Location: Vienna, Austria

Weekend 11: Vienna & Bratislava

Thursday, November 9th

Sadie, Aislinn, and I took the train to Vienna. It was a little over four hours and I had planned to work on my blog the entire time, but the wi-fi was horrible so I played Candy Crush instead #RoadTo12000

We ran into this picture of Sadie in the U-Bahn

Friday, November 10th

We got breakfast at Cafe Mozart. Final review: expensive.

Then we had a free walking tour with Wolfgang. I found a website with free walking tours and you pay what you want at the end, and that's life-changing. Of course, I tipped Wolfgang well. If you're in Vienna and need a walking tour, you can book with Wolfgang here! Final Review: amazing.

On our walking tour

We saw all the big sights in the center of Vienna (opera house, castle, churches) and then went to the Belvedere to see The Kiss. I liked it, but I preferred some of Gustav Klimt's other work and The Chef by Claude Monet. Final Review: Yes 👏 Chef 👏

St. Stephen's Cathedral




View from the Belvedere
The Kiss



After the museum, we went to dinner at Centimeter. A restaurant with traditional Viennese cuisine that also sells bread by the centimeter. One centimeter is 40 Euro cents and I asked for a centimeter of bread and the guy was confused. I asked what the minimum number of centimeters you had to buy was, but he didn't understand. I was brought 10 centimeters of bread. It was good so it was fine, but call your restaurant Centimeters if it's not possible to get a single centimeter. I also got dumplings with eggs. Final Review: tastes a little too much like egg.


Dumplings (little pasta in weird shape) with egg (tasted exactly like scrambled eggs and I was imaging egg fried rice flavor so that's my bad I forgot if something here has egg it will taste like egg)

(More than one centimeter of) bread

We then split up and searched for clues. I attended my fourth (and final 😓) ghost tour of the semester. It was good -- a lot about the Habsburg's body parts being put in urns. We did learn about the Vienna basilisk that had the head of a chicken and body of a toad, which isn't necessarily very intimidating and someone could've come up with a way better combination than that. 

St. Stephen's Cathedral at night

Saturday, November 11th

I awoke bright and early to take the bus to Bratislava, Slovakia for the day. It is only an hour from Vienna, so I thought, "When in Rome." 

I got breakfast and my walking tour was delayed an hour so I perused a shop feature local artisans where I bought the best chapstick I've ever owned (second only to Chicken Poop.)

Breakfast

I then went on the best walking tour of my entire life -- it ended up being 3.5 hours long -- for only $17! I didn't know much about Bratislava, so everything our guide had to say was interesting. 

Notable highlights include standing in the doorway of an Orthodox church and listening to Gregorian monk chants from the desk attendant's laptop in one ear and Lady Gaga from the restaurant across the street in the other (duality of man) and trying almond-flavored Bozkov with peppermint tea! Final Review: Thank you, Guga!

After the tour, I strolled through the city until I had to catch the bus back to Vienna. I have a lot of pictures that don't really need captions:


And one that does:

Angular grass

Sunday, November 12th

In the morning, we went to the Christmas Market outside of St. Stephen's Cathedral. I need to look into why Christmas Markets are so big here; there's multiple markets in almost all big cities. This market was slightly underwhelming. It was a lot of stalls selling things that appeared to be bulk purchased through a site like Amazon. I did buy an apple strudel that I carried around all day and then remembered I had when I got hungry on the train home at 10:30pm. 

St. Stephen's Cathedral

Apple strudel

Drinking warm apple cider

Pretty picture

We then had the rest of the day to waste because our train wasn't until 7. I'll be honest and NO HATE to the Austrians, but one day in Vienna would've been good. We ended up going to the Central Cemetery, which was not central. It was 30 minutes away by tram, but I think it was worth it (idk what the two people I dragged there would say though). It was huge; there are over 3,000,000 million people buried there and less than 2,000,000 (living) people in Vienna.

Cemetery

When the cemetery was opened, nobody wanted to visit it because it was so far outside the city center. Because of this, they had famous people dug up from other cemeteries and created a VIP section in the Central Cemetery with people like Beethoven, Schubert, Salieri, and Falco.

After the cemetery, we went to another Christmas market where Aislinn and I went ice skating and then got bratwurst, which (even the vegetation one) was either really good or I was really hungry. I also got this marshmallow cone because I was intrigued and I think I had adjusted to Czech lack-of-sweet desserts because it was craaazy sugary and I had to scoop most of the fluff out. 

Ice skating

@ the market













Take me home // Czech train tracks // to the place I belong 

Final Review

I'm glad I had the opportunity to visit Vienna, but it wasn't my favorite. It felt generic, which could be because it's very beige. The buildings are all white and the ground is all concrete. It makes me really appreciate how colorful Prague is. 

I really liked Bratislava. It could be because the walking tour was awesome, but I think it was because it was like a mini Prague. It was colorful, and had winding roads and a castle overlooking the city. 

This was my last weekend trip of the semester because I would like to spend the last month really living life in Prague.