Austria

After receiving a rainy farewell from Czech, I made my way to Vienna, Austria where I met up with Brianne, who I knew from college, and her boyfriend Clement.


Before leaving, I was told to not eat anything heavy as we would have dinner at !!!16!!! in the evening. It was such a big change from Spain where dinner was at 22 was considered early. But a dinner is still a dinner, after a filling dinner and chatting/catching up, we went out to the inner city ring for an post-dinner walk at 17. I still cannot believe I am saying that.


Fact about Vienna: Wien is made of districts, 1 is the inner city and goes up to 23 around the 1. Interesting way of coding around the city though.


Walking there, we saw the usual European sights of cathedral, plazas and memorials. It was sunday so most of the stores were closed but roads were packed, people were window shopping, it is pretty fun to do apparently.


My grandomther used to live in Vienna - she immigrated to the US in 1940 due to the nazi and WWII - and she gave me her old address. Thanks to GPS and technology, we were able to find the place (hopefully it was the right one too) and it was cool to go back to my roots in Vienna at district 2.


The next day included some more sightseeing at the Schonnbrunn - a 1,441 room mansion for two people, the King and the Queen! Schonnbrunn was huge and included a lovely garden in the backyard. It was more of a park that had a zoo too than just a garden, but still a garden. We also visited the famous old-style Risenrad Ferris Wheel and the surrounding amusement park.


The evenings were usually spent chatting all night long and I enjoyed them. One topic that was brought up with Clement and I discussing - If you were broke and homeless, would you rather live in the city or move out to the country side?


Another common discussion (With many other europeans) was comparing and contrasting the lifestyles of America and Europe. Clement travelled to India and it opened his mind in so many ways, and suggested that I should visit Asia, as it is way different than Europe that is for sure. I told him I would make another travels one day, no worries!


On May 3rd I made a day trip to Salzburg, it had a lovely old town centre...yeah that was all it had. It was a REALLY lovely old town though, climbing up the old Festung Hohensalzburg (Fortress) atop a hill and a good view of the alps although the day was a bit cloudy/foggy/rainy. The town was famous for its involvement in the Sound of Music movie, and kept pimping the movie all across the touristy places... which I didn't really care much for as I never saw the movie (as usual).


My last day of Austria was spent at the Jewish Museum in Wien where there was an excellent exhibit on Jewish Identity. Afterwards, I explored the city bit and came to the Sigmund Freud house/museum where the history of the brilliant mind was shown. I enjoyed seeing the stories of his past. One story I enjoyed:


He had a conversation with Einstein once, Einstein had no clue about Psychology and Freud knew nothing about Physics. So two of the greatest minds of their fields sat there and shared their thoughts and works with each other in the most epic mind-blowing conversation (I wasn´t there, but I am sure it was epic) ever. It also included cigars. Freud loved to smoke a good cigar while going on his infamous walks. It was cool to see the original "shrink" couch, it looked uncomfortable and not a couch at all, but that was what they used in the 1900s.


After exploring museums, I felt quite hungry, so it was only approrpriate I went to Der Wiener Deewan as advised by my Lonely Planet book. DWD is a pakistan place where you can eat all you want and pay as much as you want! It is kind of a jedi mind trick seeing if you will pay 2 euros for 15 euros worth of food and how generous your heart really is. But this place does not care just pay as much as you would like no big deal. Of course, I ate two good plates (It was delicious too) and paid 5 euros. HEY im on a traveller's budget.


Wandering with a full stomach, I stumbled into the original Manner's store, and bought some wafers, they're so delicious! If you do not know what i am talking about just google it. Same goes with the other stuff I mentioned above don't just nod and read on :)


That evening, Clement and I went to the Wien Deaf Club where we met several deaf people our age and double the number of old deaf folks there. It was a good time chatting with new people and drinking a glass of Austrian beer. This makes me wish we still had Deaf Clubs in existence back all over in America.


Of course, drinking good beer late at night leads to feeling hungry at 23. So not much was open except for... good ol' mcdonalds. Yeah, i collapsed and had my first cheeseburger in Europe, but it was delicious!


When we got back home, we met the love of my life, Brittany, another fellow USA traveller who was staying with us, she had just arrived from Denmark... or Italy? I forgot :( But we had a good chat catching up all night about her lovely over protective Italian family and our travels.


Eventually, our eyes could not stay open, and we went to sleep as I had to catch a train to Budapest, Hungary the next day... now Budapest, that is for another blog entry!