Friday, May 23, 2008

Wien

So last night we got to Vienna, and took the "Wiener Linien" public transportation bus straight to our hotel. After checking in, we walked around the corner to "Selina" and had a wonderful dinner. We had heard that the Austrian wines were excellent, so we got a Pinot Noir and were not disappointed. Then we came back to the hotel and slept.

Well, tried to sleep. There are four tram lines right outside our window. Check it out:



Elise found that they lull her to sleep; I had no such luck.

After fighting with the public computers (which have German-formatted keyboards in which the Z and Y are swapped), Elise and I walked through town to Mozart's house. Photography was prohibited and they were fairly strict on that point, so I got no photos. I understand Elise snuck one of the sheet for "Dies Irae" from the requiem, but I got a picture of the outside of the house:



After that, we walked to the Donaukanal, which is a sort of offshoot of the Donau (aka Danube), and then caugt a tram out to the Donau itself. The tram stopped at "Friedrich Engels Straße", which reminded me of my favorite Engels quote (marking me as a serious lefty):

"It must be a source of great pride to the patriotic German stocking-weaver that his starvation wages force his English brother to starve too."

On the lighter side, Elise found a swing and began giggling uncontrollably.



We then rode a couple trams left and right to find our way back to the hotel. We overshot by one stop, and while walking back, we came across a place in Vienna selling currywurst. Slightly different presentation, but way more curry powder!



Elise has a book called "Vienna for the music lover" so no doubt tomorrow will be filled with good stuff.

1 comment:

Kathleen said...

Ah, the old Z and Y switcheroo... the bane of my year abroad (at least when I worked on school computers). I usually just gave up. Crazy is a word I am particularly fond of that was a real doozy in Deutschland... Crayz! For that matter, dooyz!