Vienna

Jayme and Steph were kind enough to be our temporary parents and let us stay with them in Vienna, and they even planned out and accompanied us on our first couple days in the city. After unpacking at their lovely and surprisingly historical apartment (stained-glass in the lobby proudly stated the build-date: 1891!), we headed to the Turkish market to load up on fruit, which has been lacking in our strictly red meat and dumpling diet. They also made sure that we experienced Ayran, which is a Turkish drink. You can experience it too: pour the liquid off some cottage cheese, add a few tablespoons of salt to the liquid, bottoms up! It’s an acquired taste. Then they took us to a park whose name we don’t recall, so it shall be referred to as Jurassic Park since it was the kind of place which wouldn’t have shocked us too much if a raptor popped out of the foliage. Jurassic Park had beautiful views over the city, including the many church spires and several old Nazi flak-towers. Once back in the city, delicious face-sized schnitzel and lemony potato salad, along with a night-time walk through the dramatically-lit old town center concluded the introduction to Vienna.

Jurassic Park

Vienna by night

On the second day we rented city bikes (the great kind that you borrow by putting your credit card into a machine and releasing the bike, then re-locking it at any other bike station you feel like). It was a hot day, so we went to Schonbrunn palace and wandered around the never-ending manicured gardens (similar idea to Versailles in Paris) and tried to get free peeks into the zoo. We also stopped for a picnic of juicy chunks of watermelon.

Entrance to Schonbrunn Palace

Nice place for a picnic, eh?

In the afternoon, we all headed out to a small town called Stammersdorf on the outskirts of Vienna, flanked by vineyards and full of family-owned wine cellars stuck into the hills like hobbit houses. We ate a massive meal of traditional Austrian food, including a softball sized dumpling full of bacon, various peppers stuffed with soft cheese, and surprisingly inexpensive local wine. For dessert, there were scraps of cake soaked in rum with pink icing. Fawns ran between grape-vines below our balcony as we ate, and Vienna’s beautiful sprawl was the distant background. It was a great experience that would have been inaccessible without our guides.

The next day we spent mostly on our own as Jayme was working and we had some super-touristy activities on our agenda. We took a tram into the old town and went straight to the treasury at the Hofburg Palace. Full of beautiful jewels and treasures once owned by the Hapsburgs; highlights included a rose bouquet made of solid gold and the ridiculously extravagant crib for Napoleons’ kid, which we shall model any future child’s crib after. The next day included more museums and wandering of almost too-perfect Vienna.

We sheepishly admit to sharing a touristy Sacher Torte (cake with layers of apricot jam)

Views over Vienna from Stefansdom (cathedral), after climbing 340+ steps

Karlskirche baroque church

We departed Vienna on the “Rail jet”, which is a train that thinks it’s a plane. Three hours after departing, we arrived in Budapest, Hungary. It is certainly a step up from the Polish and Czech trains... this becomes evident when you sit down on the toilet and can’t see the train tracks whizzing past under your bottom.

-Collective effort of K und K