Vienna

Bus from Edinburgh to nearby airport.

Plane from airport to Bologna, Italy.

Bus from Bologna airport to Bologna train station.

Train from Bologna to Florence, Italy.

Overnight train from Florence to Vienna.

Well, that was easy.

I met back up with Reed in Florence before the third of four overnight trains. He had seen his wife off that morning, but I was back now, so things were looking up for him. We got a little worried waiting for our overnight train, actually. All of the employees had left the train station, and they had cleverly changed the name and precise time of our train. To top it all off, I was down to half of a box of cereal. But we made it on board just fine. Reed made small talk with strangers, and we went to sleep to wake up in Austria.

We had a handy guide for our one-day visit to Austria. Reed’s high-school friend Becky lived in Vienna, and she graciously agreed to show us around. So to start our morning in Vienna, we met her for breakfast. I had fancy waffles. (I’m becoming really attached to waffles.)

After Reed and Becky caught up, we all boarded the yellow Ring Tram which takes you around the magnificent circle in central Vienna and points out various sites of interest.

I’m still not quite sure what to make of Vienna. I liked it, but it almost seemed like an American city. It was pretty modern, and it lacked the distinctively European architecture that I saw throughout other parts of Europe. I saw government buildings and things like that, but it didn’t feel much different than touring a smaller city in the states might.

After our tram ride, we walked around to see some of the sites up close – including the beautiful St. Stephen’s Cathedral (28) and an impressive building that houses a world-famous horse-riding school. We also walked along the outside of Belvedere Palace, but Reed and I were both a little too palaced-out to tour the inside.

So Becky took us walking through a couple of Viennese cafés – apparently they are a huge part of the culture – and we also stumbled across a large festival that was going on. While we were there, we tried a few cheeses and made lunch of some traditional Vienna sausages that are infused with a watery cheese. It was interesting.

In fact, I did a lot of eating in Vienna. For a mid-afternoon snack, I had traditional Austrian kaiserschmarren – which is not exactly a light snack. It was a huge plate of this sweet, heavy, pancake-like dessert sprinkled in powdered sugar that you then dip in fruit and jam. It wasn’t light, but it was delicious.

Becky then drove us out to the Danube River so that we could walk along the banks and take in some of that atmosphere. The Danube is a very important European river that flows along ten countries and through four national capitals (Vienna, Budapest, Belgrade, and Bratislava). We would see the Danube again when we arrived in Hungary, but this was a nice introduction. This was also one of the few times in a two-month span where I got to ride in a car. So that was a nice change from the usual tourist’s pace.

After walking along the river, we split up to pursue different agendas before rendezvousing later for dinner. I went back downtown to walk around a bit more; I wanted to see more of the city. In particular, I walked through a nice little park and saw the Staatsoper – Austria’s famous opera house. Many composers like Mozart and Beethoven contribute to a rich history of the arts in Austria, so I figured I could at least walk by. I walked in for about two minutes too, but the attire of the people inside quickly suggested that maybe I shouldn’t have.

Then I went out to the edge of town to the Prater – which is basically a year-round carnival or amusement park. It was a cool place to walk around at night, and of course, I ate for the fourth of five times in Vienna.

As night fell, I went back downtown to meet Becky and Reed for dinner at the home of the world’s best wiener schnitzel – or at least the one Becky recommended because several places were making the same claim. Wiener schnitzel is the quintessential Austrian food. It’s essentially a thinned piece of veal that is breaded and lightly fried. They’re huge. Here is a picture of half of a wiener schnitzel. Truth be told, it tasted kind of like a chicken nugget. I’m sure Austrians would object, but it did. I still thought it tasted good at least. I'd eat it again.

And that pretty much wrapped our trip to Vienna. Like I said, Vienna didn’t strike me as the most culturally rich city that we visited, so I was glad that we had Becky with us to throw in some context. She also taught me various German words throughout the day so that I would be prepared for the rest of our trip. By the end of the day, I knew a handful of phrases including the polite niceties that would get me through the German-speaking leg of our trip.

Though it didn’t exactly wow me from a tourist’s perspective, Vienna is a nice city and probably an easy place for a former American to live and work. I had a great day touring the place with Reed and Becky, and it was a nice way to kick-off the third leg of my big trip.

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More pictures of Vienna (click to enlarge):