I arrived in Vienna Thursday evening, checking into a rather basic hotel outside the ring.
Friday morning, I started off by going to see the Hundertwasser Haus, a colorful, artsy apartment block built as a protest against boring concrete tower blocks.
I continued on to the center of Vienna, walking along the Kärtner strasse and seeing the Stephansdom and the opera building on the way. I watched the Hofburg palace complex from the outside, and made a quick stop at the "Schmetterlinghaus" to photograph some butterflies.They had some really big, tropical butterflies in there, but in order to keep the environment similar to the butterflies' natural habitat,they kept it fairly hot and humid in there (which shows up on some of my pictures). I walked around in the center for a couple of hours, getting to see the major sights and a lot of the pretty buildings in Vienna. I spent a couple of hours walking around in the Museum of Natural History, which was fun, as it has probably been fifteen years or so since the last time I was in one. Especially fun to see a BIG chunk of salt crystals from Wieliczka, the mine I visited in September last year.
I finished off the day by doing some shopping, buying stuff like the Austrian rum - "STROH" and the famous Sacher-torte. The Stroh is for my collection of vile booze that will break anyone that gets too cocky during a session of heavy drinking. I seem to remember that the taste is quite overpowering.
In the evening, I had the feeling I had seen most of what I wanted to see in Vienna, so on a whim I decided to go to Bratislava the next day. This is not that difficult from Vienna, since it is only an hour away by train. The Slovak Republic is in Schengen as well, so I didn't have to worry about visas to go there either. The only problems were that they didn't use the Euro, so I would need to get some Slovak korunas, and I didn't have a map or a guide book. I found a big book store and bought a travel guide which included a really crappy map. The only problem was that it was in German. My German isn't that great, as I have not spoken much German since I had it in school when I was 17. In that respect, this was good exercise, and I spent an hour or so trying to piece together what the main attractions of Bratislava were.
Early in the morning on Saturday, I got on the train to Bratislava. The ATM at the station in Bratislava accepted my Dutch bank card, so there was no problem getting korunas. At the station in Bratislava I bought a "Kolbasa" for breakfast - a red sausage dripping red grease - it tasted different from what I expected, with a very smoky aftertaste. Since I had no proper map, I decided to follow road signs to "historic center". I walked in a very long half-circle until I managed to get to the city center. It was fairly cold and raining a lot at this time, and I struggled to find a shop where they sold umbrellas. It was hard to find anyone that spoke any English or German, but I managed to buy an umbrella, and I managed to get served in a cafe.Finally, I found the historic center and the Castle. The castle itself was not that spectacular, although you have a very good view from the castle of most of the city.
I walked back to the train station and got on the train back to Vienna. There were trains going back every hour, so getting to and from Bratislava was fairly easy. I felt tired on the train back, having walked for almost seven hours straight. I was pretty pleased with myself going back to Vienna, having been adventurous enough to go over the border without speaking any of the local language. I still have a bunch of Slovak Korunas, though. Having to exchange currency sucks...
Back in Vienna, I looked at the Belvedere palace, and walked over to see the Karlskirche. The Karlskirche looked really spectacular from the outside, the inside wasn't all that interesting. (Perhaps I have seen too many churches in the last year to be impressed...). I also walked over to see the food marked, the Naschmarkt.Sunday I took the metro to the outskirts of Vienna to visit the Schönbrunn palace. I found it to be not that impressive. The most interesting rooms were in the east wing, where you needed an extra ticket to enter. Being an imperial palace, I thought it sucked. The Dolmabahce palace in Istanbul for instance is way more impressive. Supposedly the palace gardens are nice, but this was February, so there wasn't much to see.
I finished my stay by visiting the Museumsquartier and having a sachertorte and some coffee at a cafe.
Overall, I found Vienna to be fairly boring. There were lots of nice buildings and supposedly lots of pretty parks. Only...the parks are not that pretty in February.
Pictures are here (Vienna) and here (Bratislava).
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