A Viennese Visit

After Morgan and I got back from El Escorial, I did nothing interesting for the next 10 days. The highlight of that time was going to the Chinese restaurant with Vicki and Morgan. Even school was boring. Half of my classes at the high school were canceled, and I was with infantil at the elementary school, so I did nothing exciting there, either. But part of the reason the time dragged was surely because I was so excited for the weekend, because I was finally going to Vienna.

First and foremost,The Sound of Musicis collectively my mom's side of the family's favorite movie, so I've been watching it since I was too little even to sing along. Between that and also because it was a stop on my parents' European honeymoon, I was already excited about going to Austria. Add in the fact that I was visiting one of my friends, and it was basically a dream come true. My friend MaryBeth has lived in Austria for two years as an English teaching assistant. Basically, we're doing the same program, but in different countries. Last year, she lived and taught in a small town like I do, but this year, she lives in Vienna. So in addition to having an excuse to visit Vienna, I even had somewhere to stay!

There was one part of the trip that I was a bit anxious about. My flight left Madrid at 8:45 in the morning, but I decided not to get a hostel in the city to save money. This meant that I had to take the first bus from Quintanar to Madrid, which left at 5:00 in the morning. I was just nervous about this because the next bus wasn't until 7:00, so if anything went wrong (my alarm didn't go off, I was running late, I overslept, the bus was late, etc.), I was screwed. I was nervous about it all week, but thankfully, when my alarm went off at 4:30, I leapt out of bed and hustled over to the bus station. The 5:00 bus turned out to be full of daily commuters, so I didn't have to worry about it being late. Once I settled down in my seat, I was able to breathe a sigh of relief. Once the bus got to Madrid, I took a light rail train directly to the airport. Aside from a few interesting characters and some rude people near me on the plane, the trip was entirely uneventful, which was excellent.

I landed in Vienna on time at 11:45. MaryBeth and I are very similar when it comes to traveling, so she had sent me very detailed directions about how to get from the airport to the station where we were meeting. I had no trouble getting the S-bahn train to Praterstern, and I think when we found each other we just couldn't stop smiling. When MaryBeth first moved to Austria and I was green with envy, I vowed that we would both live in Europe at the same time someday. It was hard to believe that it was actually true. MaryBeth and I met at West Chester when we were resident assistants (RAs) in a dorm together. We still laugh about what a dysfunctional staff we had that year, but it was a great one, and there are several people that I'm still good friends with, MaryBeth included. MaryBeth and I are also just very similar. In addition to our intense passions for travel, we just like a lot of the same things and have similar senses of humor, so I was thrilled to be spending the weekend together.

We stopped at MaryBeth's apartment to drop off my stuff and to eat a quick lunch before we went back out to do some sightseeing. I have probably written in the past about my love of Ferris wheels and carousels, and Vienna has a famous Ferris wheel called the Wiener Riesenrad in the Prater amusement park. Most of the amusement park was closed, being that it was February, but it was really quaint and pretty. It looked like it was probably a ton of fun in the spring and summer. MaryBeth had never been on the Ferris wheel because she thought it was overpriced, but she was a good sport and went along anyway. In addition to the Ferris wheel, there was an area almost like a museum before it that had little dioramas of what the Prater area looked like in the past, which was actually really cool.

Prater amusement park

Museum before the ride

Diorama of Prater in the past

Prater in the past

On the Ferris wheel

View of Vienna

Reunited and it feels so good!

Our next stop was the Rathaus, or city hall. The Rathaus is especially cool because MaryBeth told me that it's the center of government both for the city of Vienna as well as serving as somewhere for the government of all of Austria to meet to discuss things. And it doesn't hurt that it's gorgeous, of course.

Vienna Rathaus

The other cool reason to visit the Rathaus when we did was because there were several ice skating rinks set up outside. Thankfully, MaryBeth wasn't interesting in ice skating, since I can't even stand up on skates of any kind, but it was just really pretty.

Ice rink outside of the Rathaus

Arguably the prettiest ice rink setting I've seen

After that, we walked around and MaryBeth showed me the best of the Viennese architecture. Thankfully, after having wanted to visit Vienna for most of my life, this gorgeous city did not disappoint.

Burgtheater

Same love crossing lights!

Parliament

Museumsquartier

Vienna Opera

We then met two of MaryBeth's friends, Charlotte and Harriet, at an Italian restaurant called Vapiano's. I had specifically requested that we go there because MaryBeth is a little obsessed with it. She also keeps a blog about her European adventures, and it seems like Vapiano's is mentioned in every post. So I had to try the illustrious Vapiano's when I had the chance, of course, and it was really delicious.

