Catching up, Part Dva: Wien!

Last week, my friend from Austria informed us all that she had to go home to Vienna for the weekend."How funny!" we all exclaimed. "We have to go home to Vienna too! For...you know...stuff"
Our friend very generously offered to put us up, and put up with us, and we were off to Wien for the weekend!
Unfortunately, I came down with a cold the first day, and so much of the site seeing was a blur. I do recall getting beaned in the head with a snowball, as some of my friends decided to have a snowball fight, but live and let live, I always say.
Just kidding. I totally got back at them.




We arrived at my friend's house after taking the LIRR of Austria at 5 AM, at which point we all promptly went to bed. My friend woke us up six hours later by playing The Blue Danube and other delightful Austrian music and top volume. There is no better way to wake up in the morning. We had a delightful "Austrian brunch" (whatever my friend had in her house- pastries, bread, nutella, the best honey I've ever had, juice), and then started on our way.

We saw a lot of cool buildings that I don't quite recall the names of (downside of being sick was I constantly at the back of the "tour"), although I believe was saw the balcony Hitler spoke on, and the plaza that was filled with thousands of people (my friends very appropriately chose that place to have a snowball fight) listening. My Austrian friend was quick to absolve Austrians of their innocence, and informed us that most Austrians actually wanted Hitler in power. Fun.

We also tried to get to a lot of museums, but unfortunately, the Euro is strong and the dollar is not, so it would have cost ridiculous amounts of money to visit museums for short periods of time. So we did the next best thing- gift shops! Good fun, those. We also saw the huge palace with big sculptures in front of it.

We went back to my friend's house, where I took some delightful German cold medicine and went to sleep. We woke up the next morning and had our second giant Austrian brunch.

My friend packed all ten of us into her car and drove us up the hill near her house to see the view of Vienna. It turns out that though the hills may be alive with randomly appearing sledding Austrians (more on that later), Austrians don't know The Sound of Music. It wasn't even filmed in Austria! Not that that stopped us from referring to our friend as Captain, a covert reference to good old Captain Von Trapp.

Vienna is beautiful! So many gorgeous buildings and statues and adorable little coffee shops. And delicious pastries. Mmmm, Mozart has the best dessert named after him. Here in Prague, there's even a drink named after him. It's called Mozart Dessertdrink. It's nougat, chocolate, and marzipan, in drink form. Which is basically amazing.

 

Mozarttorte

 Mozart is everywhere in Vienna.

Including with our friend!

We ate our delicious Mozart themed pastries, and then wandered Vienna for a little before deciding to eat in an Australian themed bar/restaurant.
I never said we were normal.
Anyway, there was cricket, and ostrich, and crocodile, and kangaroo! I avoided the ostrich because it was unkosher, the cricket because it was gross, and the croc because I didn't feel like it, but I tried the kangaroo. Tastes like steak.

 

I am a horrible person.

 

Also present were onion rings and french fries. Mmmm, french fries.

We then went to our host's favorite shot bar, where we proceeded to do as the Austrians do and drink many shots. Oh, younger drinking ages. How entertaining you are.

We arrives back at our host's home, drunken messes (I kid, I kid. Well, not all of us were drunken messes), several hours later.

We awoke to yet another delicious Austrian brunch, and a bunch of us decided we wanted to go sledding on the Austrian hill in the Austrian snow. So our host went through her family's old snow pants, and came up with some serious gems.

 

Yup, that's yours truly in a fuschia one piece snowsuit.

We went sledding, and it was excellent fun, even if after a half hour we couldn't feel our toes. Throughout the hour we were out, Austrians kept randomly showing up in front of us. Behind us was woods, so we couldn't quite figure out where they came from, but they were showing up. Those crazy Austrians.

After drying off, we boarded a bus back to Praha, and were on our way.

Vienna was gorgeous, but there's something to be said for the Czech Crown. Mainly that it's 18.5 Czech crowns to the dollar and a beer here is ridiculously good for only 30 crown.

As our host's boyfriend said, when asked what a Euro looks like: "It looks like about a buck fifty". Not as much fun.

But still, Vienna was great and it would be fun to get to go back.