Good Morning Vienna
So, Austrians speak German. Who knew? I had to look that up shortly before going to Vienna for the weekend. I do not speak a lick of German. Guten tag and Danke got me through the weekend. Needless to say, I should learn some German before I head to Berlin and Munich in the upcoming weeks. It is amazing how humbling it is to not speak the local language. I had to get over myself and just say "sorry, I do not speak German." People will generally be fine with it, but you just have to learn how to say it.
I arrived in Vienna (Wein) late. I was just starting to get sick, and I had not gotten any sleep. I took the train and metro to finally get to the hostel at 23:10... And the front desk closed at 23:00. I was shit out of luck. So I rung the doorbell, hoping some resident would come down and let me crash with them, and it turns out that the bell is linked to the owner's cell phone. She had just left the hostel to go home for the night and was in the parking garage across the street. What. She checked me into my room and I got to sleep as soon as I could, only to be woken up by my turkish roommates at 2am.
The city does not wake up too early. At 7:30, no store is open. At 10:00, you might see one or two. At noon, everyone starts to come out into the streets. But that early in the morning, no one is around and the city is wide open. Vienna is one of the most beautiful cities I have ever seen. And the sun was shining! Not quite used to that with Copenhagen and all.
I spent Saturday going from place to place, museum to museum around the city! I saw tons of different churches and made my way all the way across the entire city. It turns out that the Vienna Winter Festival is currently going on so they created a huge ice rink and skating path in the middle of the city. I got to skate around (even though I should very clearly never skate again in my entire life) and it was very fun to stumble on the ice for an hour or so.
The rest of the day was spent travelling around the city freely and seeing the main sights. At night, I tried to go to a ballet while waiting on standby tickets, but they fell through and I was out of plans. Thankfully, I decided to be bold and take a risk! I went over to the hostel room next to mine and introduced myself. There I met Lukas and Danny, from Bulgaria and France. We watched a few episodes of The Office (Steve Carrell is hilarious across the world), then went out to the pubs. We got a few liters of beer and we said our goodbyes because I would be leaving the hostel early in the morning.
In the morning I went out to see Schoenbrunn palace. That was the most specatular garden I have ever seen. The gardens to either side of the palace were very pretty and all, but when you exit to the back of the palace, you are greeted by an absolutely gigantic expanse of gardens. At the back there was a fountain and even beyond that was a hill with even more architecture on top. Hungover Adam hiked to the top and there was a view of the entire city. It was a beautiful day, the sun was shining, and Vienna was magnificent.
