Vienna impressed us as a very livable city. There are so many parks and green spaces in the central city – about 1/3 of which is green as we were told. Except for the Danube canal on the northwest side, central Vienna is bound by the Ringstrasse which is a wide boulevard constructed in the late1800’s when the emperor ordered the old city walls torn down and replaced by the boulevard. The Danube canal is an old arm of the Danube River which has been progressively more regulated since the 1500’s to protect against flooding and ice jams. Vienna also has an exceptional interconnected transportation system of trams, buses, and subway. The Ringstrasse and other streets have charming classic style trams powered by overhead electric. (It was fairly easy to navigate, and in fact, we took the number 8 bus from the airport to Schwedenplatz for 8 Euros apiece or about $11. Schwedenplatz was only about ¼ mile from our hotel. The subway is a little different than many subways in that you get a ticket from a self-service machine and then stick the ticket into a device that stamps a date and time at the entrance to the subway lines. There aren’t any gates that would prevent you from riding for free, but rather there are supposedly ticket checkers on the subway trains that randomly check. However, we didn’t see any of them. Vienna also has an extensive system of designated bike lanes and one has to be careful not to stand in these lanes at intersections while waiting for stop lights. Vienna itself has about 1.7 million people and the urban area somewhat over 2 million. About 25% of the 8.5 million Austrians live in Vienna.
Almost everyone we met could speak English and most spoke it fluently. We only encountered a couple of people that did not speak any English. And of course many we met spoke three or more languages. Our guide to Prague, Claudia, who was born in Vienna but lived several years on the Adriatic in Italy, spoke German, Italian, English, French and Spanish. And our guide to Budapest was born in Bogota, Colombia and thus spoke Spanish, German, and English fluently. Interestingly our Spanish was useful. On our guided day trip to Budapest there was a couple from Argentina and two women from Mexico, City and so we could practice some of our Spanish. There was also a server in a gelateria that spoke Spanish. Also, in general, we saw very few overweight Austrians. They seemed very fit and not slovenly dressed except for maybe some teenagers. It also seemed like there was a noticeably higher percentage of blue eyes than in the U.S. Regrettably, we didn’t get to speak to many Austrians except the guides. The hotel staff was always busy as well as the coffee house/bakery servers. But I did have the impression that the Austrians are a bit more reserved than Italians, Spaniards, Portuguese, Brits, or Irish. They seemed similar to the French in “reservedness.” The more talkative people seemed to be foreigners working in Austria. And interestingly, the two people I asked about Ukraine didn’t indicate much concern about Vladimir Putin’s actions.
As for our flight to Vienna, it was uneventful. We did go through Washington Dulles, and we have to say that that airport is an embarrassment to the U.S. - so old, undersized gate areas, and just out-of-date. On the other hand, the Zurich and Vienna airports were very nice. And Austrian Airlines is the nicest airline we have flown in a long time. The service is like airlines used to be - the plane was so clean, and for better or worse, they don't mind practicing age and looks discrimination in hiring hosts/hostesses who were all young, slim, and attractive. Although our trip to Vienna was smooth, our return trip home was torture. The airports at Budapest, Vienna, and Frankfurt were all having computer problems. For boarding, the gate attendants just kept a tally sheet since the computer system was down. The airport operations were affected to some extent so that we were 40 minutes late leaving Vienna. Frankfurt was having the same problems and so we were 40 minutes late leaving there too. Unfortunately, this meant that we were probably about 30 minutes late arriving in Chicago. This should not have been a problem since we still had about 90 minutes to make our Knoxville flight. But frustratingly, it took us 90 minutes to get through immigration. We waited probably 15 minutes just to get to another line where we waited another 15 minutes. Then we used the new computerized kiosk machines into which you insert your passport. If the system sees no problem, then you get a ticket which you just show someone and then you’re done. However, many people received a big X printed on their ticket which meant you had to wait in another line that only had two TSA agents to check out the problem. It took about 1 hour to get through that line since so many people got an X. I got an X apparently because my name is a common name and there must be another person with the same name that sets off alarms. The agent said that it wasn’t even TSA’s computer system. Ironically, it looked like the non-U.S. citizens didn’t use the kiosk system and so didn’t have nearly as long wait. The upshot is that we just missed our Knoxville flight. My flying partner was quite distraught since we were facing the prospect of probably having to stay overnight in Chicago because the other two United flights to Knoxville and all other airline flights directly or indirectly to Knoxville were booked. The two United flights had standby waiting lists. We took our chances and flew standby and were numbers 3 and 4 out of 8 on the standby list. We felt so relieved when we were able to get on the flight by sheer luck. We suspect that so many people were having such long waits in immigration that many people were missing their flights. And to top it off, my partner’s luggage arrived with our flight, but mine was pulled off by TSA for inspection and didn’t make it until the following day.
