This past weekend, I made a trip to another new-to-me destination, Vienna, where I was able to stay with a former classmate from Yale, Georgi. Georgi had always talked about getting people to visit his home country of Bulgaria, so it was a decent consolation to visit him in another Eastern European country. Yes, that's right - Eastern European! I had always thought of Austria as part of Western Europe, but as you can see here, Vienna is actually further east than Prague, and just minutes up the Danube from Bratislava in Slovakia.
Vienna, of course, has been much more developed than other Eastern European nations throughout time. Outside the reach of communism, plus being the seat of the Austro-Hungarian empire, allowed Vienna to always be one of the leading cities of Europe. That said, I have to say that my visit to Vienna was not quite what I expected. Vienna was a very nice city, but I admit that I had expected something more "grand". The city of classical music, opera, the Habsburgs, Ed Norton in The Illusionist - I thought the city would be full of that old, classic European architecture that we tourists love. Instead, I found that wherever the Kaiser's reach extended, those buildings were of incredible grandeur. Outside of the Kaiser's reach, to be honest, kind of reminded me of the former communist cities that I have visited in the past (Budapest, Krakow) - kind of drab, bland generic architecture, and housing of low quality by Western standards.
However, despite the downer of a description, on to the good stuff! Vienna was still weekend full of eating (especially desserts), and visits to the former palaces of the Habsburgs.
Fancy Buildings
It's sad to think, but all the really great, grand buildings that we see across Europe will never be repeated. All the effort and time that went into constructing the buildings, but more importantly, all the money that went into them, will never be duplicated. What government would be willing to set aside all that money these days, just for a building? Perhaps China, but they would probably build a modern building.
St. Stephen's Cathedral. This was the very first touristy thing I ran into in Vienna. It was bombed out during WWII, but they re-built the roof from all the damage the pesky Americans and Russians caused.
This is an example of a former Habsburg palace that was turned into a museum. Pretty much all the former palaces house some sort of museum now - this one, art (kind of like how the Louvre used to be the French monarchy's palace).
The gate into the Kaiser's royal grounds
I am not sure what this church is, but Georgi and I came across it at night, on the way to the Russian WWII memorial and it looked amazing in the dark.
The National Library. It used to be the private library of someone in the monarchy, and these days it's just a museum about the evolving reach of the Austro-Hungarian empire. Despite it's name, you cannot check out any of the books - only look at them sitting on the shelves.
The roof of the National Library
The Belvedere museum. Yet another former palace turned art museum.
Parliament. Congressional Hill doesn't even compare.
City Hall! A stark contrast to the bland city halls of the US.Food
I really liked the food in Vienna. Plain and simple but hearty, lots of desserts, and lots of beer.
For some reason, it never occurred to me that wiener schnitzel was from Vienna. Perhaps it was because I never knew the real name of Vienna was actually Wien. For those animal lovers out there, this is actually a pork schnitzel. I didn't go for the veal, which cost 5 extra euros.
Mmmm...roasted pork with some mushy sauerkraut-like thing with some mushy stuffing ball. I had no idea what I was eating, but it was good, traditional Austrian food.
The Nachtmarkt is an island in the middle of a long street, full of food vendors and restaurants. I snapped this picture right before the guy said "no pictures", but I told him I wanted to buy a pickle so he was all nice after that. He even gave me an extra free spicy pickle.
This is some sort of Hungarian doughnut. The dough is rolled into a long strip, wrapped around a wooden roller, then cooked over a spit. When you eat it, the dough coil unravels. Really cool!
Coffee break with Georgi. At this point, I had already eaten so much dessert, I kind of didn't want to eat any more.Weird Statues
Vienna, in its Austro-Hungarian splendor, has lots of statues. Many of naked ladies (I began to think these statues were the 18th century rich peoples' version of pornography), but overall lots of really "interesting" statues.
This was outside of the gates to the Kaiser's compound. I am not sure if that guy is really scared of that topless woman, or perhaps she has really bad B.O. coming from that raised arm.
I noticed a few Viennese statue themes: 1. topless women. 2. Animals. 3. Little boys/angels riding animals. This statue combines all three.
Homo-erotic statue at the Kaiser's gates. Quite brutal that the guy on the right is about to bash in the head of the guy on the ground.
Lots of horse-punching statues around. It's supposed to be a way of breaking down a wild horse. However, Georgi (who loves horses) saw an error in this statue - the horse had horseshoes, something a horse would never have unless it was tamed. Thus, this is just a statue of animal abuse.
More naked ladies again, but these statues reveal another theme: large men beating the hell out of other men/strange creatures.
Even geese are able to be ridden. They must have been bigger a few hundred years ago.Protests
Vienna was full of protests that weekend - two official, one by my friend. They all occurred on the same day, Sunday, which must be the official day for protests in Vienna. Hu Jintao, the premier of China also happened to be in town my final day. There were no protests that day, due to the fact that the police had shut down every possible area that one could protest (or a tourist would want to visit), and that in general people are pretty nice to China these days because they have all the money.
Free Tibet. Also some Falun Dafa people. These people are everywhere. The police didn't really care, though - there were only a handful around, not doing anything.
The Turkish community had a huge protest. Nobody knew about what, but there were hundreds of them, they were loud, and they looked like they were about to break stuff. Tons of police in riot gear everywhere.
It was Bulgarian Presidential elections, too. Here Georgi's own little protest. It's in Cyrillic, but you can probably figure out that last word.Random Vienna
A cheeky ad I saw at the airport.
The old and the new mixed in together in Vienna.
The ferris wheel in the Prater - a Viennese icon. Apparently, it was in a James Bond film. I still didn't recognize it.
Children's maze. If I were three feet tall, this would have been awesome.
Some of the industrial buildings were disguised with art. We believe this is the building for Vienna's heating company. I like the blood that streams down the external facade of the building.
This is one of those really cheap cars that East Germany used to make. The body is made of some paper material mixed in, so it can actually start to fall apart if rainwater is too acidic. Georgi also said that if you wanted to steal the car, you can either just kick a hole in the door, or just reach underneath the car and pull the cord to the door locking mechanism.
Vienna had lots of these weight scales on the street. For 20 euro cents, you can find out your weight. This one was nicely placed next to a junk food ad.
A flak tower - one of three that the Nazi's built in Vienna, and one of the few that the Nazi's built in Nazi-occupied territory, to help shoot down bombers. They flak towers were positioned in a triangle to create a safe-zone from Allied bombers. This one is not being used, but another was turned into the Vienna aquarium.Lastly, this group was my favorite street performers. They did an excellent rendition of the Last of the Mohicans song (I kept thinking about Daniel Day Lewis running through the streets of Vienna, chasing a deer). However, that clip was too large to post, so here's an alternate.
Looked like a fun trip. No pictures of Georgi!
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