Vienna

Monday, May 22^rd, 2011

So I woke up this morning in my hostel in the mountains to a beautiful sunrise. I must confess that even though the hostel was in the boonies, it was so pretty! I had wifi, breakfast, and a great view of the wilderness. After I got up, I had breakfast, then went back to the room to pack up my stuff because I was leaving my wilderness hostel for the Wombat Hostel in the city that Eden was staying at. This is also the hostel that Nyuri told us to stay at, so we thought it would be good. It was in fact a great hostel, nice rooms, nice facilities, wifi in the lobby, I had to pay for breakfast, but only 3 euro for a breakfast buffet. The only problem that I found with this hostel was all the children. I swear almost every hostel I have stayed at has been full of school-rooms full of children. I guess I just pick all the destinations that school teachers want their pupils to experience.

Once I got all settled into the Wombat hostel and met up with Eden, I waited while he ate breakfast and we began to plot out our day. But first thing was first; Eden wanted to go to Lush and so that’s where we started off our day. We actually started off at the Naschmarkt, next to our hostel, but since we didn’t see anything but food and we had both eaten not to long earlier, we left for Lush. From Lush we went to the Museum Quarter and admired all the museums from afar, then wandered downtown and found ourselves at the tourist information point inquiring what shows were playing. This is where we got our tickets to the opera. Yippie! From there we walked to Dr. Karlsplatz lost and decided it would be the perfect time for cake and coffee. NOM NOM NOM

After our little break, we walked through the State Gardens and saw the gold statue of Vivaldi. Somehow from the gardens we found ourselves at a war monument with a giant fountain and a weird metallic exhibit being set up. It was at this fountain where Eden once again splashed me, making me look like a wet hobo. Somehow that seemed to happen everywhere we went! Anywho, so from this monument we tried to figure out where we needed to go in order to go the Belvedere. After many failed attempts, we did what I always like to do, we just started following strangers who were holding up maps and also looked a little confused and hoped they knew where they were headed. In this case, they did. So, we made it to the Belvedere and admired the gardens for a brief while, then we went inside the palace/ now museum and saw many great works of art, most notably, “The Kiss” by Klimt.

Once we had spent about 2 hours looking at art, we sat in the gardens, ate some fruit, and admired the sculptures outside the intimidating palace façade. After a while of doing that, we looked at the clock to realize Ruh-Oh, we needed to hurry back to the hostel and change if we were going to make it to the opera on time. We scurried on back, quickly got changed and were on our way to the Vienna Opera House. Half way there, Eden began to notice a rumbling in his tummy, and I realized how ridiculous purple flip-flops with a nice skirt and shirt looked, so we made some decisions. I just want to state that the reason as to why I was wearing purple flip flops wasn’t because I thought they looked styling, rather because I threw away most of my shoes back in Brussels. I threw them away for a few reasons: they were smelly, they were falling apart, they looked bad, and there was no sense in dragging around worn-out shoes around Europe for a month. Now then back to the story, so once we made it to the opera house a few minutes before the show started Eden and I split up so we could achieve our goals: Eden’s for food and mine for nice shoes. Just as I saw an H&M and my hopes were restored, I tried to enter the store only to come to the crushing realization that the store had closed 10 minutes prior to my arrival. And so, I left heart-broken and in search of Eden. Eden had found a Burger King to dine upon, and since neither of us had eaten a real meal, besides snacks all day, we both quickly grabbed some chicken wraps to go, devoured them on the run, and somehow made it to the opera on time.

Now the opera Eden and I went to go see was called, “L'Italiana in Algeri.” Basically it was a show about how great Italians are. Since we got the cheap seats, we were up in the 3^rd tier of seats, in the seats closest to the stage. This meant that I literally had to lean half-way off the ledge to see what was happening on stage right (we were sitting house left). Despite our janky seats, it was a great time. It was just the experience of seeing an opera in Vienna that made it worthwhile!

