S.B. Part 2: Vienna

Vienna

April 2-April 5

April 2

After flying into Vienna late, I met a friend, Shay, who is studying abroad with me in London at the airport. Shay stayed with me for Vienna, Prague, and Krakow and was a great companion on the travels. Shay is a traveler and we both had similar ideas of what we wanted out of each city. It is always easier to travel in smaller groups especially when everyone is on the same page. Shay and I took the public transportation to our hostel called ‘wombat hostel naschmarkt.’ The hostel was surprisingly nice, clean, safe, and centrally located. The reception was super nice and gave us our keys to the four person room we were staying in. Once in our room, we planed out what we wanted to do the following day and met the other two people in our room. They were postgrads teaching English in Spain and were traveling over their Easter break. One of them was a guy, which is always somewhat tricky, not because I feared for my safety, but it just makes changing/showering that much more of a hassle. After planning our time in Vienna, Shay and I went to sleep.

[Side Note: In my mind, when I think of a hostel, I think of people between the ages of 18-28 staying in them. For some reason, I feel like once you hit a certain age, you should probably be staying in a hotel. Well, my preconceived notion was shattered when I was faced with families staying in the hostel. I was awoken at 7 AM one day by a baby crying in the room next to me.  Why would you ever want to have your family in a hostel?! Moreover, in other hostels I stayed at there were really old people…like I shared a 6-bedded room with a 50-year-old-man. After talking to some of my flatmates about it, I came to the conclusion that maybe in the European mind, a hostel in their version of our motel. If you want to travel cheaply, you can always find some ucky motel to stay in, but here all they have are hostels. I still think it’s weird, but whateverrr.]

April 3

Shay and I woke up early and wandered in the Naschmarkt (a food market) across the street from our hostel. There we got a quick breakfast and made into the city. We first wanted to find the opera house and get a tour, but after around 30 minutes of wandering lost we felt as if there was no hope. The map was difficult and when the street names are abbreviated, it is impossible to find your way. Finally we came across the opera house just to discover we had been walking by it the whole time. Welp! We then found out that the first tour was at 2 PM and you could only buy tickets around 20 minutes before the tour. That left us with some extra time, which we filled with touring St. Stephen’s Cathedral. Before I left for London, I bought an ‘International Student Identity Card’ (ISIC). This card had been useless in London since I always had my Kings College card, but once I left the country, this thing saved me so much money! Every museum/church/tour offered student concessions that I always got due to the ISIC card. With the ISIC card, Shay and I cheaply got to go to the top of the cathedral and get a good view of Vienna.

The Opera House 

The Opera House

Wandering through Vienna...

A soviet memorial that (according to tour-guides) is just
ignored by the Viennese these days. 

Opera House

St. Stephen's Cathedral

 

Inside the cathedral. 

Inside the cathedral. 

The Cathedral's roof

Cathedral 

View from St. Stephen's Cathedral  

View from St. Stephen's Cathedral

View from St. Stephen's Cathedral

Vienna was heavily bombed during WWII, so a lot the city was rebuilt and new. While I am not saying the city is not beautiful, it was much different than I expected. For some reason, in my mind I was expecting The Sound of Music or just something old with beautiful mountains in the background. Instead, Vienna was just white big buildings with statues all over them. The city was different, but not bad.

Just random sculptures on buildings... 

From St. Stephen’s Cathedral, Shay and I wandered over to the Hapsburg Imperial Apartments. We bought our ticket to the exhibits, which included the Hapsburg treasury, apartments, and a special exhibit on the famous Empress Sisi. The treasury was huge and redundant. It was a lot of gold lamps, china dishes, and silver cutlery. The Sisi exhibit was next, which lead us through the Empress’s life. Shay was super excited for this exhibit since she had seen the famous French trilogy about her. Then we moved into the royal apartments. Of course, each room was lavish and was covered in fine wood and gold. The best part was Sisi’s chambers, which included her gymnastic tools since she loved to work out and stay in shape. What a woman!

Hapsburg Imperial Apartments  

Hapsburg Imperial Apartments 

Hapsburg Imperial Apartments 

Hapsburg Imperial Apartments

Hapsburg Imperial Apartments

After the imperial apartments, Shay and I walked around the museum section a little. We decided to not go into a lot of the famous museums (like the Albertina) partly because they were super expensive. I’ve found that traveling by myself, I need to really choose what I want to see because I have to relatively money conscious. I continually caught myself thinking, “well if I was here with my family, my parents would just pay for these museums…” but now I was alone and just couldn’t get myself to pay for some of them.

Anyways, the museum section was gorgeous really. Vienna had great weather (compared to London and Amsterdam so far) and everything was lush and green.  We then ran over to the opera and bought our tickets for the tour.

On the tour, I had my little moment to shine. So, in one of the intermission room, there are all the busts of the famous opera writers that had a performance in the opera house, one of them obviously being Mozart. Well, Amadeus just happens to be one of my favorite films (seriously…I own it…) and when the question “What were the three Mozart Operas?” came up, I was right on that…”THE MARRIAGE OF FIGARO, DON GIOVANNI, AND THE MAGIC FLUTE” I yelled as all the old people turned around at me in awe. I got to pat myself on the back, as the tour guide gave me her ‘impressed’ look. In the tour we got to see the imperial box, the imperial room, and behind the scenes on the stage. The opera house was gorgeous, but I was somewhat surprised/disappointed to learn that a lot of it had been rebuilt since it was bombed in WWII! Ugh! Why is everything I love destroyed?! Anyways, I did learn that while seat tickets are sold out months in advance of the show, one could buy cheap standing room tickets 2 hours before the show. I decided I would try later.