Unfortunately for our trip, it rained the first six out of eight full days that we were in Austria with highs in the low 50’s and lots of wind. But we did indoor activities including museums and took day trips to Bratislava and Prague where it was not raining. The Vienna weather was not typical for that time of year, but was part of a low pressure system stuck over the Balkans that caused a significant amount of flooding there.
For the first evening in Vienna after arriving that day, we took a walking tour which was of course very interesting. We started in the Naschmarkt just outside the SW corner of the Ringstrasse. It is a long outdoor market of stalls selling many food and produce items including some bakeries, some clothing, and many restaurants. It was very crowded and seemed maybe a step below the Boqueria in Barcelona. We did walk past many of the important buildings in central Vienna including the opera house, St. Stephens Cathedral, several museums, and the Hotel Sacher – home of the famous Sacher torte which is a single layer chocolate cake covered with a thick ganache. We wanted to have a Sacher torte there, but the price was about $10 apiece, and so we had a Sacher torte at two other cafes. Interestingly, Vienna was bombed around 50 times in WW II completely destroying the opera house. But it was rebuilt after the war from the original plans. Part of St. Stephens was also hit and rebuilt.
We did go to Bratislava, Slovakia on Wednesday and had a nice exposure to the city although it was rather cool and windy. Our guide was just slightly younger than us, and she talked some about the old communist days. Slovaks were allowed to travel to the west only once every ten years and everyone took Russian in school. As soon as the communist regime fell, no one wanted to learn Russian but rather English. Bratislava has so much history. It was the capital of Hungary and was called Presburg when the Ottoman Turks controlled Budapest. Also the treaty following Napoleon's victory at the battle of Austerlitz was signed in the town hall there. Bratislava is not a large city with only about 400,000 people and Slovakia itself isn’t very big. Countries don’t spend a lot on their embassies in Bratislava. The Japanese embassy is in a building shared with a souvenir shop. The U.S. embassy is more substantial apparently for security reasons. We did see many wind turbines between Bratislava and Vienna but wind energy provides less than 2% of Austria’s energy. About 2/3 comes from hydropower and 30% from coal fired power plants. Austrians voted not to have nuclear energy after Chernobyl. But best of all, upon our return to Vienna we had our first Sachertorte along with an apple strudel and Viennese espresso. Interestingly, our Vienna walking tour guide from the night before told us that most young people would rather go to Starbucks than the numerous Viennese coffee houses (they don't use the term cafes). So disappointing. In years past, people would sit in coffee houses for hours and hours even if they didn’t buy more than one cup. There was no pressure to buy or leave; that was the tradition.
Thursday, May 15, was our first full day in Vienna itself. We took the subway to Shoenbrunn Palace. It was rainy, cool, and very windy and so we did not go through the gardens. The palace was of course interesting to go through but we could not take pictures. There were so many rooms and it was fascinating to see the office where Emperor Franz Joseph worked everyday even during WW I and the room where he would have audiences. We also learned a lot about his wife, Elisabeth or Sisi, who was assassinated in 1898. She was very beautiful and her hair was very long, more than waist length. She was very obsessed with her figure and never ate dinner with the family. The Palace was an interesting contrast to Versailles which seemed much more opulent. From Shoenbrunn, we took the subway back to central Vienna and went to the National Library. One can visit two impressive huge rooms that had a second level balcony encircling the rooms giving two levels of tall bookshelves stuffed with fat old tomes. Since 2014 is the 100th anniversary of the start of WW I, there was a display of diaries, photos, letters from soldiers, posters, etc. from the war. After the National Library, we went to the globe museum a couple of blocks away. It was so windy, that we gave up on using our umbrellas even though it was raining. The museum had a very large collection of antique globes with earliest being from before Columbus’s expedition. It was so interesting to see the development of geographical knowledge of the earth from very little knowledge of the new world all the way to modern times. Some globes were at least six feet in diameter. From the globe museum, we of course had a pastry and coffee at a café and then went back to the hotel after collecting a couple of sandwiches, pastries, and a coke on the way.
