Wien in Vienna

It's been nearly a year since I have traveled out of the country. Finally, thanks to vaccines and restrictions becoming looser, I can finally travel to a select few countries. First stop on my list was Vienna (Wien if you want to sound like a local). Back when I first began my English teaching journey, all the way back to volunteering with adult students in Kansas city, I had a coworker/friend who had worked in Vienna for many years. She was always talking about how much she loved living in Vienna and how she would often go back to visit. After visiting myself, I can totally understand why!

Traveling during Covid times is certainly not easy. We had originally looked into booking a train to Vienna. Two-ish hours from Budapest sounded really nice but the tickets were crazy expensive. They were nearly 40 euros for a one way ticket. No way. That is way outside of my money conscious traveling style. So we opted for a bus ride instead. The bus tickets were roughly half the price and were two way tickets. So on the bus we went! The bus ride went well. I listened to music and watched the Hungarian countryside fly by my window. To be honest, a lot of this ride looked like Kansas. There were lots of fields growing different crops and it was really pretty darn flat. After two hours on this bus, we approached the Austria-Hungary border. This was the moment of truth. Soon. two Austrian troops hopped on the bus and began asking for proof of vaccination and passports. I felt nervous but they checked my papers (very quickly) and moved on. Before too long, the Austrian troops hopped off the bus and we were back on the road but this time in Austria! After another hour or so, we pulled into Vienna.

Holy smokes we made it! The time was roughly 3:00pm and we had not eaten lunch yet so we were absolutely famished. We had to eat relatively quick because we wanted to make it to a museum before it closed at 5:00pm. Given this, we snagged a quick lunch at the nearby McDonalds. We had to test and see if the McDonalds in Austria tasted different from the McDonalds in America, Hungary and South Korea. As it would turn out, the Big Mac tastes roughly the same here as it has in America, Hungary and Korea.

Ugh. One thing that is really frustrating in Europe is that you have to pay to use the bathrooms everywhere! In Austria, for example, you have to shell out 0.50 euros just to use the bathroom even if you had already bought a meal. If you are planning a visit to Europe, be sure to have plenty of spare change for bathroom breaks.

Anyway, after the McDonalds bathroom fiasco, we hauled buns over to the Heeresgeschichtliches Museum. Forget saying it three times fast, I would be happy to say it one time slowly. This was a museum depicting the military history of Austria. Inside, you found an immense collection (seriously, we could have spent 3+ hours inside) of military weapons, ships, airplanes, tanks, nazi memorabilia and much more. We actually had to rush through the upper levels of the museum because we had spent so much admiring all of the exhibits.

After the museum, we walked to Belvedere Palace. In front of the palace was a beautiful display of rainbows created by some Austrian children. They were collected by an artist and put on display at the entrance of the magnificent palace. It must be so cool to be a child and see your art on display at such a world-famous location. Belvedere itself is marvel all on its own. The palace is absolutely immense and all of the bushes and plants were beautifully manicured. Personally, I enjoyed the symmetry of everything at the palace.

From Belvedere Palace, we walked into the center of town in Vienna. It was good to see a lot of people but it had been so long since I had seen a crowd that it was just a little bit off-putting for me. It wasn't long before we spotted St. Stephens Cathedral. I'm not sure why, but it was much larger than I had anticipated. We even got to walk inside and got to see what the inside looked like.

After the cathedral, we were pretty tired from walking around and decided to give our legs a rest and our minds a little kick at Cafe Central. We each ordered a coffee and enjoyed the live renditions of classical music. To be completely honest, I felt slightly out of place because the coffee shop was incredibly fancy and very high class. I opted to try a traditional Viennese coffee but my taste buds didn't notice a big difference. Together, the two coffees cost us about 12 euros.

Feeling more awake and refreshed we moved on to our hostel which happened to be closely located to the Danube River. We checked in and decided to go to a beach-y place along the river. Here we discovered that Austria had pretty steep prices. There were very limited options food-wise as this was the end of the day. So we ended up opting for some nachos and a burrito bowl. This cost us about 12 euros as well. We also took this opportunity to try some local beers which were 4 euro each.

By the time we finished it was nearly 9:00pm and we felt like it was time to hit the hostel and get a good nights sleep so we could start again early the next morning. We shared our hostel with a friendly guy from Germany. We could have talked more but I think everyone was feeling sleepy and opted instead to climb into our bunks and get some rest.

We were awake and out of our hostel by 8:15 the next morning. We wanted to grab breakfast and arrive at the next museum shortly after they opened at 9:00am. As it turns out, most places in Austria (even cafes and such) do not open until after 9:00am on Sundays. Unfortunately, the only place open was McDonalds. Once again, this turned into an interesting experience. The man working inside McDonalds (there was only one strangely) told us that only a certain type of mask was allowed and the police will give a 30 euro fine for anyone who is caught wearing the wrong type of mask. So, we ended up buying masks from McDonalds because the stores were not open at all on Sundays. Oh well, better to spend one euro on a mask than spend 30 euros for having the wrong kind.

After breakfast we went to Sigmund Freud park. We were hoping to run into something super cool but it turned out to be just a regular park with a stone that depicts his name. From here, we walked to the Austrian parliament building which was under so much construction that you couldn't even see it. We then walked across the street to see the Hofburg theater. This is a very beautiful building and again was much larger than you would expect it to be.

Finally, we reached the Natural History Museum. We had planned to spend about an hour in here but in reality spent more like 3 hours roaming and exploring this massive museum. There were five rooms displaying different kinds of rocks and minerals. Then there were two full rooms dedicated to meteors that had struck Earth. It was very informative but a LOT to take in. They had dinosaur bones and lots of stuffed critters going on for what feels like an eternity. In just about every room they did have a kind of interactive display that would teach you about different exhibits and how they came to be. There were also exhibits on the first men and displayed the scientific evidence for evolution. They showed mans first tools, bowls, weapons and much more! Eventually, the exhibits caught up to modern day and they had some very interesting exhibits demonstrating our impact on the world around us given our culture of consumption.

After the museum, we were hungry for lunch and made our way back to the downtown area in Vienna. We found a place and grabbed lunch. I tried a Weiner Schnitzel which was basically a pork cutlet with halved potatoes. It was really tasty but I had always thought a weiner schnitzel was a kind of hot dog or sausage. I guess you really do learn something new every day.

After lunch we strolled down to a street market. This market had tons of international foods and lots of restaurants. Apparently, there is also a flea market on Saturdays but it was not operating on Sunday. Oh well, maybe next time!

Our last stop was at the Shonbrun Palace. This place was freaking huge! We easily could have spent an entire day strolling through the marvelous gardens and seeing the massive fountains. We were there for a full hour and only saw a fraction of one half of the palace. You could easily spend two to four hours roaming this place.