).  I really enjoyed the raspberry flavor, and only took a couple sips.  It really did help settle my stomach!

Vienna was beautiful.  Everything about it was gorgeous, however I wish I had more time to go back and really see everything it has to offer.  That is a major drawback about visiting places on the weekends- you don't really leave with the feeling that you have seen everything.  I hope to return someday and take more time to see everything there!