Greetings from a train bound for Prague!
I had to arm wrestle Ashley in order to get my blog back, but don’t worry, I won (jk she would kill me; I had hardly the upper body strength to put my backpack in the overhead cabin today). I hope you enjoyed her guest post yesterday! But enough about her, let’s discuss Vienna & Salzburg! Bear with me, this post will be lengthy!
We arrived in Vienna on New Years Eve, so once we got the AirBnb situation figured out, we quickly set off to see where all cool kids were celebrating. The NYE celebrations were all around town, so we checked most of them out, including my two favorites of the evening, the Opera and Town Hall. We found a booth that sold punch in 2016 ceramic mugs in the shape of a pig, so you *know* we hit that up and purchased those while watching Die Fledermaus (spell check me I dare you) being streamed to us plebeians outside the Opera House. It was magical and perfect. But we weren’t going to settle there! After a brief potty break at a bar with the world’s most heinous and uptight barista (Ashley can probably describe her better in her post seeing as she had to deal with the aftermath of my bathroom break), we took the metro to Rathaus, a house full of rats! Oh wait nope it’s Town Hall. Surprise, I know absolutely no German!
We found ourselves at the town hall’s celebration, which had a great live band and DJ who played the hits of the 80s and 90s. We found a stand selling warm sangria in, you guessed it, those pig cups. In order to avoid paying extra for the cups, we may or may not have exchanged our Opera House cups for the new ones. Luckily, our server had a great sense of humor and we all laughed about how ridiculous the moment was. Sangria in hand, we danced and danced for a few hours until the fireworks went off at midnight. It was, without a doubt, my favorite New Years to date.
The next day, we woke up to snowfall! This lifelong Texan was pumped, so we quickly got dressed so we could walk to the Belvedere while it snowed. We walked around the Belvedere gardens before going inside. We got to see Gustav Klimt’s famous Kiss painting, and I got to see a Van Gogh, so color me pleased. We spent the rest of the day walking around the city center, including a few churches and the Hapsburg Palace, my new home. Vienna is by far the most clean and opulent city I have ever been to and I know I’ll be itching to come back as soon as possible. 4/4 stars, would recommend.
We found ourselves up at the main train station (hauptbahnhof; see, I’m learning!) to catch a 6:55 am train for a day trip to Salzburg. Luckily, we got to witness a drunk man pee right in front of us while waited for our train. Ugh, it must be so easy being a white male these days!! We grabbed a very American breakfast full of eggs and bacon at a restaurant the size of a closet upon our arrival in Salzburg, then we made our way to the Hohensalzburg fortress via funicular. Apparently the views are so beautiful from up there. We wouldn’t know, because the fog reduced visibility to like 3 inches. The fortress itself was awesome though, apparently it took over 600 years to build, thus it is an amalgamation of many different centuries of popular design styles. We funiculared down and made our way to the Mirabell Gardens (where the Do-Re-Mi song from Sound of Music was filmed!). Naturally, Ashley and I recreated the final scene from the song on the famous steps. Most of the gardens were closed because of the winter, so we ended up heading over to the pick-up point for our Sound of Music Tour.
You didn’t think we would go to Salzburg without doing the Sound of Music Tour, did you?
Let’s just say this was by far my favorite tour of all time. Not only did we get to see many of the filming locations, such as the gazebo and the church where Maria and the Captain got married, but we also got to see some beautiful mountains and lakes outside the city with the funniest tour guide of all time, Peter. He had a great sense of humor that pretty much only the English speakers on the bus found funny. We all sang along to the soundtrack, and it is by far one of my favorite moments of the trip. If you ever find yourself in this charming city, you absolutely have to do this tour, even if you haven’t seen the movie! Fun fact: Kaine has never seen the movie because he is insane, and he loved it!
And thus concludes our time in Austria. I know I will come back if I have the opportunity. Also, I am 100% certain I probably forgot some details, so hop over to Ashley’s blog again if you want another take on these past few days.
Auf Wiedersehen (or as Peter says, “our feet are the same”)!
breaking the chain 