MaryBeth was an especially great hostess because she went out of her way to accommodate the things that I wanted to do, like Vapiano's. But the main thing that I really wanted was to hear some classical music. I couldn't go to the classical music capital of the world and not hear it, so she managed to find a classical pianist that was playing at the Musikverein, the concert hall. As it turned out, the pianist was Rudolf Buchbinder, a multiple award-winning pianist that I'd actually heard of (I studied piano for many years and I also like classical music) and who played absolutely beautifully. We got standing room tickets that cost only €6 each, which was basically the most incredible deal ever.

Weiner Musikverein

Great Hall of the Musikverein

After the concert, MaryBeth and I went back to her apartment. We watched some TV and talked and laughed. It was great having a chance to catch up. In the morning, we slept in and had breakfast at MaryBeth's before we went out to do more sightseeing.

Our first stop was the Schönbrunn Palace. Maria Theresa of the Habsburgs (aka the mother of Marie Antoinette and a very big deal in Vienna) received the palace as a wedding gift, and she ordered the last large-scale renovation, a neoclassical style that it still represents today. I had just gone to El Escorial, a Habsburg palace, a few weeks prior, so I didn't go inside. But MaryBeth and I explored the gardens and walked up to the Gloriette, which reminded me of a greenhouse on a hilltop. The Gloriette afforded lovely views of the city.

Schönbrunn Palace

Gloriette

View of Vienna from the Gloriette

Vienna has a bunch of museums, but MaryBeth was kind enough to let me choose one for us to visit. I picked the cluster of museums owned and operated by the Austrian National Library. Buying a ticket includes a visit to all three museums, which were a papyrus museum, an Esperanto museum, and a globe museum. I was most interested in the globe museum, because it's the only public museum in the world dedicated to globes. But as it turned out, the Esperanto museum was fascinating. I wasn't familiar with it at all before visiting, but I associated Esperanto with Hitler. As it turns out, Hitler was staunchly opposed to Esperanto, because the idea behind it is largely credited to Dr. L. L. Zamenhof, a Jewish doctor. The goal of Esperanto was to create an easy-to-learn, international language that could be understood by people of many different nationalities and tongues. Esperanto draws from many languages, so a lot of words were recognizable between what I know about English and Spanish. I don't have any photos from that museum, but trust me that it was actually amazing. The globe museum was also very cool, mostly because there were so many different kinds. There were celestial globes and even globes of other planets or moons.

Huge globe built by Vincenzo Coronelli (45 inches in diameter!)

Globes from the early 1900s

Globes of other planets

We left the globe museum and MaryBeth took me to see the Hofburg Palace. The Schönbrunn was the Habsburg's summer home, but the Hofburg was where they usually lived. MaryBeth said that now, it's mostly used to host events.

Hofburg Palace

Platz behind the palace

We then went to the Austrian National Library itself, the basement of which housed the papyrus museum. I don't mean to be a snob, but having visited Egypt not long ago, I wasn't overly impressed by the collection in Vienna. The papyrus in Egypt is perfectly preserved art, but a lot of the papyrus they had in the Vienna museum was literally scraps, so I don't have any photos.

View of the Museumsquartier from the library

Austrian National Library

Our last tourist stop was to go to Stephansplatz, the center of the city and the home of Stephansdom, the cathedral of Vienna. It's impossible to go to a major European city and not visit a church, but MaryBeth explained that Stephansdom was actually very dark on the inside. We went when the sun was setting anyway, but I could see what the meant. That is a hallmark of Gothic churches, to be fair.

Stephansdom

Inside Stephansdom

Finished with our sightseeing, we met MaryBeth's friends again to have traditional Austrian food for dinner. I had potato soup, piroshki, and beer. It was delicious, and totally ham-free (In fact, being out of Spain for the weekend, I went out of my way to avoid pork of any kind). Then we went to a café for coffee and cake. That was the last thing on my list. I couldn't visit Vienna and not go to a Viennese café. I had a slice of chocolate cake that was named after Mozart. It had pistachio marzipan in the middle, and it was to die for.

We went out that night and had a great time in a bar that played music that wasn't techno (Hooray!). My flight was at 12:30 on Sunday, so we didn't have to get up very early, but it didn't leave much time to do anything special on my last day. So MaryBeth and I just had breakfast together, took the U-bahn to Praterstern, and then I took the train to the airport. I slept for most of my flight back, so it passed very quickly.

My bus back to Quintanar arrived around 7:00 pm, and I was very pleasantly surprised that Quintanar's Carnaval parade was still going on. I knew that it was supposed to be the previous Sunday, but bad weather had called for it to be rescheduled. I was thrilled that it was still going on when I got back, so I got to see the floats and the amazing costumes. I was actually very, very impressed. Quintanar is a small town, so I didn't expect much, but the parade blew me away.

I won't be traveling again for two weeks, so I might take next week off from my blog if I don't have anything interesting to share. But you never know what the weekend might bring