Seeing 5am a few too many nights in one week is killing me. I was so exhausted this whole first day in Vienna, but it was still sweet. The city was beautiful. The first day, we walked around downtown and found Parliament. I love this kind of building, the US just doesn't have it... All the statues carved into the sides of the buildings and the details in the iron cast lamp posts.... I love art.
Vienna is much cleaner than Budapest. I guess it makes sense since Hungary saw quite a bit more of the rougher side of World War II. It's interesting to see a lingering impact of the world wars in Budapest, also quite sad. The people here are very serious looking, it's not like America in the sense that most people look approachable, relaxed, and smile a lot in public. People here are more withdrawn and they don't smile as much and try to blend in. I'm told that this is because during the occupation by the Soviet Union, it was for your own good to stay serious and be like everyone else. Standing out while living under a communist regime invites trouble, authorities would want to know why you are so much happier, find out what you have that others don't. This kind of demeanor has been passed on through the years, and it's very apparent now. That is kind of hard to get used to. Also, because it is not impolite to stare at people here, I had some trouble adjusting. I kept having a very serious, quiet person watching me on the metro. Weird! What, dude? Look away or something. Haha but it's all good now, just some interesting cultural differences that I didn't anticipate.
Anywho, back to Vienna. It's clean, the metro is cool, and the people were nice. Actually, the people were amazing. Every single time we had to ask for help, the people were very patient, tried hard to speak English, spoke slow, and were really helpful. To top it off, they always told us they hoped we were having a great stay in Austria. I was always smiling after I got help. I totally recommend going to Austria, if only because the people rock.
The rest of the weekend blurred by. We went to a huge park where there was a zoo (the first zoo ever in Europe, it got its first elephant there before the US was a country!). I like zoos, I found the frogs and turtles and lions, which are my favorites :-) We went to see the jaguar feeding, and I thought that they'd feed the jaguars big hunks of meat. I was wrong. They ate big, white bunnies! It was kidna like watching Animal Planet. The park also had the Habsburgs' summer palace, which was beautiful! The Habsburgs, in case you're wondering, were a royal family. The head of the House of Habsburg was usually the ruler of the Holy Roman Empire as well, at least until like 1800. There's your history lesson for the day! I feel like a dork. There was also a hedge maze, but we didn't go through it because no one wanted to pay for it.... Euros, man. It's all way expensive there.
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| Summer Palace |
We visited St. Stephen's Cathedral, which was being cleaned so a lot of it was covered up. We took a tour of the catacombs. Those were weird. And there were rooms full of skeletons. Seriously, bones filled the rooms, piled from floor to ceiling! We also climbed up 300 some stairs to the top of the tower at the cathedral and got a sweet view of the city.
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| St. Stephen's Cathedral |
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| A view from the tower |
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| The Imperial Palace, where the Habsburgs worked, I guess. |
That night, we went to dinner at a Mexican restaurant. Austrian versions of Mexican food.... oh gosh. I miss Taco Tuesdays. I thought it was so nasty there... The chips and salsa was great! But when they brought my tacos....and my tacos had sauerkraut in them... no way. Luckily the rest of the night was better, we found a cool little bar and chilled.
The last day of the weekend, one of the USF girls, Laurel, and I went to the Sigmund Freud Museum while Erika and Mike went to the United Nations building. Laurel and I really wanted to try schnitzel, but we never found any. What on earth is schnitzel???!! It was everywhere, I have no idea why we didn't think to get any before it was too late :-(
Oh well. It was a very nice weekend and I'm so happy I got to go! I'm back in Budapest, and the other international students from around Europe have finally arrived. We met a few of them at Morrison's, our favorite Monday night bar. Oh, Mondays here are the same as Thirsty Thursdays at home, it's a party day. Celebrate the start of a new week, I guess. I like that philosophy!
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| The group at the Imperial Palace |
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