In which I finally return to Vienna

Our first day in Vienna, we arrived to our hostel just a little bit later than planned. I planned to meet Yu-ra, an old classmate from my German classes at 3. We arrived at the hostel at 2:30, which ended up being a little further away than I thought.

I ended up needing to practically sprint to the Starbucks where we were meeting. Well, we sprinted in the wrong direction by accident, then made it to the Starbucks. Yu-ra wasn't there. We texted a bit and eventually managed to realize that we were are 2 different Starbucks on the same street. I went to the one that was right next to my old apartment and she went to the one just up the street. We eventually figured it out, but weren't able to meet for very long. We met up the following weekend, so it worked out anyway. I was extremely proud of myself for having the entire conversation in German without any English, despite not having spoken in German for 4 years, apart from emails. The next week I had a 3 hour conversation!

Here are the Raders! Aka the family name.

We then headed to meet Liviu and Alina. We were supposed to meet by Stephansplatz, but I accidentally went to Swedenplatz, which was close by, but not the right place. Unfortunately, we missed each other that day, but we were able to meet the next day. I was a bit disappointed.



Adrienne and I got lunch/dinner afterwards. We got schnitzel, because I wanted to show her one of my favorite places. She kind of ruined schnitzel for me when she referred to it as a giant chicken nugget. At least she enjoyed it.

After eating, I showed her to all of my old haunts. We walked around the area I lived and looked at my favorite buildings.

We started here, which was near Stephansdom.

I also showed her my old school area, which was apparently not in the same spot because I couldn't find it. I also showed her my old apartment.

This was near Stephansplatz.

Stephansdom! It was just as enormous as I remembered!

Here's one of the shopping areas.

This was just on the side of a building. It was quite beautiful.

We walked by the Opera House!

Here's Adrienne and the Opera House.

Here I am with the Opera house.

Here wee are on the other side of the Opera House.

We looked at some pretty flowers.

Saw this...interesting sign for the International Dance Festival.

This building had a mustache the last time I was in Vienna.

Here I am with the formerly mustached building.

This was a bit of play on words.

We continued wandering around the various neighborhoods.

Here is Adrienne and David Bowie, her husband.

We walked by the Museums Quarter, which house the twin museum buildings-the Natural History Museum and the Museum of Art History.

We continued along, walking by Hofberg Palace, which is just as grand as it was before.

We then headed to my favorite place, the Hofberg Rose Garden. I checked to see if there were ducks in the pond, which I spent much of my time looking at 4 years ago. My ducklings. There were some the next time we walked by. But not this time.

This was new. I'm not entirely sure what it is, but it was cool looking. It might not be new, but it was definitely under construction or something in 2009.

Here's the Rose Garden! I spent a lot of time here people watching, reading and hanging out. I love it!

It was just as rosey as before.

The side of the Burgtheater

The top of the Rathaus, aka the City Hall.

The Museums quarter.

Here we are!

Here we are in the other direction!

This is the Parliament building which we wandered about.

There is a horse.

Here is Adrienne with a statue and some birds.

There's a tiny baby and a fish spewing water.

You can vaguely see the mosaics here, which are very cool.

Adrienne vomiting along with a dragon.

Adrienne vomiting from afar.

Here i am posing along with a very serious man.

Looking casual with Vienna in the distance.

Adrienne relaxing again Dr. Renner

We continued walking and wen by the Burgtheater.

We continued by Minoretinkirche, which was my favorite church. Well, it's still my favorite church in Vienna.

We went inside on another day.

Just posing like an angel.

One of my favorite parts of this church is the fact that you can see the different layers of the church. It was built at several different times and you can see the different ages.

We continued wandering through the streets.

We ended up getting sucked into an Opera performance. It was cheap because we got student tickets. (Yes, since I am afraid of breaking the rules, I told them I was not a student. But, they gave me the student price anyway. Thank heavens.)

It was in the Hofberg palace. Adrienne was not excited about it because she "hates classical music and opera" but went because I wanted to go. She ended up enjoying it a lot.

It was actually several performances of various Strauss and Mozart operas and orchestra pieces. The opera singers were very talented, although a bit dramatic in their hand gestures. At one point, there was a man singing to a girl from the doorway. Adrienne, who was on the edge of the row, started giggling madly. I asked why she was giggling.

Apparently, due to the angle, she was only able to see his nose. So it was just a nose singing to the girl.

Adrienne and her crazy eyes.

Here are the performers.

The conductor looked a bit like Ed Bagley Jr. in a bad wig.

The man in the top hat was the one with the nose.

This woman had the crazy eyes when she was singing. The same crazy eyes Allison gets when she sees a mosquito.

This woman opened her mouth in amazingly wide proportions.

I definitely notice the important things.

I also noticed that she had a very beautiful and powerful voice, but seemed to be give no effort, which was really amazing.

This man was causing a ruckus throughout the performance. Among other things, he could blow a hose or bird whistle, looking quite cheerful about it. Clearly not a completely serious performance, but it was lots of fun!

At one point, he brought out a fake playboy and pretended to show it to some of the musicians, but when he turned it around it was a picture of a cute puppy. He also smashed the conductors wand.

The finale!

We took a few night pictures of the palace and Stephansdom.

We headed back to the hostel. I intended to go to sleep immediately, until I noticed that my feet were a solid shade of dark black and I needed to shower. Luckily that night, we had the bathroom to ourselves that night since there weren't any people in the other room of the apartment. The hostel was actually an apartment building. It was fine for this time, but we had a weird experience after returning from Salzburg.

The next day, we met up with Liviu and Alina, which I will write about in the next blog.