Friday was our trip to Prague with Claudia as our guide. The countryside was beautiful with fields of canola making wonderful lagoons of yellow. There were also vineyards and fields of hops and lavender – the Czech Republic drinks lots of beer. Much of the landscape reminded us of Iowa with dark brown rich soil and rolling hills and a few forests here and there. The towns seemed compact and the houses were neatly tended to and kept up. Houses generally had a stucco finish and tile roofs. In Prague we picked up our local guide, Jan, since the Czech Republic apparently requires local guides. We started at St. Vitus’s cathedral which was of course beautiful, and then we made our way through the adjoining castle to a rampart overlooking the city where we could see the Donau River, the Charles Bridge, and old Prague. We were fortunate to see the changing of the guard at Prague castle which was a bit underwhelming. There were just two guards, one on each site of the entrance gate, and they were so young and cherubic looking. They didn’t look very serious or threatening. Two other guards marched out led by their presumed officer and went through a formal change. It just seemed like a poor imitation of other changing of the guard rituals. After the change, a middle-aged man got up and held aloft a sign and said something. Our guide said he has been doing that for years. Something about him being treated unfairly by the government. From there we went to the previously mentioned rampart with the great vista of central Prague. Somewhat regrettably, there was a Starbucks café right there. Its architecture fit in well and was probably a renovated old building, but still, it seemed sacrilegious to have a Starbucks on an ancient historical site. In our eleven trips to Europe, Starbucks and McDonalds seem ubiquitous.
But back to Prague. A wide, stone staircase hugged the curving castle walls leading down to a charming old neighborhood, and we were soon at the famous Charles Bridge. This medieval stone bridge is featured in every travelogue about Prague. It is has stone porticos on both ends and statues line both sides of the bridge. It is pedestrian only and was packed with people. The bridge connects to old Prague and is a short distance from the old City Hall which has an amazing medieval astronomical clock on the outside tower wall (Prague Orloj). The clock was was installed in 1410 and has two faces. One face gives the time of day and the position of the sun and moon in the zodiac, while the hand of the other face points to the day of the year that is on the circumference of a large circle. There is also a mechanical movement in which apostles exit from two doors. We walked over to Wenceslaus Square which is a long, wide pedestrian plaza with lots of shops around it. We had about 90 minutes of free time and so we walked around window shopping and admiring the many crystal glass displays. And of course we had some coffee and a pastry at a café on the square. The café had an interesting wall treatment. The wall was covered with what appeared to be wicker bread baskets. I also used the bathroom which was an interesting system to prevent non-customers from using it. You get a code number with your receipt and then enter the code in an electronic lock on the bathroom door. There are not too many free restrooms. The highway rest stops where the bus stopped had a system where you had to pay about 50 cents and then got a token. In one of these places, you put the token in a slot on the bathroom entrance to get in.
We started Saturday by walking over to the weekly flea market at the Naschmarkt. It was a bit disappointing; there were a lot of clothes and trinkets but we were hoping for books and small antiques and coins. From the flea market we went to the Art History Museum. It is a very large museum and we spent a couple of hours there until our eyes started glazing over looking at so many paintings. It would have been better to take a guided tour in order to help us understand the importance of various works and the changes over time, but the next tour required too much of a wait. Unfortunately, we didn’t discover that there was a whole floor of sculpture, jewelry, etc. until we were ready to leave. After the museum, we enjoyed some window shopping, and naturally, had another pastry and coffee. We also visited a couple of bookstores including the Shakespeare book store which is packed with a lot of English language books in a small space. The books had no prices so you had to take a book to the teller to know the cost. One of us collects Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s “The Hound of the Baskervilles” in several languages and so bought an edition in German. We headed back to the hotel to eat and then went out later to an organ concert at St. Peter’s church. The church was very ornate and lavish inside. However, although the concert started out with a nice piece, the rest of the pieces were a bit modern in the sense that they were strange without enough melody and not very harmonious. Probably a third of the people left before it was over. The concert was free, but a donation was requested to help restore the organ. We gave 5 Euros but would have given more had the music been more agreeable.
On Sunday we went to the Natural History Museum which was very nice. The Museum had a large collection of minerals including a large gold nugget worth millions of dollars. There were also many stuffed animals, birds, and fish as well as insects, spiders, and some preserved animals. The highlight was probably the dinosaur exhibit which had full-size skeleton replicas of a saurapod and tyrannosaurus. There was also a nice photo exhibit on the present day Chernobyl area. It was very sobering to see how much damage was done to such a large area that is still uninhabitable although some elderly people have returned to less dangerous towns. Vienna is pretty dead on Sunday since all the shops are closed except for tourist shops. So after the museum we just had another pastry/coffee (big surprise) and went back to the hotel.
