The Day in Vienna

So the first leg of our trip is over and done with, sadly enough. I’m writing this post from a location that will be disclosed in the next blog entry, and also with benefit of a couple days’ hindsight. Vienna was by far the best part of the trip.

We arrived around one in the afternoon in the Vienna Westbahnhof, which by the time I post this entry will no longer exist, having been shut down on the 15th of September. We then proceeded by U-Bahn and bus to our accommodations: a youth hostel located on Neustiftgasse, about 30 minutes’ walk from the city center. The hostel was, I have been informed, one of the better examples of its kind, and I have to say that I found our lodgings there quite nice, if rather spartan. All of the guys were in one room which while somewhat narrow had its own shower and toilet. Breakfast was also included, and it was again nice if simple.

After depositing our luggage we traveled by bus into the center of Vienna, the Karl Renner Ring. There we began our tour of Vienna guided by Herr Gürtler. First stop was in front of the Parliament Building, then the Rathaus (“city hall,” literally “advice house”), before proceeding up to the Hofburgtheater. After that we walked through the Volksgarten to a plaza which contained on the left the Imperial Hapsburg Palace and directly in front the jaw-dropping spectacle of the Imperial Library, which is the most impressive building I’ve ever seen.

From there we proceeded to the Opera House, passing by a statue of Goethe where we took a group picture. From the Opera House we went around to the Michaelerplatz, which is at the rear of the Imperial Palace and contains some excavated Roman ruins and the prestigious Spanish Riding School. After that it was on to Stephansplatz, named after Stephansdom, the Cathedral of St. Stephan.

Then our tour ended, and me and a few others had cake at the Café Aida off of Stephansplatz, followed by an hour of wandering. Along the way we saw a chalk artist working on his rendition of Botticelli’s The Birth of Venus and a wizened old man preaching the virtues of marijuana.

Afterwards we dined in a nice little Austrian restaurant off the beaten path before returning to the hostel to sleep and get ready for the next part of our journey.

Now, I really liked Vienna. The city is beautiful, though not quite as awesome in my eye as Salzburg or any older city. My only regret is that we spent under 20 hours in the city itself, and I would have preferred to stay at least another day if not two. The weather for our brief period could not have been better. Saturday was crisp, pleasant, and a bit windy; the perfect fall day. During our tour my overcoat weighed a bit heavily on me, and a few times I regretted choosing it for my journey. Fortunately the night was cold enough to make up for the heat of the day, and the weather in Hungary... Well, I’ll get to that in the next post.

-JA