Lizzy in Vienna!: 28.3.2008

The flight to Vienna was sehr schön. I was on the craziest plane ever, it looked like it came straight from the 60’s or an Austin Powers movie. The seats were bright purple with blue headrests and lime green pillows. The carpet was some weird shade of grass green and the walls and curtains were sky blue. It was hysterical. I passed the 8 and a half hour trip easily enough. It was easy to relax after a five-course meal served to you by attractive Austrian men, followed by 3 glasses of wine and Bailey’s on the rocks.

After I landed, I met Winona, Sofie, and Myles at the airport. I had to smile my way through customs (I realize that smiling and being a nice young American woman can speed the process up quite a bit), collect my bags, and catch a bus to the city. I was so glad that they all came to get me because I don’t think I could have done this by myself. Just knowing where to leave the bus was a challenge. We found our hostel , but I couldn’t check in for another few hours, so we killed time by walking up and down the main street of the district we were in (Westend?). I felt a little disappointed with what I was seeing. I mean the buildings looked old, but it was so commercial I probably couldn’t have told the difference between this street and any other street in any other big city in Europe or the US, except everything was in German. Where was the beautiful city I was expecting?

In the mood to feel a little bit more Austrian, we searched for a good 20 minutes or so to find the perfect coffeehouse to try the famous Viennese kafe. Three of us ordered the “Melange” which is steamed milk, foamed milk, and espresso. Myles ordered one with a shot of Baileys, even though we reminded him that it was only 11am. The Viennese have their own names for all of their coffee drinks, no “Cappucino” or “Latte” or “Mocha.” You have to order it either by color depending on how much cream you like in it (“schwarzer” for black, “brauner” for a little cream to turn the coffee brown, or “goldener” for a lot of cream) or by the traditional Viennese names that all the coffeehouses use.

Either way, we finished our coffee and feeling a little bit perkier we set off back down the street to buy prepaid cell phones, scarves (EVERYONE had scarves! Men, women, boys, girls..i had never seen so many scarves in my life) and stop at the grocery store for snacks and checked me into the hostel. We then decided to go to a café at the end of the block for lunch. It was a very traditional café where all the waiters wore suits with bowties. It was really hard to sit there and eat through the sheer amount of smoke. Everyone here smokes and everyone here does it indoors. It’s pretty overwhelming for those of us who like clean air. Anyways, I ordered Hunherschnitzel and got basically a big chicken strip that filled up my whole plate. It was great! Basically a dream come true for me. But it got to be a little ridiculous when the waiter charged us €0.75 for each ketchup packet we used. At least we were smart enough to not eat the bread at the table or ask for water like the other poor table of American schmucks sitting across from us. That was easily another €15 they added to their bill.

After lunch we headed over to Sofie’s hostel to take advantage of some free internet service. We used the U-Bahn (Vienna’s subway) for the first time. That thing is really convenient! We got there in no time flat and then decided we wanted to see the famous Ring-Strasse and the historic 1^st district. We were looking around for another good coffee shop and found ourselves in a beautiful place. It looked just like Europe should—there were windy little streets with horse-drawn carriages driving by. The buildings stood at least 4 or 5 stories high and were all very old and ornate.

We followed Herrengasse and suddenly found ourselves at the Hofburg -- the Imperial Palace for the oldest ruling family in Austria. The building was monstrous and had a huge round-a-bout in front of it decorated with large white statutes. There were gold statutes scattered along its green roof. We spent quite a while playing tourist and snapping pictures of each other. It seemed like down any street we traveled there were more and more beautiful statues and buildings. It was absolutely amazing. This was the Vienna that I was hoping for; the twisted little streets filled with people and surrounded by old Baroque buildings and gaudy statues. There were little shops everywhere you looked and everyone sat out and ate at outdoor cafes. It was so perfect J You’ll just have to see the pictures! I am so happy that I chose to come to Vienna.