Vienna

So, I thought it was about time to write a blog about my trip to Vienna (and I promised Grandpa I would...). So here it is.

So I went to Vienna (Wien in German, Viděn in Czech) with Marta (Iceland). We left Brno Friday morning, and got to Vienna at about 10:30. It was funny going through passport control (a person comes on the bus and checks stuff). The checker-guy was very slavic looking, and looked rather suprised to see both an icelandic passport (very cool) and an american passport in the same day, at the same time. A brief note about icelandic passports: they are very advanced. They have like this page in them that has a chip in it with all the info, and they just look cool too. Ours aren't nearly so cool. Czechs just have an ID card that they have to show to travel throught the EU.

The first thing we did in Wien was, well, obviously, get off the bus, but the first hurdle was buying a metro ticket. We bought 72-hour tickets, but this handy little machine was one that took credit cards, and for some reason it kept spitting out Marta's card. But eventually we figured it out, and were on our way. The Wien metro is very clean. The whole city is very clean. There is hardly ever trash or anything on the ground, and there are very few homeless people. Vienna didn't strike me so much as other cities that I have been to, but it's a nice city. It definitely has an older median age, and is a "high-class" city. Friday we just spent wandering around Vienna. We got off at a subway stop and just wandered from there. We spent a couple hours at the Museum Quartier, not going into any museums, but just looking at the shops. Marta and I both like modernish art, and spending a lot of time in museum shops. We found a lomography shop (best kind of photography...), and spent a long time in there. We both decided at some point during the weekend we would buy a camera. From there we kept wandering, just turning when we felt like it. We came across a couple cool shops (one was almost exactly like the crystal dragon on pearl street) and ended up on the main shopping street. We went in a few department stores, walked into Starbucks, and then decided against buying anything, and then kept wandering. Somewhere on the way we found the british council, basically an english language library/resource center. Pretty cool. They also had free internet, so we spent some time on there finding things to do. I of course, compared the prices of the cameras at the store, in prague and on ebay. After that, we both decided that we really wanted one of the cameras. I ended up getting the supersampler, and marta got ...something. I can't remember the name. you can look up lomography on google.

Friday night we went to a relatively cheap italian restaurant, and then to an english language movie theater and saw "The Queen" in english, without subtitles (that was suprising). It was pretty good. By the time we got back to our hostel it was like 10, and time for becca to go to bed in order to get enough sleep to function during the SAT!

Saturday morning was the SAT. I knew what bus to take to get there, but I hadn't looked at the times or anything. So I left for the metro station at 7, because I wanted to get there by 8. It all worked out fine until I had to walk from the bus stop to the school. I got a little lost, but thankfully with the help of a dog walker, I made it there. I was worried because I got there at like 8:10, but we didn't actually start the test until 9:15! I think it went pretty well. There was 1 math question I had a lot of trouble with, and ended up guessing on, but other than that, I think it went well. It was tiring though. The scores come out on February 15th, so I'll let you all know the results then. After the SAT I went back to the hostel to take a nap. I was so tired, and ended up sleeping for like 1.5 hours. While I was at the SAT, Marta just went around the city, and looked for second hand shops. After sending a few SMS's back and forth about when to meet, and then promptly realizing each one cost 12.5 crowns (like 60 cents) rather than the normal 2 crowns (10 cents), we met up again. After a long time. And a snow storm. Because marta ran out of credit, and then it started snowing. It snowed like 4 inches in 20 minutes. Strangest thing ever. I walked into a store, wandered around, saw a guy come in covered in snow, went huh?, walked out, and saw the snow. Marta and I finally found each other after agreeing to meet in front of the church because she couldn't send messages.... Anyway. Then we went to Starbucks, because we both decided that though we had decided the previous day not to, it was snowing, and coffee sounded good. So I got a frappuccino of course. Starbucks is expensive in Wien (3.80 euros for a tall coffee frap), but still very good nonetheless. Then we went to wait on line for standing room tickets at the Opera. The line was incredibly long, but we ended up getting tickets. THe one thing we didn't know however was how the standing room only thing worked, and so we ended up going up stairs, and realizing there were really no places left. so once it started (Don Giovanni), we like wiggled our way in between people, in a place where we could see the right side of the stage only, and all the action seemed to be happening on the left side! We ended up basically just reading the story on the screen thing that translated it. At intermission, Marta really wasn't feeling well, and so just decided to sit on the wall. I have to say I don't so much enjoy opera, but it was a "culturing" experience, and fine for only 2 euros (amazing price), but I don't plan on going again anytime soon.

Sunday we decided to take it easy because Marta was feeling better, but not up to much walking. We tried to call Sanja, a serbian girl we met in Prague during New Year's and who is studying in Vienna (and was an exchange student in Texas two years ago), but we couldn't figure out how to use the pay phones, so we didn't get to see her. We ate a lunch of appetizers from a japanese restaurant, and then went to an Andy Warhol exhibition at the Albertina. It was a pretty good exhibit, all of popstars, but pretty small. After that we went to another starbucks, and experimented with our cameras, and then at 5:30 we headed home.