After the show, we left and went out for real dinner (not quick Burger King) in the Naschmarkt next to our hostel. We had Greek food, so I had tzaki, which I came to love over spring break. Once we were done with dinner, we went back to the hostel and I called home to let them know about the volcano in Iceland, which would be preventing Alissa from meeting me the following day. The storm cloud from the volcano was over Scotland, so no flights were leaving from Edinburgh at this time. Once I had given my parentals the lowdown on the “me not leaving the next day for Berlin” situation, I went to sleep. ZZZZZZ

Tuesday, May 23^rd, 2011

I woke up and pretended to figure out what I was going to do that day, was I going to leave Vienna? Was I going to Berlin in hopes that the storm cloud would Alissa to come? In the end, I decided I was just going to stay another night in Vienna and figure the rest out as I heard from Alissa. So in order to best start off my day, I showered then met up with Eden for breakfast.

From breakfast, we left and went to St. Stephen’s church. This is a church with a really cool title design along the backside of it. It’s a gold and black design that makes the church really stand out. After we walked the perimeter of the church, we walked toward the river and found ourselves where we always found ourselves at, a Lush. Once we had chatted up all the sales persons and gotten the lowdown on what to do, we left and continued on our walk along the river to Hundertwasser. Our hostel map of Vienna defined it as a “barn,” but really they were cool houses created by an architect who didn’t believe in straight lines. I will admit in some places, like steps for example it was a little hard to walk around, but overall it was a great little stop on the Vienna trip. Before we really found the houses that people actually live in, we stopped by a little café and had lunch. There we played some more of my favorite game, “guess the nationality.” Turns out there were an American couple sitting behind us from Alabama and wow, were they American. For some reason they were sitting with a Spanish family, who clearly didn’t want to hear about how great the states were. It was hard to listen to in the way that a car crash is hard to turn away from, you know the consequences are going to be terrible and uncomfortable, but you just can’t help but be fascinated.

I will admit right now that I fear going back to the US, not because I don’t love my country, but rather because I have forgotten what parts of it are like. In this past year I haven’t really seen America at its core, well at least the America that I know and base my views off of (Minnesota). I have lived in a dream world of Disney, and now Europe. For Europe, I had to completely change how I acted around people. I wasn’t supposed to make eye contact on the metro, I wasn’t supposed to talk to strangers, not everyone spoke my language, I had to use a new currency (which would screw me over every time I used it, because the euro is so much stronger than the dollar, plus I get charged every time I just take out money), shops closed at 7pm and weren’t open on Sunday, just little things that made me change how I view the world. Long story short, I have pretty much adjusted to the European way of life. Its way easier to come to Europe from the US because you read up on it and study what the cultural norms are to prepare yourself, whereas when you return, you assume that you will just know them, like ridding a bike. Frankly, I don’t think it will be like just hopping back on a bike, I feel like it will be like going from knowing how to ride a bike to riding a unicycle. Thinking the basic principles must be the same.

Anyways I digress. After we toured the Hundertwasser community, we walked back to the center of the Vienna and walked around Stradtpark looking for the castle. About an hour had passed as we walked around this park and I had to use the bathroom, this became something that I could no longer put off, so we abruptly left the park and found ourselves at a cute little café. This café turned out to be at the entrance to the castle gardens, the castle we had been looking for! Funny how things like that turn out. Well, we sat for a while at the café and had cake and coffee. Then, we began to wander the castle grounds. Unfortunately, the castle was closed already for visiting, so we just walked along the grounds. We saw numerous fountains and an arch. We sat on the arch for a while talking about the differences between the US and the UK, and Europe and general, which has spurred my fear of culture shock when I return home.

As the sun was beginning to set, we decided we too would leave the castle grounds and return to our hostel. The next day Eden was planning on going to Budapest because his holiday was coming to a close and that’s where he was flying out of, so tonight was our last night. We changed and went out in search of Yahm, this “Austrian vegetarian” place that one of the ladies that Lush had told us about. So we walked back to the center of the city in search of this place. Eventually, aka an hour later, we found it. Only to discover that it wasn’t at all an Austrian vegetarian place, rather a sushi place. But since we had spent so long looking for it, we decided to eat there anyway. After dinner, we had gelato for dessert, and then returned to the hostel.

By checking my email, I once again found out that Alissa wouldn’t be making it to Berlin at all. It seems as though the storm cloud had now moved it itself over Germany, meaning she could fly out of Edinburgh to anywhere in the world, but Germany. It seemed as though fate simply didn’t want us to be together. Once I read this, I decided well….now what am I going to do, where am I going to go? But instead of worrying, I just went to sleep and decided I would figure it out in the morning.