Vienna
We're in Bohemia Bagel in Prague, last day here and we're braving the night train tonight to get to Krakow, 9.20pm from Prague staion, arriving at 5.55am. Yippee! I am seriously abusing their "bottomless coffee" policy and now have energy to update the blog again, yay for caffeine! Linsey is adding titles to as many of the photos as she can just now so some explanations for some of the more obscure ones should be on there shortly!
Anyway more on Prague later- Vienna! Beloved of Midge Ure, and also good place for the lovers of coffee. We got there on the train at about 3pm, it was sunny and nice and after 4 or 5 days of sogginess and rain it fel good to pack away the umbrella. We went to tourist info in the station and got a map fom the friendly lady, found the "Happy Hostel" where we were booked in, and it was just round the corner, so we walked round and checked in to our room which had a kitchen and eclectic Viennese decor. We headed out and jumped on the metro to the centre of town, popping out at St. Stephens Cathedral. We went to the first place we found to get somehing to eat, and it was very good, very rich Austrian meaty stuff. Yum.
So we came out, armed with the guidebook and headed for the area known as the bermuda triangle, os so many people disappear into the collecion of bars and clubs packed into it. We went to a low key style bar place first, all red and reasonably dimly lit, where we had a couple of drinks and I almost fell asleep. Linsey woke me up, and we went to the next bar - Cactus Bar, I think it was called, the bar was about 3 people deep and full of the local 16 year olds, so we had one drink and moved on to a low key bar with minimalist black and white decor for a drink, and then on to a place called Kitsch. It was the most dimly lit bar Ive ever been into in my life, only a few little candles in red jars, the barman talked us into doubles and we managed to find our way back to the bar a couple more times before we headed out to find the next place - an Austrian karaoke bar! We got another couple of drinks, and by that time we were full of dutch courage, the locals were doing the Michael Jackson Karaoke Marathon, so we enjoyed renditions of "Earth Song" and "We are the world" whilst singing along drunkenly at the bar.... it was beautiful!
Anyway, we thought we'd keep the British side up, and entered ourselves for the Beatles "I saw her standing there". It came up on the screen much sooner than we had expected and we hauled ourselves up on to the stage for a fantastic rendition of the song, complete with air guitar over the instrumentals. It ended far too soon and we headed back to our seats at the bar to rapturous applause from all(possible exaggeration). The reception boistered us a bit and so we decided to put ourselves up for "rock and roll music" too, but before we performed we enjoyed Flashdance and "Wind of Change" by the scorpions, which went down a storm with the locals - lighters waving in the air and us singing along at the bar yet again. Amazing. Rock and Roll music didnt quite get the reception it deserved, but we were happy and went back to finish off our drinks before heading out for more adventure.
The next bar we went into (we werent at our best by that point) looked strangely full of scantily clad women as we walked in, and it was only when a lady told us that Linsey wasnt allowed in that we realised it was a lapdancing place. Anyway, we exited pretty quickly and headed homewards, grabbing a hotdog on the way (hotdog sausage had cheese and mustard built in! fantastic!) but we seriously underestimated the distance and ended up walking a good couple of miles back, although the walk was broken up a bit by the opera toilet, where you can listen to Mozart whilst relieving yourself, and the number of stars on the pavement with famous Austrians hand and footprints in them. We took a photo of Linz with the Gerhard Berger one, and to be honest, we didnt recognise any of the others we saw.
Next morning, Linsey went out to get some breakfast while I woke up breifly and went back to sleep. She bought bread, jam, oranje juice, harobo sweets and some sort of after eight mints. She also had a sneaky milkshake from the local McDonalds that she told me about later out of guilt for not getting me one!
We ate the brekky of minty chocolate and Linsey fell asleep for a bit. Then we got up and organised getting some laundry done. Ive never appreciated clean clothes as much as I do now. You dont want to know how many days Ive had to wear the same underwear, seriously, you dont.
So that was organised, and we headed off to the Reisenrad, a historic big wheel with an accompanying historic exhibition on a pointlessly revolving floor which just served to disorient us in our mildly hungover states. We went on the wheel and took a few pictures that you can see on the photo site, it was quite cool, you could see all of Vienna from the top. After we rotated back down to ground level we decided to head off to the museum quarter, which we found and had a sandwich at. We both wanted to go to the museum that houses Klimt's "The Kiss" and so we got on a tram towards it. Unfortunately it was the wrong tram, we noticed after we realised we were heading into the suburbs of Vienna - possibly towards Salzburg, and so we got off and took the opposite tram back to where we started. Then we got on another tram and were reasonably confident until we started to see street names that werent on our map. A kindly Austrian bloke must have recognised our expressions and told us we were on the wrong tram. We love the trams we do. So we got off and went back past everything we had just seen (lots of big impressive buildings including the Vienna opera house) and finally managed to get of at the right stop outside the museum. It was a beautiful building set in fantastic gardens and we headed inside to find a brilliant exhibition on the history of Austria and in particular, its wartime history. It was fascinating and included the bloodstained shirt of Franz Ferdinand next to the two guns his assassin had used. It was great, had a long Austrian flag along which the timeline of the exhibition was based, running from room to room. We sat and looked at "The Kiss" for quite a while, its much wider than I expected, and fantastic to see up close.
Then we walked out into the gardens and had a stroll about, where we saw some jackdaws dropping snails off the top of the building in order to crack their shells so they could munch on the snaily goodness. yum!
So.....we got on the right tram back into town and jumped off it when we saw a stand at the side of the road selling pizza slices. We ordered a couple and a drink then realised we didnt have enough money, so I had to run around looking for a bank for a while, then we stood and ate them whilst watching the world go by.
We headed back up the main street - to the Museum of Music, we found a flier for it in our hostel and it looked quite interesting..... it had loads of crazy "make your own Bjork" sort of sound effect machines which involved waving your hands around or running back and forward pressing buttons. It also had a cool bit where you could be the virtual conductor of the Vienna philharmonic, so we both had a shot (pictures of Linsey doing that in the photo bit too!) It didnt give you long enough to do the entire piece though, so my conductor fantasies were cut a bit short.
There was a room with the ultimate sound system in it, playing the best sounding recorded music I've ever heard, it was some sort of high end 7.1 surround system with big subwoofers and we promised each other that when we become millionaires we're getting one just like it!
A few of the "bang this or slide it to make a weird noise" thingummys didnt work which was a bit dissapointing, and some of the stuff was so far onto the obscure side of avant-garde that even Bjork would have got a headache, but all in all it was great fun.
After that we wandered aimlessly for a while around Vienna, went to an internet cafe to book a place to stay in Prague, then got the tube home, but ended up getting off at the wrong station. We walked the rest of the way back to the hostel and watched an Austrian puppet sponge music show before falling asleep. Got up in the morning, packed our bags and got to the wrong railway station with an hour or so to spare. We realised we were at the wrong station, ran out to get a tram , and managed to get to the right station with about 15 minutes to go, we used that time to buy a couple of subway sandwiches from a man who had relatives in Newcastle and had visited Edinburgh once. He gave us free crisps which I ate on the train whilst Linsey was asleep! cheese flavour they were..... yum.
Prague next, Linseys writing it up as I type......see you all soon!
posted by Enid Blyton @ 11:35 PM
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