I had semi-plans for this weekend but nothing was confirmed by Thursday. So I took some initiative and decided to just go somewhere rather than wait for others to make their minds up.
I got on the net and booked some flights to Vienna, Austria. People had told me it is a nice place to go and the flights were relatively cheap at 85 Euro.
I left on Saturday morning, I had to get up at 4:30am to be at the airport by 6:00am as my plane flew out at 7am. I'm getting used to the "get up and go to the airport" routine now.
There wasn't much of a line to check in and also the flight wasn't very full. This is the 4th different airline I have flown with since being in Europe, called Germanwings. They were pretty good. They are a low cost airliner that act kind of like a bus service :-) i.e. you don't get allocated a seat, you just get on-board and sit down. Makes things a bit easier.
The flight went well and only took an hour. So I was in Vienna and on my way to check-in to the hostel at 8:30am! I couldn't check in so I just left my bag in a locker and went into the city.
Up until this time I hadn't seen the city yet, I had been on the underground subway since the airport. My hostel was half an hour out of the city, and an hour from the airport. So it's strange being on a train for an hour and not actually seeing any of the city :)
I stepped out of the subway and saw daylight... it was now about 30 degrees at 9:30am. Wow... is the only way I can explain my first impression of Vienna. The buildings are huge, and extremely old.
You forget that Vienna was once home to the great Austro-Hungarian Empire, and before that the Holy Roman Empire, both of which controlled most of Europe. The city speaks for itself thought with it's grand scale of architecture and the number of monuments erected around the place. Everywhere I walked I was awe struck with the impressiveness of the place.
I got lost at first because you can not see any landmark, wherever you are you are surrounded by at least 4 storied buildings, most of which are hundreds of years old. I eventually found the Info centre and got some map and an idea of what I wanted to do.
I started with a self-guided walking tour where you can see most of the main sites. I ventured off the "directed" path on the map because there were just amaising buildings and sites to see at every turn. The pictures in my gallery show some of the main sites... but I took so many photos.
My favourite site was the cathedral in Karlsplatz.
After walking for several hours, I realised what the time was. I noticed these stands with bicycles locked into them. Me being my nosey self, walked up and investigated. It was a public bike system that cost 1 Euro to register, then taking the bikes was free. The catch was you had to return it to a stand within an hour, but then you could grab another bike. The public transport system in Vienna is just awesome!
So I got on my bike (hehe), then continued my "walking" tour through the city. I got even more distracted because I could now get further quicker. Saw many amasing buildings in the Museum Court and cool little streets everywhere I went. I lost track of the time and realised that it was almost the time a guided tour of the city was taking place... so I cycled back to the info centre (getting lost several times along the way), found a bicycle stand to lock the bike back up, then tried to find the guided tour. I found them, just in time. In fact, I didn't even have to pay because I was late and turned up after the money collection time... oops ;-)
(I think I should write a "dodgy" guide to travelling... because I can see how you can exploit a lot of the systems around Europe, especially public transport)
Anyways, the guided tour was not bad. You didn't get to see too much but learnt a bit about Austrian culture. Why the coffee shops are expensive, and we got a guide around a cool cake shop. I got chatting with a few people on the tour and discussed some of the things we were being shown.
At the end of the guide most of the people said byebye. I was still talking to some Canadians. They said they were heading to the river (because it was f***ing hot) which the guide had told us about. They asked if I wanted to join them.
So off we went to the Alte Donau (the old river that runs through the outskirts of Vienna) it was about 15 minutes from the city by U-Bahn. They had made this little beach on the side of the river and it was a really nice place to sit and have a beer. You had to pay to enter, but it was worth it. So we got chatting and found out about each other. Summary: 2 French-Canadians, Catherine was an English teacher and Caroline was a French teacher, 1 English-Canadian, Ryan who was working for the Canadian Embassy in Serbia. We had a couple of beers to cool down, and the afternoon flew by.
At this stage we were starving, so we went into the city to find somewhere to eat / drink. Ryan lead us to a micro-brewery which he had found in his previous travels to Vienna. I ordered some traditional Austrian food, sausages and sour-crout. Ryan and I worked our way through the various different beers that they brewed there. It was relatively quiet there and we had 4 waitresses to our table... we would constantly have different people coming up to us and getting drink orders... it was great!
The waitresses all spoke English, and one even said she was an American. We were a bit confused because she had a strong German accent. She had been living there for 4 years... but in the end we came to the conclusion, she can't be lying, only an American would ever admit to being an American :-P
At about midnight we decided to call it a night. Ryan was heading back to Serbia in the morning so I swapped contact details with him. The girls and I decided to meet up at the Schönbrunn Palace in the morning.
I headed back to the Hostel to finally check in :-)
I was a little hazy eyed after trying most of the beers on the menu, but found the hostel, unpacked and got into bed at a reasonable hour.
Pretty good first day, and it was still around the high 20's at midnight... just ridiculous.
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