Wien and Whoa, I'm Halfway There

My trip to Vienna didn't start off too well. An hour or two into the train ride, we stopped and a voice told us that we would be delayed for 30 minutes (this was later changed to 130 minutes). I looked out the window to see firefighters running across the tracks toward the back of our train, and police cars stopped on the road by the tracks. Then, a reporter came up to my car with a mic and started interviewing passengers. We think that our train hit someone. Then, after finally arriving after six and a half hours on the train, I was pretty surprised that in the station, there were NO signs for the metro. So it was quite an adventure just finding it. But don't worry, things got better.

We soon took the metro into the heart of the city, were we were quickly greeted by a salesman dressed in a cape and a triangle hat. Long story short... we bought tickets for that night to something called the Imperial Orchestra, which ended up being a lot of fun. The tickets were discounted and we got 2 free glasses of champagne each, so it was pretty hard to pass up. It was a symphony of 10 people playing mostly Strauss and Mozart (both from Vienna) and there were some opera singers and ballet dancers who joined in for some of the songs.

This was my first European hostel. I was pretty impressed with the cleanliness and the atmosphere, but as soon as we got home at the end of the first night, something sounded horribly wrong. And it was the guy sleeping in the bed next to me. When I was younger, I made something that has been called the "Dragon Noise," where I cleared my throat really loudly in my sleep. I think it must have sounded something like this, except I hope I wasn't this bad. It took me a few hours to fall asleep.... thank god he left the next day.

The next morning we went to the top of the Stephensdom, which is the central cathedral, and we had an amazing view of almost the entire city.

Then we somewhat spontaneously went to Shabbat services at the Stadttempel, the main synagogue that survived Kristallnacht because from the outside it looks like a normal office/apartment building. However, inside it is a perfect circle with two balconies, and beautiful.

Our next activity was probably my favorite in Vienna. It was the Naschmarkt, a super long street market. We went during the peak time, so it was packed, and there were endless stands selling fruit, vegetables, spices (pictured), meat etc. and then after all of that there was a flea market. If I was studying in Vienna I'd go there every day for lunch.

From there we headed to the Museum Quarter and went to the Kunsthistorisches, the Fine Arts Museum. I got really excited when I saw a couple paintings by Peter Brueghel that I learned about in my Art History class last semester. I will be seeing a lot of the things I learned about when I travel to Greece, Italy, France, and the UK in May, but seeing these two still made me really happy.

On Saturday night, we tried and failed to get standing room tickets for the Staatsoper, the main opera in Vienna. So we saw the Pink Panther 2. It was terrible, but we knew that going into it. Although all of the locals thought it was incredibly funny, which really confused us.

On Sunday we went to the Schloss Schonbrunn, the suburbuan Habsburg Palace, which is HUGE. It's one of those places that would be so much nicer in late spring and summer (mostly because of the massive gardens), but it was still beautiful.

So it was a packed 48 hours in Vienna, and we had a great time.

And now I'm realizing that it's mid-March, which means my program is halfway done. I knew it would go by fast, and I'm really glad that I'm staying a few weeks later in May and traveling before heading back to the US.

On Wednesday night I head to Poland with my Jewish Studies program. We're spending the first few days in Krakow, doing some Jewish and Polish cultural things. I'll be leaving my gorup for the afternoon on Saturday to take a cab about 45 minutes north of the city to the small town where my grandmother is from, and I'm really looking forward to that. Then we're going to Oswiecim or in German, Auschwitz. My grandfather is from there, so I'm also looking forward to going to the address where he grew up. Our last couple of days will be in Warsaw, and I'm skipping one of them to go to Majdanek, a death camp a couple hours away. I'll be back in Prague on Friday, the 27th, a few hours before my mom gets here! And from there it'll be a really fun parade of visitors for a couple weeks.