Before John came over on Friday, some of the other students in our apartment building hosted an early, Wednesday night Halloween party after most of us had finished all our finals. The party was a complete success, and very luckily was never busted by the police. I say this, because Vienna has a 10 o’clock quiet hour rule – city wide! That means also that all practice room facilities are of course, closed by 10! Most Viennese go out to restaurants, bars, and clubs to parties, and house parties are actually much less common here in Vienna. Which of course makes it a bit easier to experience the culture here! None the less, we Americans still love our house parties, so that’s what we had on Wednesday night. For the real Halloween, I did however go out with John, so that was fun too!
Also before John came over, on Thursday night I went with some friends to see Pierre Boulez conduct Mahler’s third symphony with the help of the Vienna Philharmonic and…the Vienna Boy’s Choir! Oh, it was wonderful! Overall I think Boulez took it a little slower than the piece should go, but hearing that piece in the Musikverein is a wonderful experience!
Day 1, John arrives:
Westbanhoff station on Friday morning.
John got here mid-morning, but didn’t get much sleep on the train, so he went to sleep for a bit while I made a few errands. Upon the afternoon, I took John out to walk around a little bit of the city, starting with the Naschmarkt. Since John was also an IES abroad student, I showed him our facilities in Vienna (The original IES facility in fact!) and then I practiced for a bit while he biked around the city. John apparently got the experience of trying to buy apple juice and instead got sparkling apple – even after I warned him this would happen.
On our way home we tried to find costumes, but the shops had just closed (6 PM) so we just picked up some makeup at a local Bipa store. Then we went home and made some Korean food together – bibimbap. Mmmm, tasty!
All the ingredients for Bibimbap
My costume for Friday night.
After dinner we dressed up and went out to a Viennese club with a few friends for Halloween (Vienna has apparently just started celebrating Halloween 5 or so years ago). Vienna University was also sponsoring a Halloween party at the Museums Quarter, but it supposedly had too many people (ie, no one could get in until others had left) so we headed off to the club that was recommended by IES.
The club turned out to be great – there was a center room/bar with three rooms tangent to the center one. We checked out each room of course, the first being the bar with numerous hired dancers in Halloween outfits. We met a few others from our school in this first room. The next room was the main dance floor, playing mostly techno music (not a surprise at all here in Europe) and oddly with a very slick, almost as if wet, floor. I almost fell once or twice as we danced here. Lastly, the third room was another bar with a bit more space for dancing that was playing almost entirely American music. As we walked into the bar we got to hear a dance version of “Country Roads” with all of the Austrians singing together “Country roads take me home to the place I belong, West Virginia…” Seemed a little ironic, but we stayed here for another half hour or more singing along and dancing to American songs. We even got a few Austrians to dance with us as we basically took over the floor (at one point even the Macarena was played…).
A group of us at the club on Friday
Day 2
•After a very long night, John and I did not wake up until it was afternoon. So we left the house to pick up some food to cook and came back in to make an afternoon breakfast of omelets, toast, and a cinnamon roll. Got into a deep conversation about the problems with and purpose of stereotyping (among several other topics) and realized that the sun was already setting! The sun starts to go down by 4 in the afternoon (or do we call it evening now?) and it is dark by 5!
So we decided to go see an Opera – The Marriage of Figaro – at the Volksoper. Unfortunately, once we got there we discovered that standing room tickets were sold out! The ushers at the Opera House were relaxed enough that it looked like we could sneak in and sit down without buying tickets, but we decided to be good citizens and not do this, so instead we left to visit Prater Park.
Along the way, when we switched from the U-Bahn train system to the S-Bahn, we stopped by Millennium City – the newest and most modern shopping mall in Vienna. It was interesting because hundreds and hundreds of people were here even though no stores were open! After a few minutes of walking through the mall we discovered why: In the middle of the mall is a movie theater complex, many many restaurants and bars, arcades, pool and bowling, gambling, and more. So we hung out here for about 30 minutes, maybe an hour, just walking around and playing a few games. The cool thing about stopping here is that there obviously were very few tourists here so it was a closer look into the young Viennese culture. Also, as I mentioned before, the Austrians go out to party more than they have house parties, so Millennium City was pretty darn busy tonight.
