Update --
We are returned from our rainy, windy, cold, and snowy trip to Bratislava and Prague. Bad weather notwithstanding, we had fun and, while we maybe didn't get to see Prague in all its glory, it was still worth the visit. Perhaps we'll stop by for a day on our way back from another trip sometime.
I think we have another short break in early May (school testing) and so we are looking for what we can get to either quickly or cheaply...both would be great but that is probably not gonna happen. Update upon the update...we found a round trip flight to Brussels, Belgium for roughly $60 for the both of us..so off to Brussels and Amsterdam we go.
Oh, and the Palinka Festival is this weekend in Gyula -- so it will be nice to not have to deal with buses and trains for once. However, it is illegal for us to ride our bikes after drinking so we will probably be walking quite a bit. It is not illegal to ride our bikes after eating a crapload of pork type foods, though.
And, we are going to Kecskemét (Ketch ka mate)Hungary this weekend. All of this traveling has made us want a vacation!
Ok, on to the blog...
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With the Kolbasz Festival behind us, we packed our bags and set out for Vienna on a Sunday in late October. It was our first international trip and our second major European city to visit after Budapest. We had really only taken one long train ride (Eger) and were just getting used to how the trains worked in general so this was, again, a major task for us. The idea of "getting there is half the fun" does not really apply for our early travels in Europe.
First, we loaded ourselves, two shoulder bags, and two pieces of luggage on a bus in Sarkad. Upon arriving in Gyula we walked the twenty minutes to the train station and crossed our fingers that we got on the right train to Bekescsaba (we did...we have only taken the wrong train once our whole time here and, outside of the time inconvenience, it wasn't a big deal). From Bekescsaba, we took a direct train to Budapest.
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| Inside Keleti Train Station, Budapest |
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| Outside Keleti |
It probably wouldn't be a shock to anyone if I said that we had no real idea of where to go at this point. We had about 2 hours to catch our bus to Vienna on the other side of town. We knew that we could walk there if we had to...but it was time to try and figure out the tram/subway systems. We also had a secret weapon in our resident expert on all things Budapest, Bernardo.
Taking time out of his busy schedule (which seems to consist of drinking coffee and playing snooker), Bernardo met us at the train station and all but held our hands getting us to our bus. We did stop for a quick coffee along the way though.
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| Bernardo, Melissa, and me |
A tram and a subway ride later...or was it a subway and tram? Oh well, we made it. I am also happy to say that by the end of our New Year's Eve trip to Budapest we had figured most of this out by ourselves...which helped since we had to find our way to the airport for our Rome trip and catch another bus for our Prague trip. Our upcoming trip to Belgium should be no problem...famous last words and all that.
Anyway, we said our goodbyes and thanked Bernardo and hopped on our bus to Vienna.
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Orangeways and Student Agency buses are not bad ways to travel around Central Europe
Cheap and not too uncomfortable |
It's about 3 hours from Budapest to Vienna by bus. I think it cost 70 bucks round trip or something very close to that. I'm always excited to see new stuff even if it's by bus or train, but the trip was fairly uneventful (because he always falls asleep--Melissa). We watched a movie (the last Fockers movie) on the bus (but made a mental note of which seats we wanted if we ever did a bus trip again because 1) it was subtitled, 2) we were too far away from the front screen, and 3) both had a bit of a stiff neck from craning to look at the screen up and to our left). That sounds petty, but maybe I'm the only person that is addicted to subtitles. I can't look away. I could be riding by the Taj Mahal and if Wild Hogs was playing with subtitles I would be staring at the screen. It's like trying to fall asleep to Pop-up Videos.
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| On our way to Vienna |
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| Meliss was most happy about the sanitary conditions in the bathrooms at the gas station break we had |
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| Took this for Rick Sims (cause I hate him). He asked me to bring him back a pair of wooden shoes from Hungary, so I assumed he thought there were windmills here too. |
We made it to Vienna at around 7 PM (clocks were turned back the night before and that added to our stress level for the trip). All we had to do now was find our hotel. Easy enough, I had printed directions from the bus drop off to our hotel. I figured that walking about 45 minutes to our hotel in the evening wasn't a bad idea because the route took us right thru Vienna's town center. So, off we went.
And went...
And went....
We were lost...again. Look, in our defense, none of the European streets are straight. You start off on one street and it veers and branches into a dozen others...and we are idiots. We at least had the Danube River to keep us in check, except that in Vienna the Danube splits into three parts. So when we stopped to ask directions, after we had walked for about ten minutes and realized it wasn't very crowded and/or pretty, and the guy told us that the Danube was "that way," he was talking about a different Danube than we were.
