Vienna had such amazing sausages and apfelstrudel

We took a brutal train from Ljubljana to Vienna. "Brutal," you ask? Brutal: it departed at 11:45pm, we were only in regular cars, not sleepers, it changed at 4:10am in Salzburg and finally arrived at 8:15am in Vienna. Ahh. We found a pleasant hostel a little outside of the city center and after dropping of our bags, went to explore! The first notable monument we crossed was the Soviet War Memorial. Unfortunately, nobody in the group could read Cyrillic, so we were out of luck for reading the inscription at the base of the statue.


This year celebrates the 250th anniversary of the birth of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, the famous Austrian composer who spent many of his most productive years in Vienna and is consequently highly celebrated in the city!


The view in front of the memorial and the beginning of a trend: an enormous Viennese street with enormous buildings.


Some rich playboy posing in front of his Oberes Belvedere Palace.


The Belvedere actually contains two palaces: Oberes and Unteres; here you can see the gardens leading up to the latter, slightly less impressive palace.


In Karlsplatz, the Kalskirche Church, "one of the city's finest Baroque churches; a huge Italianate dome with a Neoclassical portico, flanked by two giant pillars."


My Rough Guide suggested trying to find a nearby "gilded cabbage" and I do believe we found it, atop the Secession building, formerly the home of Vienna's Art Nouveau movement.


An impressive building in the city center, preparing us for bigger and grander things to come...


...like the "hoary Gothic bulk" of Stephansdom, quite possibly the most commercialized church I've ever been in. Also, hmm, it looks like another church is undergoing renovation. Grr.


You could almost hear the jingling of coin and picturing money changers in the nave was easy, but we were still able to appreciate the impressive interior and its soaring ceilings.


Despite the exterior construction work and a caution that the tower offered only "50%" visibility due to the scaffolding, we scaled 334 steps to the top and peered out over Vienna.


Near Stephansplatz.


While touring the church, we met a nice Austrian girl and her Spanish consort and walked to the Hofburg - "Hofburg Imperial Palace is a palace in Vienna, Austria, which has housed some of the most powerful people in Austrian history, including the Habsburg dynasty, rulers of the Austro-Hungarian empire, and currently serves as the official residence of the President of Austria" - an absolutely monumental complex. Before we would arrive, though, we had to walk through some interesting side streets.


Unfortunately pictures can't quite convey the enormous scale of the dozens of enormous statues and squares scattered throughout Vienna, but believe me, they're HUGE.


A glimpse of Rathaus, the Vienna City Hall.


The front facade of the Hofburg.


Opposite the Hofburg is another massive statue and open plaza.


West of the Hofburg, in Maria-Theresien-Platz, are the Kunsthistorisches (Museum of Art History, pictured here) and Naturhistorisches (Natural History) museums - two identical palace-like buildings too big to fit in one photo. If you want to know what the whole square looked like, imagine the same building you same here with a twin 100 meters directly opposite, with a gigantic statue "depicting Empress Marie-Theresa of Austro-Hungaria, namesake of the square."


A glance back across the Ringstrasse (the large avenue that circumscribes Vienna's hyper-center).


Friday evening, we hopped on the easily navigable U-Bahn metro to Prater, east of the city, in hopes of riding the famous Riesenrad Ferris wheel but found it unpleasantly expensive so we decided to find more affordable amusement...


I don't know how you win at bumper cars, but I'm sure I did.



A better view of Rathaus, the city hall located in Rathausplatz, "the Ringstrasse's showpiece sqaure, framed by four monumental public buildings."


Here's monumental public building #2, the Burgtheater.


#3 is the University.


The fourth and final member of the Rathausplatz is my favorite, the Parliament building.


I wish I knew what this building was, but there were so many spectacular ones it became hard to distinguish them on my map!


We took advantage of free admission Saturday and all went to the MAK, Vienna's celebrated contemporary art museum. Some of us were sillier than others.


Later on Saturday, we wandered the city further but the continuing snow flurries forced us to take a few minutes of refuge inside the dark but interesting Jesuitenkirche. The snow didn't let up, so we went to see The New World at an English theater. It was a good movie, but the theater experience left a little to be desired. We had to buy specific seats, like at a sporting event, and the prices were tiered so that the ones farthest from the screen were the most expensive. We opted for the fifth row (still $9.84 with a student discount!) upon a recommendation from the box office, only to find out that there was a giant STEEL HANDRAIL obscuring part of the screen. Grr.


On Sunday morning we headed to the Museikverin for an 11am appointment with the Viennese Philharmonic Orchestra and special guest, famous Chinese pianist Lang Lang. Here was our view of one of the best concerts I've ever enjoyed. Absolutely fantastic.


The exterior of the Museikverein, "considered to be one of the three finest concert halls in the world, along with Boston's Symphony Hall and Amsterdam's Concertgebouw."


We spent a bit more time in Vienna before hopping another train back to Budapest, arriving late Sunday night. Ben and Stephanie were exhausted and headed back to the hostel after walking around the city for a bit, but after a bit of success at the casino (and four free espressos) Rachel and I continued to explore the Budapest streets, in search of allegedly the most amazing bar in Eastern Europe, according to a friend we'd made in Slovenia. Finding it was like a treasure hunt, since the only directions we were given was a circle on our torn, crinkled city map and advice to "look for the black door." After a weary 90 minute search, with brief rest-stops in other interesting cafes and nightspots, we found the black door. The closed black door.

We headed back to the hostel and stayed up talking for an hour before realizing it was 6am... and that we had to get up at 7am to get ready for our flight back to Geneva, so we stayed awake the whole time and whispered loudly while trying to stifle laughter and avoid waking up the 8 Spanish sharing our room. We were absolutely knackered and I fell asleep while standing up on the subway out to the airport, but the trip was deemed an enormous success.