Vienna

Saturday, April 3 – Vienna (or Wien)! We started with a 3 hour bus and walking tour of the city. We went through the 1st district with the opera house, museum quarters, parliament buildings, and lots of cool buildings, squares, and fountains (it kind of reminded me of Rome). Our tour guide told lots of funny anecdotes – there was a statue that the Russians put up after WWII, but “in typical Austrian fashion, we put a big fountain in front of it to hide it.” We also saw one of the big art universities in Vienna – it was where Hitler was rejected admission 3(?) times, then decided to join the army…the rest is history. Then we drove to area that was designed by Friedensreich Hundertwasser. His philosophy was that there are no straight lines or right angles in nature, so we shouldn’t create them. These apartments and stores that he designed were very colorful and nothing was straight or flat, stairs, floors, walls, nothing! It was very interesting.

Once our tour was over, we went to the Prater (an amusement park area) and to the famous Riesenrad – the giant Ferris wheel which was the focal point of the classic Orson Wells film “The 3rd Man.” It was destroyed in WWII and rebuilt as a symbol of revival for the city, but now it only has 15 cars instead of 30. We went for a ride on it – it was really nice, with a good view of the city. The cars were huge; we had about 8 people in ours with plenty of room to spare.

Then we went back to the first district and went to Hotel Sacher to have the famous (and original) Sacher Torte! A rich chocolate cake and apricot jam mixed in with a harder chocolate frosting coating – num!! it was very unique. After our “lunch” we walked to one of the gardens/parks of the Schonbrunn Palace – it was beautiful! I could have sat there all day in the grass with the fountain, blooming trees, and people playing guitar :) but much more to see!

We walked though the museum quarters, past the parliament building, and to the town hall (below) – which looked like an old church or palace/castle! I mean, it looked pretty much like the Ramsey Town Hall in MN. We walked back on a mission to find Stadtpark…but ended up getting lost for a while.

We finally found it, walked through it quickly, then back to the opera house to wait in line for tickets to a ballet! We got standing room tickets for only 4 euro to “Ein Sommernachtstraum.” The opera house was beautiful, and we made our way to the front of the standing room section – dead center, level with the stage, and nobody in front of us! We felt very cultured and classy…well until intermission when our feet were on fire and our legs were like jello from walking around all day, so we left and had schnitzel for dinner!

Vienna was very overwhelming at first because it was so big and there was so much to see and do - there are over 120 museums alone, much less everything else to see! But after our tour and exploring on our own, it became much more manageable and I loved it! It had a nice mix of big city with cool old buildings, cultural and historical places, and beautiful parks where everyone went to enjoy the day :)