After about 40 minutes of walking, we stopped to ask another guy for directions (which was getting harder to do since there were no people around). We showed him our map and asked him if he could show us where we are on our map. His response, "you're not on this map."
Taxi!
Our first taxi ride in Europe and for only 15 Euros we were dropped off at our hotel. Taxi guy was nice, spoke some English, and didn't drive like a maniac or anything. And, we made it!
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| The Hotel Fürst Metternich |
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Lobby of the Hotel Fürst Metternich
Looks great, except for the luggage! |
And our room...
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| Very nice and comfy. |
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| This was a nice hotel -- bathrooms are just small wherever you go. |
The hotel had a very comfortable feeling and, most importantly, it felt clean. By the time we got there it had been almost a 12 hour travel day for us. All we wanted was to dump our crap off, go have a drink, call it a night and be ready to see Vienna when we woke up. That didn't happen exactly.
As the cab driver explained to us, our hotel was less than a block from one of the major shopping districts in Vienna, Maria Hilfer Street, and, as such, there were plenty of restaurants and pubs from which to choose.
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| Big, naked, mural guy was our landmark. Right or left was Maria Hilfer Street. |
We popped into one of the first places (didn't want to get too far away after already having been lost) and had a beer.
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| It was good and allowed us to decompress a bit. |
Afterwards, we headed back to the hotel but stopped to have dinner...
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We split it.
Awesomeness though. They drill a hole in the buns, fill that hole with mustard and slide a hot dog into it.
The buns were tremendous |
We walked along Maria Hilfer for a bit, alternating bites of our frankenfurter, and then went to the hotel. As we walked in, we saw a sign for "The American Bar" that was part of our hotel so we had to check it out. It was our first introduction to the prices of Vienna. Holy Shit! Budapest is not like this!
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| 10 Euros is about 15 bucks...also notice the wodka drinks -- yes, wodka. |
The beer prices were about the same...this was like drinking at Busch Stadium! Speaking of St. Louis, as we were looking at, and taking pictures of, this menu we overheard a guy a few places over say something like "you know, that big park in St. Louis." Meliss just blurted out, "Forest Park!"
And just like that, we had made a new friend -- heretofore to be known as St. Louis Bob. This is one of those things that is strange about traveling. If this hadn't happened, we would have gone to bed and gone about our business the next day. As it was, St. Louis Bob gave us a tour of the exciting night life of Vienna.
Come to find out, he ran a bed and breakfast in some part of south St. Louis County ( he told us, I forgot what it was) but had spent several years in Vienna previously due to business. In any event, we bonded quickly over the Cardinals (just had won the World Series...do Cub fans ever get this treatment...I guess suffering is enough of a bond) and he paid for our drinks and that made us happy.
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| Us & St. Louis Bob |
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First off, my favorite sweatshirt was a a bit out of place in this bar...and Vienna.
Second, I drank absinthe.
Third, it was on fire
Fourth, once the fire was out it tasted like black licorice...which I hate.
Fifth, I didn't pay for it. |
After a few cocktails, St. Louis Bob took us to the streets for some real Viennese food. Right down the road from the hotel was yet another food cart (by the way, I love food carts). St. Louis Bob bought like 4 servings of random food for us to sample. It was much appreciated!
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| Free food after free drinks...yep, we're in for that! |
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Yes, I made Meliss take a picture of the menu.
Yes, that was because it had bratwurst dick on it.
Yes, I am a child. |
If it helps for you to understand how our evening went from here on out, the guy in the red coat standing next to me and St. Louis Bob in the above picture spoke very little English, but came with us as we bar hopped around the area. His name was Harry. I know nothing else about him.
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| Later, I drank this. |
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| And maybe this? Honestly don't know why we have a picture of this...but that's my hand! |
St. Louis Bob bought all our drinks and paid for all our food that night. We also went to some out of the way pubs and got some local flavor -- mostly because St. Louis Bob was in love several bartenders.
By the end of the evening, we had made plans with St. Louis Bob (who was staying in our hotel) to take a segue tour of the city, have dinner each night, and maybe a helicopter tour, but...we never saw him again.
He was like some magical Viennese Santa Claus! Anyway, here's to St. Louis Bob and our first night in Vienna.
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| Hip Hip Hooray! |
Suffice it to say that we awoke the next day around 11 or so. It also happened to be Halloween. Anyway, we headed off with the plan of spending the afternoon at the Hapsburg Estate and Museum Quarter and then to Prater Amusement Park in the evening. Most of us have heard of the Austro-Hungarian Empire...as far as U.S. History goes discussion of the Hapsburgs usually begins and ends with the assasination of the Archduke Franz Ferdinand and the start of WWI. However, in Vienna and, most of Europe, the Hapsburg Dynasty meant a whole lot more.
