Vienna

- Zach - 

Vienna was such a beautiful city! We had 5 days to spend here, and we definitely took advantage of them.

We arrived on Saturday the 21st at about 3 pm, so we had plenty of time to begin exploring the city. We didn't know much about the city, but our hostel was on one of the main drags and had a ton of shops and restaurants lining each side. So after we got situated in our room and everything we set off down the street. We discovered there was a flea market on Saturdays until 5 pm near a market known as the Naschmarkt so we veered off of the street towards there, but weren't very impressed. All of the vendors were beginning to pack up for the night, as the sun sets by 4:30 at this time of the year, but we just continued down to the famous Naschmarkt which is known for all of the different food in all of the shops. And wow, was it impressive; it had everything from watermelon (which I hadn't seen for a LONG time) and strawberries to different kinds of cheese to sheep heads. We picked up some chicken and peppers to cook up for dinner, and while we were eating, we met a few fellow travelers who invited us out with them later on in the night. They were from Canada and Australia and were traveling for MUCH longer than we were. One had been traveling for 5 months, another for 4 weeks, and another was only on week 2 of 6. Yikes. While I love traveling around Europe and everything, that amount of time would be tough to do. Although it might be easier when you don't have an entire semester's worth of clothes and 'stuff' to lug around. We went to a club called Chelsea, which played a lot of British punk-like music, so Rachel and I didn't recognize hardly any of the songs played. We left a bit early, but it was still a lot of fun!

The title of our second day should be: "Hey, here's another Christmas market!" For travelers in Vienna, there is a sort of 'ring' to walk through within the city in which you will come across most of the major sights in the city. So we figured we could start there. I'm honestly not sure how far we got due to distractions. And by distractions I mean CHRISTMAS MARKETS! We stumbled across either three or four different Christmas markets, and of course explored each of them. It would be really cool if cities in the U.S. did things like that. I mean I can't say for certain that cities don't, but I don't know of any people who take a Saturday to go down to Minneapolis-St. Paul to go to a Christmas market. They feel so festive! Gluhwein and hot chocolate became a bit of a tradition for Rachel and I at each market. They're usually pretty cheap and it'll warm you right up after being out in the cold all day. 

The markets in Vienna use real mugs too! You end up paying about 5 euro for a hot chocolate or gluhwein (hot mulled wine), but 3 of it is a deposit for the mug. We ended up keeping the mug twice haha. One is in the shape of a boot, and they both have the name of the market that we bought them at, so we figured they were pretty cool souvenirs for us. We realized that we had, so far, spent all of our time searching for gifts for our family, and hadn't bought much for ourselves at all! So we ended up treating ourselves a little bit while in Vienna. Of course while in Europe, you get pretty used to using the metro systems, and the Viennese metro system was 'essentially' free :) meaning it just wasn't very well monitored. But also in the station near our hostel, there was a 24 hour shop called U3 which had MOUNTAIN DEW! That's been one of the things I have craved on many occasions while over here in Europe. And this was the first place I found it where it wasn't crazy expensive. So I bought 4 :) One thing I also learned while in Vienna... Rachel has a passion for gummies. I think we went through 4 bags of them haha. I'm a little worried for her.... 

The next day we essentially wandered around again. We saw more of the statues, monuments, and museums throughout the rest of the 'ring', took a nap, and ate at a really good Viennese restaurant. I had wienerschnitzl and Rachel had a beef goulash. YUM! The restaurant was in a giant cellar that had been built in the 1300's! It was really a cool atmosphere, and the food was equally as impressive. Both of us nearly finished our gift shopping too that day, I had two of my grandparents left and Rachel had her grandmother left as well. But the good part was that we knew what we were going to get for them :)

For Christmas Eve, we spent the day on a train. Exciting right? Not just any train though. It was a train from Vienna to the city of Klagenfurt, and is known for being one of the most scenic routes in all of Europe. I think we ended up on the less impressive side of the train, but the views were really impressive. It was nice to be able to just relax and sit on our butts for an entire day. We played some cards (mostly golf), plus we have been attempting to watch the entire Harry Potter series, as Rachel hasn't seen them all -_- (I think it's crazy that she hasn't seen them, it's the movie series of our generation!) And the reason I say attempting is that someone is unbelievably good at falling asleep when a movie is put in front of her, sometimes within two minutes of the movie! No joke, it's literally unbelievable. But yeah it was a relaxing day, nothing too exciting and not a typical Christmas Eve, but it was still a very good day.

Christmas day was more eventful than Christmas eve. We started the day by ice skating at a public skating rink for a couple hours which was really fun! I hadn't skated for about two years so it was definitely interesting for a while at the start, but we both got better as we made our laps around the rink. After ice skating, we headed back to the hostel for a change of clothes and then headed to an English movie theater to see The Butler, which was an awesome movie. Rachel stayed awake so it must have been good! It is about a black man who escaped from his slave owner and eventually became a butler at the White House and lived through either 6 or 7 presidencies from Harry Truman to Ronald Reagan. I highly recommend the movie to anyone. After the movie we ate at a really good Italian restaurant (can you tell I have loved the food here?) that had a modern vibe to it and was very reasonably priced. The day before, we had bought tickets to an orchestra concert at the Golden Hall, a concert hall that had seen the likes of Mozart and Von Strausse. It was definitely interesting, and outside the boundaries of both Rachel and I. We weren't even sure if we were going to be let in, well if I would be let in, because we didn't really have much for classy clothing. But once we got there we realized that we were totally fine. It was a combination of the orchestra and five different opera singers that was put together in a very comical manner. It was all in German but they were definitely making us laugh! I wish it would have been in English, but it was very cool to go to something like that in a different language. The concert hall was crazy too, so decorative and marble everywhere! Very cool. We had pretty good seats too.

We were originally going to have to move to a different hostel for the night of the 26th as the hostel we were at was booked on the 26th, but we decided to cancel our room and head to Budapest for a day! We have heard a lot of good things about Budapest so hopefully the 8 euro cancellation charge to my credit card is worth it haha!

I think both of us are almost ready to come home. Maybe it's because we have realized that our journey is almost coming to an end with only a few stops left, but we have talked more and more about being home. I even made a list of things I want to eat when I get home. Topping that list is Panchero's and Marnanteli's! I wouldn't say we are excited to come home, but I think it's safe to say that we are getting closer to being ready

Rachel is taking care of the post for Budapest. Should be interesting haaaaaaaaa......

- Zach