The remainder of the day was spent exploring the area, and especially spending some quality time down in Naschmarkt, a great street market full of amazing food, wine and antique vendors. It was so much fun walking through all the crowded stalls, checking out the variety of food— fish and squid, piles of freshly made bread and cheese and a variety of what seemed like veggie tapas. Pete and I bought some ricotta stuffed cherry tomatoes, olives and artichoke hearts. We had some incredible kebaps, which here are made of doner meat (could be lamb, beef, mutton, or goat) cooked on a vertical spit and sliced off, tomatoes, lettuce and a tsaziki sauce wrapped in a pita-like bread. Since everything came to the market that morning, it was incredibly fresh and delicious. I also had some falafel, intrigued by it since my roommates had raved about it since being in Europe. Falafel is Middle Eastern food, a fried ball or patty made from spiced fava beans or chickpeas. It’s definitely an interesting taste, and when you have it with hummus or some other dressing, it’s absolutely fabulous.
Here's a picture I took offline to show you what doner meat looks like. They just slice it off the spit and put it in your kebap.
Pete enjoying (?) his kebap. Very goofy.
I know I’ve been raving about food a lot lately. I’ve come to realize that a lot about exploring another culture is about going out to eat and trying the native dishes of the country you’re visiting. I have almost as much fun doing that as sightseeing, which may have negative consequences for my weight, but that's ok. Totally worth it. When am I going to get the chance to eat grilled sausages and saurkraut in Austria again? Probably not anytime soon, if ever.
A really cool picture I took walking down the street our hostel was on. New next to old.
When it got dark, Pete and I decided to explore the city by night, taking a walk around the Ringstrasse. The entire old part of the city is surrounded by this beautiful, pedestrian friendly road, where you pass by some of the city's most beautiful buildings. It was finally not raining or snowing, so we took up the opportunity. We stopped at the City Hall building which looked like Cinderella’s castle. During the winter, they have a huge ice skating rink out front that they have decorated to look like a winter wonderland. We missed it by a couple of weeks, though my flatmates were able to see it when they went to Vienna over winter break. Regardless, it was so beautiful, as is the entire city in general.
Part of our nightwalk.
City Hall/Cinderella's castle.
Pete and I on our nightwalk.
We ducked later into a pub we went to our first night in Vienna for a late night snack of pretzel, a couple sausages and a pint. But by that point, I was pretty beat from the traveling and the walking, so we didn’t stay out too long. Plus, knowing we had to do Easter mass the next morning was more incentive not to stay out too late. So we called it a night.
The next morning, we got up early and attended Easter mass at St. Stephen’s Cathedral, right in the heart of Vienna. The inside is absolutely spectacular, and though there were people taking pictures, I still didn’t feel it appropriate to do so. St. Stephen’s is the headquarters of the Roman Catholic Church in Austria, so the Archbishop of Vienna, Christoph Cardinal Schonborn, presided over the mass. What was really cool was that they had a full orquestra and choir singing the songs of Beethoven and Handel throughout the entire mass. Given that I didn’t understand a word that was being said over mass, the whole experience was much more like a concert than an actual service. But we were able to take communion and every once in a while sing “Hallelujah,” say “Amen” and do the sign of the cross, so I guess there was some familiarity. Overall though, kind of cool that you could say you had Easter mass in one of Europe’s largest and oldest cathedrals.
We enjoyed a nice Easter brunch and then checked out a cute Easter market set up in one of the city squares, full of handmade decorated eggs that are hollowed out and you see on people’s Christmas trees a lot. It’s fun to look at crafts at these kind of markets. I know my mom would have loved it.
The little Easter market.
To actually be tourists, I dragged Pete to the Hofburg area, where we went to 3 museums in one, the Silberkammer, the Sisi Museum and the Kaiserappartements. The first is a ridiculously large collection of silverware, place settings, and general lavish table décor that you have no idea what its actual purpose is. Pete and I weren’t so interested in this part, overwhelmed by the sheer gaudiness and amount of it all. It was all used by the Hapsburgs, the famous line of Emperors and Empresses that ruled Austria and Austria-Hungary from the 1300s up until WWI. The Sisi Museum gave us an inside look into the most famous empress, Elisabeth, who was married to Emperor Franz Joseph and lived in the 1800s. Her life has been documented by so many movies, that I guess a specific museum to her was deemed acceptable, or at least a big money maker. The Kaiserappartements are the still decorated rooms from Franz Joseph and Elisabeth when they used the Hofburg Palace area as their summer home. It was all fairly interesting, though Pete and I kind of burned out on the palace thing, since we’ve both seen so much of it. Probably not worth the admission fee to see it all, but I felt good knowing I at least did something really touristy.
Part of the Hofburg
Before I realized you couldn't take pictures, I snapped a shot of a room of golden candlesticks. Pretty extravagant.
The Schonbrunn Palace, another part of the Hofburg area.
In a park in the Hofburg area. It doesn't date back to ancient times, but was still pretty. You can see City Hall in the left of the frame.
The Ringstrasse that we would walk around in the evenings.
We walked around the Hofburg area a little more, enjoying the outdoor gardens and gorgeous buildings. In the evening, we hit up an area called the Bermuda Triangle, full of bars that stay open really late. We bar-hopped around, enjoying live music and each other’s company late into the night. A good way to have our last evening together.
We bought liter steins, which as you can see was huge. But this is the way Austrians, and Germans for that matter, do it, so we tried to be in tune with the culture. Don't worry, we spread the drinking out over a couple of hours.
I left the following afternoon, so just spent the morning laying low and checking out of the hostel. I would go back to Vienna in a heartbeat. It was an absolutely gorgeous city with so much history that I’d like to explore even more. There are so many great public gardens that were just on the verge of blooming that if I could come back in May or June and enjoy the city in nice, non-snowing weather, I definitely would.
It was hard saying good-bye to Pete, as usual. We both realize how lucky we are, to not only be able to study in Europe at the same time, but to be able to travel together. He’s a great travel companion. We always have so much fun wherever we go, which will include Ireland in a week and Spain in a month. It’s going to be a bummer when this is all over and we can’t “plot our conquest” of the foreign countries or be chased around by gypsies or Cape Crusaders any more. Columbia in the fall will be amazing with him, as will the month of July when we’re both in Atlanta.
If I haven’t mentioned it already, I got an internship in Atlanta with a great company for the summer. I’ll be living with Pete’s mom, who has graciously taken me in. Pete won’t be back in the States until early July, but I’m on good terms with his friends, so I know I’ll have a good summer. It’s going to be fun getting to know a new region of the country and getting to know Pete’s friends and family better. I’m a little sad that I’ll have been away from the Midwest and KC for so long, but I do go to school there, so I really can’t complain. And my parents are of course wonderful in being supportive of everything and letting me go off and do my own thing for this semester and the summer. I guess that’s just where I am in life right now, and will be a year from now as well. Pretty scary, but really exciting at the same time.
Busy day today. I’ll need to update you on the past week because some fun stuff has happened, so I’ll do that as soon as possible.
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