After Millennium City we hopped on the S-Bahn (after some more confusion) and went to Prater Park, the amusement park that sits just beside the Danube river on the East of the city. We had fun checking out a few rides – which was an interesting experience because not many people were riding the rides at this point in the night, so we got to ride roller coasters by ourselves, as well as this very awesome ride that spins you around at almost 100 miles per hour! It felt extremely wrong for the both of us to see the earth from so high up, and to see it completely upside down. The ride made it feel not like we were upside down but that the world was upside down! Here are two pictures I took of some friends riding it a couple months ago – I didn’t bring my camera with me tonight!
This ride was extremely tall...and even faster.
My friends on the same ride, in early September
After trying our rides, we walked around the park a little, and then ended up paying 2 euros to jump on some trampolines for 5 minutes. Seemed like a silly thing to do before we discovered that these were some serious trampolines! They sent us flying like no other trampolines I have ever been on, and it was an interesting feeling when I felt a complete loss of balance while in the air. After 5 minutes, both of us were extremely tired.
After the Prater fun we headed back into the city to check out a restaurant I had been to earlier this week. Just a few blocks north of Stephansdom and Mozart’s house, was a restaurant that existed in an old wine cellar. This means that to eat we walked down several flights of stairs, into a place that looks like it had hardly changed since the Medieval times! I ordered a Wiener Schnitzel (Vienna’s symbol of diet) and John ordered Beef Goulash. While we each found our meals alright, we both found the other’s meal quite appetizing so we switched halfway though. To drink we both had Sturm, which was a bit different at this restaurant than what I normally find in stores but was still quite good – and it’s unique flavor caused me to like it a bit more too.
After dinner and another long discussion keeping us there for a few hours (in restaurants here the waiters never try to get you to leave to make space for more customers) we headed back home – although not before an Austrian came up to John to compliment him on his Obama pin. If there was an election for the American President in Europe – I am pretty darn sure Obama would win, he sure is popular over here!
Day 3:
Today I got up quite a bit earlier, and got to work on updating my blog, facebook, and doing some homework before John got up and while he was out for a jog. By the time it was noon, I was eating my third meal of the day (leftover bibimbap) and then we headed off for the Schönbrunn Palace.
Schönbrunn Palace
First thing first, the Schönbrunn Palace is HUGE! Looking at a map, almost the entire inner city of Vienna could fit inside the grounds and gardens of Schönbrunn! We couldn’t figure out where to go, so we just followed the groups of tourists and were awestruck at the magnificence of the gardens!
At Schönbrunn
One of the games in a labrynth at Schönbrunn
After walking partway into the gardens, we decided to pay about 2 euro to enter the labyrinth mazes/gardens/playgrounds. It was totally worth it – there was a playground that was tons of fun (although yes, it was made for kids). Still there were a number of others about our age as well as adults looking at themselves in the distorted mirrors and such. Then we tried our skills in the mazes, starting in opposite directions in the largest maze and finding that after many wrong turns we met up again just before the end and tied (yes, we were competing). Each of the mazes took about 15 minutes to find our way to the end, and two of them included little puzzles that we spent a bit more time solving.
After mastering the math puzzle with a group of about 10 other confused tourists standing around. To be fair, John though of the strategy for it first. Go teamwork!
Looking into the fun mirrors.
Finally, after probably 2 hours of playing, we decided to walk the rest of the way to the top of Schönbrunn to overlook the palace (and as we found out, to overlook a good portion of Vienna! Unfortunately it was a bit hazy and cloudy, but the view was still phenomenal. Also, near the top we happened to run into two German girls while we were taking pictures. We walked around and talked with the girls for another 30 minutes, went to see some Emus (quite entertaining) and then went to eat a late lunch/early dinner with them.
John and I with the two girls we met from Germany.
After parting with the two girls, we tried to see the Belvedere, but it turned out the gardens had closed about an hour earlier. Oh well… So we biked through the city and eventually back home, but not before coming across this strange setup of dishes that turned out to be in preparation of a performance that concerned nothing other than the American Elections! We met more pro-Obama Germans and Austrians both at Schönbrunn and here in front of the dishes. I’ll have to check this out on Tuesday to see what it is about.
So in the end, while we slept in late once, showed up to a sold out opera, and tried to see the Belvedere after it closed, the weekend was still a very long one, filled certainly with some great memories and good loooong talks (yes, I needed the extra few o’s of course)! Take care John, see you next year, and I wish you the best on your time in Paris!
Looking at Schönbrunn from behind/under the statues.
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