Mozart's Bust surrounded by his famous operas

View from Imperial Booth

Imperial Room

Staircase

View from backstage

Box seating

Imperial Booth

There is a screen at each seat that shows the words sung
in the opera in multiple languages so you can follow along!

The opera!

From there, Shay and I decided to look for some lunch. We ran into a slight problem since everything in Europe I have found is made of pork. While I have no problem getting food from street carts, it does become a problem when all the hotdogs are pork. (Sorry Shay) but we were forced into a restaurant we I resigned to getting a beef burger.

Mozart Cake!

Afterwards, Shay and I hoped onto one of the trams and followed Rick Steve’s tram tour around the city. At each stop, Steves gave us sites to look at along the way. Once we finished the tram tour, Shay and I decided to walk back to the places we passed in order to get better looks. We walked to Vienna’s town hall, which is more like a palace, the building where Beethoven wrote his work, Vienna’s parliament building, and music park where statues of famous composers are.

Mozart Park

Mozart Statue

Parliament  

Athena in front of Parliament

Town Hall

Town Hall!

The National Theatre 

The building behind the statue is where
Beethoven did all his work! 

Beautiful church ruined by an
uglllllly sign.

Unsere Garten 

Handel statue in Unsere Garden

Unsere Garden

Before heading back, I tried to get standing room tickets for the opera that night, but as I was standing in line I was informed that I could not buy any due to my ‘inappropriate’ clothing. HAH! Me…inappropriate clothing…Plz, I am Miss. Conservative wear. Apparently, wearing thick tights under a pair of shorts is inappropriate. I tried to tell the people that I was going to change into a dress after the buying the ticket and come back for the show dressed nicer, but they informed me that I could not(?). So, me- Sydney Hyder- got denied by the opera for inappropriate clothing. Well, if anything it is for the better since now it gives me a reason to go back. Anyways, I did not really want to stand for 4 hours…next time I will splurge and buy real tickets ahead of time.

Womp wommmmmp

From there, Shay and I wandered into a grocery store and bought a cheap dinner to eat before we passed out.

April 4

Shay and I decided that instead of going back into the main city for our third day, we would go a little further out and explore the Hapsburg’s Schonbrunn Palace. Rick Steves didn’t recommend the palace to those who are staying in the city for a short amount of time, but the weather was amazing (around 75 degrees) and we really wanted to see the rest of the city.

Well, we proved Rick Steves wrong since the palace was probably the best part about Vienna. Going out to Schonbrunn let us see the Vienna we were expecting to see- some rolling hills, classical styled building, etc. The ticket we bought for the palace included an audio guided tour of the royal apartments, the imperial garden, the maze, and access to the overlook on the top of the hill. The imperial apartments were to the ones we saw in the city, but the best part about the place was the gardens. It almost reminded me of Versailles (not that I have been there…). There was one funny thing Shay and I found in the gardens, which was an ‘ancient’ Roman ruin. Looking at the roman arch, you would think it was transported from Rome itself, but in reality it is just a construction ordered by the Hapsburgs. It was super ‘in’ to have ancient ruins, so the emperor just needed to have one and got architects to build an old looking one. Classy Hapsburgs…Classy. Especially, walking to the top of the hill, you could overlook the palace with the rest of the city. It was gorgeous and I even tanned a little! Furthermore, in front of the palace was an Easter market that we got to look around at. Shay and I spent around 5 hours at the palace and it was worth every penny!

Easter Market

Schonbrunn Palace 

Columbary in the Gardens 

The 'Roman' Column

The Gardens

The Obelisk Fountain 

Empress Sisi!

Schonbrunn Palace 

Schonbrunn Palace

Schonbrunn Palace and the city

Schonbrunn Palace

Shay and I

The Maze

Imperial Gardens

Imperial Gardens

Imperial Gardens

When we got back to our hostel, our roommates recommended this restaurant in the city, which we sought out. It was such a cute restaurant that was placed in a nook right next to a church. We got a nice Viennese meal that consisted of beef goulash, chicken schnitzel, and Viennese beer. We walked around the city at night a bit and got to see some of the flavor of the city. In the main square, there was so much music. Seriously…there were violins everywhere, opera singers, jazz saxophones, and clarinets! We also noticed that the homeless people only come out at night. During the day we noted that we saw zero beggars or homeless people, but for some reason saw a handful at night. After some time, we went back to the hostel to pack up for our intending flight.

Dinner in Vienna!

April 5

I woke up super early to make my flight to Prague! I had to transfer through Frankfurt, which realistically makes little sense.

Overall, I found that my short time in Vienna was NOT enough. If I were to go back to Austria though, I would probably not go back to the city. I would try to visit Salzburg or Tirol. I feel like Austria is more about its countryside than its cities, which I still have time to explore in my future!

Also, while I flew from Vienna to Prague, Shay took a train. I envied her and came to terms that if I were to ever do this again…I would only do trains. It is just so much easierrrr.