9 July, Vienna

Vienna, Austria is again one of the quintessential cities in Europe. A beautiful city with opulent buildings, vast historical sites, culture. Okay, so Carter and I were starting to get a little bit of museum-fatigue. We needed some undirected exercise. As luck would have it, Donauinsel, a man-made islet dropped into the Danube, was just what we needed. Carter went for in-line skates while I rented a bike. It was a good day of just recreating outside with no time-tables or agenda. It was here I met .........The Remora! The skates Carter rented had a bulge in one seam that produced a large blister on the side of his foot making it painful to skate after the first 45 minutes. So he latched onto my side for most of the rest of the ride. It was a good diversion from our somewhat normal routine.

The Austrians have a very formal demeanor, distinctly different from the Germans. But they are friendly and warm all the same. The city is very diverse culturally. There was a large obvious Muslim population as well as various Slavic nationalities. All coexisting peacefully, well mostly. We witnessed a near conflagration of tempers in one of the common courtyards but it produced only loud argument and frantic hand and arm gestures, ending in a truce brokered by an elderly women. Street theater at its best. Shortsightedly, we did not bring clothes appropriate for the Opera House so we only saw the exterior and missed what one could only guess was excellent music. Vienna was much more traveler friendly with unsolicited offers of assistance, patience with my poor German language skills and easy and available mass-transit systems. And thank God for the bleeding Euro.


The food was uniformly excellent as well. The somewhat simple lunch of chicken soup was one of my very favorites of the entire trip. It was so good we ate there twice in spite of the numerous choices. There were mimes, (shudder) musicians and street performers of all types throughout the market areas. One all-female string trio was especially good but there was a hippie-type bongo drum player in accompaniment that just completely ruined the effect and was very odd. We saw the same trio on the next night, this time without the bongo distraction which was much better. It is unclear whether he was an invited guest or a crasher but my guess is the tips were better without him.

Throughout this blog I have not bothered to try describing the buildings, and I will not start now. They simply must be seen first-hand to be fully appreciated. If you visit Vienna, it should be a primary destination, not a stop on the way. As we were told in Prague, unfortunately all construction must be done in the warm months which also coincides with tourist season. I think Vienna would be especially wonderful in the winter months. I will be back to test that theory one of these years. I'm thinking ski trip in the Alps, Opera in Vienna. Any takers?

On to Munich.