Railing thru Europe: Stop 14.1 Austria – Vienna
Vienna, the classical capital of Austria, where not only famous composers like Mozart and Beethoven were drawn to during the 18th and 19th centuries. It was the city that pioneered the incredibly graceful dance of Waltz.
From Prague, we took an overnight train and arrived at Wien Meidling at about 6am in the morning before taking the metro to Wien Westbahnhof. (West Station)
After considering the high summer rates for accommodations in Vienna, we decided to make Vienna a day trip and bought our overnight tickets to Frankfurt on the same day. We left our backpacks in the lockers at the train station and were ready for a very early set off. Fatigue has started to kick in at this point of our trip. In fact, it started back when we were in Scandinavia. Never would we have thought we did feel tired of travelling, but carrying the weight of our backpacks moving from cities and walking the whole day everyday for the past one month plus was taking its toll on us. There were days when we were dragging our feet and had to remind ourselves that we would kick ourselves the day when we are back sitting on our office table thinking back of that particular day where we did not fully appreciate how lucky we were and that kept us moving. Afterall, we only have a day to do a whirlwind trip in Vienna.
Red ribbon pinned on the Parliament house for the 18th International AIDS Conference (IAC)
We were using the auto timer to take a photo when this man happened to walk past. It looks like one of those photos that shows up in stock image when you typed businessman.
This looks like some tycoon series game, where you have gain too much money and not sure where to use it. In the end, you decide to put benches side by side, outlining the whole park.
Rathaus (The City Hall)
Burgtheater (former Imperial Court Theatre)
Votive Church (Votivkirche) in the background
Minoritenkirche
As we head into the Innere Stadt (1st District) where many sights are within this Unesco World Heritage site, the impressive Hofburg Palace came into view.
Hofburg Palace seen from Heldenplatz
Albertina Museum
Coffee break in one of the Viennese cafés writing postcards.
Donnerbrunnen Fountain
St. Peter's Church (Peterskirche)
St. Stephen's Cathedral (Stephansdom)
Vienna State Opera (Wiener Staatsoper)
mini cola zero comes to the rescue on a scorching hot day!
While i was looking at the camera, one of the ducks snatched the bread from my hand. Ducks:"Is she gonna feed us that bread or not?"
St. Charles's Church (Karlskirche)
Hochstrahlbrunnen Fountain
refreshing relief from the hot weather by letting the splashes from the fountain cool your tired feet.
Off we go on the tram, to visit some famous graves!
Zentralfriedhof - The most famous cemetery in Vienna
Johannes Brahms's grave (German composer and pianist)
Johann Strauss II's grave (The Waltz King)
Franz Schubert's grave (Austrian Composer)
Dr. Karl Lueger-Gedächtniskirche
Arnold Schoenberg's grave
St. Marx Cemetery (Sankt Marxer Friedhof)
Statue of Beethoven at Beethovenplatz
Stadtpark (City Park)
Statue of the Waltz King (Johann Strauss II) who composed many waltz pieces which resulted in the popularity of the ballroom dance today.
Next, we head to Burggarten in search of Mozart's statue
We found it finally!
The very suave pose of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart.
This part of our journey in Vienna really felt like we were on the “Amazing Race”. As we were racing against time to find and visit most of the important places of interest on the map. At some point, we were running as we had trouble finding the statue of Mozart and had only an hour left before the train leaves for Frankfurt.
We made it in the end and turned out we were even slightly earlier. We found our couchette (4 bunk cabin) that we are going to spend the night with another couple from Sweden.
The train conductor came by and started collecting our passports and train passes to keep overnight for border checks. As the 4 of us have never encountered this, we were a little skeptic at handing our passports and passes to him at first but do so as we saw others did the same. When the train stopped in Frankfurt the next morning, we were frantically looking for the conductor as we feared the train was going to move on to its next destination. (Frankfurt was not the final stop) Thankfully, he later appeared with our passports and passes. A little worrying for us first timers but that how they do it i guessed.
yup, we are back in Germany. Frankfurt this time.
Why? you might ask… well, you’ll find out in the next post
Yee
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