We took an early, early train to Vienna – because apparently we’re incapable of doing things at normal humane hours while in the Salzburg region. I passed OUT quite effectively. It turns out that traveling by train in India gave me the uncanny ability to sleep in trains no matter the discomfort level. Here’s how I woke up:
Kelvin: “Alice, we’re almost there, just one more stop until Vienna Hauptbanhof”
Alice: (delirious) “If it’s Hutteldorf we should get off….”
Kelvin: “IT’S HUTTELDORF!”
Kelvin dashes off the train with his bags nearly collinding with local train conductor:
Train conductor: “Hutteldorf…” (As if to say, ‘really, this isn’t an important place, you know that, right?’)
Kelvin: (nodding emphatically) “HUTTELDORF!”
So off we went…and met up with two friends from my SIT program! This first day we mostly explored as much of Old Vienna as possible. We dipped into some unbelievable churches and simply delighted in the ENDLESS and decadent architecture. What really struck me about Vienna was how the old, beautiful buildings just keep going and going. Since the Austria-Habsburg Empire was in power not SO long ago compared to other European greats, cities were already quite large during their heyday. And Austria has the money to keep up these gorgeous monuments… so the city is chalk-full of beautiful streets to gawk at. We treated ourselves to the famous “Sacher tort” (a chocolate cake from Vienna) at a famous Viennese restaurant. I split one – though it WAS decadent and lovely, it was also large and expensive…
Vienna day two!
Exploring the Schonbrunn palace. By the way, German is a hilarious language. I want to learn it now! Add that to the list. When we were in Italy, I kept bemoaning the fact that Italian is a fairly useless language… (Political incorrectness alert) – if only the Italians had colonized as effectively as the English, Spaniards, or French! Then there would be somewhere larger than the state of New Mexico where I could speak Italian. (I checked… Italy is 116,304 square miles and New Mexico is 121,593…. yikes.) But back to Ostrich - I mean Austria. I would highly recommend the Schonbrunn palace to anyone going to Vienna – the audio guide you get with entry is SO COOL! Does a great job of leading you through the palace and the history of the place. I was continually struck with the fact that, at least in my schooling, I learned SO little about Central and Eastern European history. The Austrian-Habsburg Empire was massively important, but Kelvin and I (relevant because we both went to Lakeside) agreed that we only heard about it when it interfered with Western European powers. There’s so much to know…
Next stop: the Opera! We stood in line for some nose-bleed balcony seats and thus got to see Mozart’s “The Magic Flute” in the famous Vienna Opera house for 4 Euros. It was fairly uncomfortable and we couldn’t see the full stage during the first half… but that really didn’t matter. It was a WEIRD Opera. Apart from being horribly sexist and racist it was simply trippy! I didn’t know Mozart had that in him. The music was, of course, magnificent.
Vienna to… Breclav?
Everyone except Danika and I left early in the morning for Geneva... so now we were officially released into the wild on our own. Danika and I both follow the “spontaneous, see where life takes you” travel philosophy. We’re happy to go along with others who have a solid plan for the day… but once left to our own devices, life got a lot more random. We started off fairly normal, however. I met up for breakfast with a Whitman friend who is studying in Vienna and went and saw the famous Lipizzaner stallions at the Spanish Riding School as they did their morning exercises! They are famous for their highly controlled, stylized steps and jumps that look like horse dancing. The breed was developed at the Spanish Riding School in Vienna in the 16th Century with support from the Hapsburg Empire and has been operating ever since. It’s dressage riding at it’s finest. If you’re curious – here’s a wikipedia article about the Spanish Riding School in Vienna where I watched the exercises: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spanish_Riding_School.
Without further ado Danika and I said good ye to Vienna and bumbled off to the main train station…in search of a way to get to Prague. We were at the wrong train station, turns out. We thought we’d get the better of the train-info lady (who was rather short with us) so we headed off in search of “Breclav” where apparently a train was leaving for Prague much sooner than the 2.5 hours wait the info-lady suggested. Well. Gosh. Thankfully we asked a local guy how to get there after a bit of confusion….
Alice: “Excuse me…. can you tell us how to get to Breclav station?”
Kind Austrian: “That’s….not in Austria.”
Alice: “Ohh. We’re going to Prague.”
Kind Austrian: “Okay. You need to go (directions to same place mean info-lady told us about)
Alice: “ohhh Danke shehn!”
And we’re off, like a herd of turles. The train ride was amazing fun, as I find they usually are. We thought that Breclav was in Slovakia so we were going to get off because, you know, why not…. but it looked really dark and boring. And we realized it was just a border town in the Czech Republic… so we made a very solid game-time decision to stay on the train.
PRAGUE!!!! We were staying at the “Mosaic House”. Which we thought was a hostel. Well, it IS a hostel but it’s also SO MUCH MORE! There’s a hostel under ground, a night club, a bar, a room with a giant TV screen, and lots and lots of eager staff waiting to help YOU. When the concierge told us we were staying in the “Oasis” the circle of confusion was complete… It turned out to be a really nice hostel and not at all loud because they keep people underground… but so weird.
