After a long 4 months apart, it was great meeting up with Andy again and catching up on all the time apart!
We got a great deal on a flight into Vienna via Air Berlin, and enjoyed our first walk across the tarmac to board the plane:
We were quick to feel welcome in Vienna, making ourselves at home in Andy’s dorm room where he has been studying abroad.
Vienna is a great place to visit, and we easily filled our five day stay here with activities. It doesn’t suprise me this city is often among the top ranked cities for “quality of life” or “livability”.
As our first introduction to the city, we wandered through the naschmarkt, almost 2 km long and one of the world’s longest and most popular street markets. You can buy everything here from fresh food, to clothes, to car tires. Or, in our case, a pornographic cigarette lighter and some sunglasses.
As a city full of culture, a popular area to hangout and indulge in the arts is Museumsquartier – a huge outdoor courtyard surrounded by various museums and galleries with funky seating in the center. This bright yellow, weatherproof seating seems to gather all the youth, particularly in the later hours of the evening. We were no different, and found this the perfect spot to catch up on our last few months apart late into the night.
Not only that, but the featured gallery here at the time of our stay was the “Porn Identity”. And so, we somehow ended up strolling through an exhibit of pornography. The most entertaining of which was a compilation of (in)appropriately cut Disney movie clips to make a somewhat questionable film…
Our upcoming days we joined in the environmentally friendly ideals of Vienna and rented bikes to get around the city. These are stationed at every subway stop and other major sites, and allow you to rent a bike for free to get between each one. I thought this was really a lovely idea, and we enjoyed riding along the ring road and taking in all the sites.
This included stops at Hofburg palace, the home of the Habsburg dynasty for many years, and today home to the Austrian President. We frolicked in the gardens here, and then we ended up at a festival at the Rathaus where we saw a site you can only see in Europe: children drinking beer.
While the Hofburg was the winter home for the Hapsburg family, we also visited their summer residence at the Schonbrunn Palace with its grand and beautiful grounds.