Monday was a clear blue sky day with highs around 75 for our day trip to Budapest with Marco, our guide. There were eight of us in the van plus Marco. Interestingly, we got to practice our Spanish since Marco was born in Colombia and moved to Vienna several years ago. He spoke at least English, Spanish, and German fluently. There was also an older couple from Buenos Aires, Argentina who did not speak any English and seemed a bit reserved. Additionally, there were two women from Mexico City, and ironically, a couple from Nashville who were born in Ghana. He was a pharmacist working for a hospital and she was a nurse. They were on a several week vacation in Europe and had visited Spain, France, Switzerland, and Austria and were heading next to Italy and then England and Ireland. One of their daughters was at Emory University and they were paying a hefty tuition, but complained that the daughter still could not get some classes due to insufficient capacity. It was about a 2 ½ hour drive to Budapest. One can’t tell where the national borders are except that there is usually a gas station, restaurant, and quick shop there. In Budapest our guide took us to Buda side first which is on the west side of the Danube River. We ascended to a bluff overlooking the Pest side which is much flatter. It was a great view and we took plenty of pictures. From there we went to another bluff or hill farther north and more or less directly across from the parliament buildings and an old bridge. Beautiful Matthias Church inhabited this hill as well as some shops and residences. We could take great pictures of the impressive Hungarian Parliament building from the bluff; the Parliament building is the second largest after the British parliament and is often seen in pictures of Hungary. We drove over to the Pest side and past some landmarks and stopped at a monument to the founding Hungarian tribes - not really very interesting. We also stopped at a cathedral in central Pest and then had time to walk around the shopping area of Pest. We ate a great lunch of pork loins and new potatoes in a delicious sauce at a restaurant. After walking around awhile we found a charming café where we had dessert and a coke. On the way to and back from Budapest we had opportunity to talk to one of the Mexican women. Her English was very good, since she attended a bilingual school while growing up. She now worked at a small school in Mexico City that tries to focus on drama and the arts to get students more engaged in those activities rather than computer games and texting. She and her boss were in Vienna for an international conference on a particular psychology technique.
Tuesday, May 20, was our last day in Vienna and we spent it taking the subway over to the military museum, and then walking back to central Vienna via the Belvedere Gardens. The military museum had nice displays of medieval and modern weaponry including many uniforms, pikes, sabers, and rifles. There were also huge paintings commemorating Hapsburg victories. And there was also a tank park that included about twenty armored vehicles although many were modern. They had only a couple WW II Soviet tanks including the famous T-34, a U.S. mobile artillery piece called the Pulpit, but no WW II German tanks. There were very few signs for the tanks and all the other signs in the museum were in German only and the audio guide tended to talk about important leaders and not so much about the weapons. However, the cost was only about $5.50 (4 Euros) to get in plus another $2.80 (2 Euros) if you wanted to take pictures. From the military museum we walked through the nearby Belvedere Gardens which were very pleasant although not much was in bloom. The Gardens had several fountains and a great view of Vienna. After walking to central Vienna, we spent several hours shopping. I bought three antique Hapsburg and Austro-Hungarian coins from a dealer who had been in business for about 30 years. She and her husband had started the business, but said that these days the young folk are not so interested in coin collecting. We also went through several bookstores that had some books in English, had a chocolate truffle from a Neuhaus shop in a very nice galleria, went through a couple of souvenir shops (we bought a cute coffee cup with whimsical cats on it) and had a gelato.
To wrap up, the Hotel Stefanie was very nice and quite convenient to sites in central Vienna and close to a subway station in order to travel farther away. The staff was very pleasant although always busy. The breakfast buffet was very good, and between the two of us, we usually chose scrambled eggs, cantaloupe slices, blueberry yogurt, cheese slices, wienersnitzel (sp.?), bacon, orange or pear juice, several types of pastries, and crescent rolls with jams. The TV stations available in the rooms included CNBC, CNN, BBC and a couple of other English stations, two Spanish channels, an Italian channel, RTV (Russian TV) which always had an interesting story critical of the U.S., and finally several German channels. Our room looked out over a courtyard and a nearby church tolled the quarter hours and tolled the number of hours on the hour.
We didn’t come close to see all we wish including visiting the Hofburg Palace, taking a trip to Salzburg, enjoying the outdoor concerts, touring the Opera House (the lines were so long when we tried), and taking a cruise down the Danube.