It's heyday was probably the reign of Maria Theresa in the mid to late 1700's. Maria Theresa birthed 17 children, two of which became emperors of the Holy Roman Empire and one was none other than Marie Antoinette. So, yeah I guess pretty powerful. Personally, we always heard and read about how wealthy and powerful the kings and queens of Europe were, but to see some of this stuff was truly amazing...and a little sad.
Anyway, to tie it all back in, one of her other children was Franz Ferdinand's grandfather and that's where we pick it up in the history books. By the way, if you are a reader I would say that a good book on Maria Theresa would be up your alley.
So, we made it to the Hapsburg Estate. This was once their living quarters but is now full of museums. Hopefully these pics do it some justice but it's absolutely massive.
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| Maria Theresa statue in Heroe's Square...or Heidenplatz...or the place Hitler gave a speech to a crowd of over 100,000 cheering Austrians when he took over Austria in 1938 (the Anschluss) | | | | | | | | | | | |
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| Museum of something or other on the right side of the square, there is an almost identical building on the other side of the square which is the Natural History Museum. We did go in the latter...not the former. |
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| Meliss at base of Maria Theresa Statue |
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| Another pic of the museum on the right...whatever it was - there were a lot of museums in Vienna |
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| Front of Maria Theresa |
This square filtered into the actual estate portion of the Hapsburgs ut we couldn't get in that day because some bigwig was there (who we saw leaving by expensive car caravan and helicopter escort). So we walked along the outside and slipped into the garden area down the road a bit.
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| The square feeds into this thing thru which you can reach the actual estate, we couldn't on this day. |
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| Streets of Vienna and a sign for the Albertina..we went to that museum a few days later |
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| Outside the square |
In the garden were lots of statues and such.
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| Some guy with a sweet moustache! |
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| Mozart | | | | | | | | | |
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| Opera House down the road |
After our plan to go to the Estate failed, we just walked along the road looking at stuff
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| A lot of traffic -- but the Vienna Market on the left... |
Eventually, we wound our way back to the center of town dominated by St. Stephen's Cathedral...and a bunch of high-falutin' shops.
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| Main walking street in Vienna |
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| St. Stephen's at night |
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| An orb!!!! There be ghosts here! Yes, we only included this because of the orb...the pic below is better of the front. |
We stuck to our plan and headed off to the Prater Amusement Park. As the clocks just changed, it was only like 6 PM but felt much later. We watched "The Third Man," an old Orson Welles film (as opposed to all the new ones, I guess) as research for our trip and wanted to go just to see the ferris wheel.
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| Entrance to the park |
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| 63 meters high (Six Flags Colossus 55 meters..more meters MORE FUN!) |
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| Built in 1897 |
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| Inside they had a little museum of the building...and maintenance...of it |
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| Our cart |
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| Jammed in pretty good and yes, it rocked as people moved from one side to the other...when was this built again? |
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| We thought it would be a neat pic at night over Vienna...it wasn't. |
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| We tried again -- that pole thing is the tallest swing ride thingie in the world -- thanks dad for that email! |
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| We couldn't get a good picture inside this cart but if you paid extra you could have a private dinner as you rode around. | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | |
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| Not a bad trip -- it was pretty rickety though |
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As we left, we saw this haunted house.
Since it was Halloween and Sarah and Colten love zombies, we figured we should go.
Here's a nice thing about the amusement park, it was free (or very cheap to get in) but we just paid per ride. Anyway, it was pitch black inside and...(Melissa takeover because Marc won't tell the truth about this)... Marc is scared of
everything so I had to take a picture just to use the flash so we could see where to go...really? It's been sooo long since Marc has taken me to a haunted house.
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| I had to take this pic just to get him around the corner...bullshit! |
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| We walked out laughing...Marc had nightmares for awhile! |
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| And a closer pic of the tallest whatchamacallit in the world -- we didn't ride it because it was effing cold...and we didn't know it was the tallest whatchamacallit at tzhe time or we would have done it...or thought about it at least. |
We walked around the amusement park for a bit longer and then headed back to our hotel -- we skipped the American Bar this night (we slunk right by it to the best of our ability). We had a lot more of Vienna to see!
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| Pic of us inside the Weiner (ha) Riesenrad |
Also, on the home we thought we ran into a Halloween parade...but it was just some kind of protest.
Next up... more Vienna and richer people than you...
