European Adventure #4 - Vienna

Our overnight train from Venice to Vienna departed over 45 minutes late, but thanks to some trademark Austrian efficiency, we rolled in to the Westbanhoff station a mere 5 minutes late.

There, we were greeted by this man.

He is Dr. Bob, an old friend that I won in a break up. She got my dignity, but I got Dr. Bob and that's a trade I'd make any day...since, really, I never had much dignity to begin with.

Anyhow, Dr. Bob is a supergenius professor who is doing a year of research at the University of Vienna. His office is filled to overflowing with formula-filled notepads and other things my simple mind cannot make any sense of...especially while doing this:

Vienna was a breath of fresh air. After being easily identified as tourists in Paris and Venice, we were treated as regular nobodies in Vienna. It was nice to finally experience some real language barriers when trying to order a cup of coffee.

Vienna is a magical land filled with sausages (but not those tiny ones in the cans), beer and jelly donuts. It was just like my dreams only I didn't rescue any bikini girls from a volcano. Oh, and Mozart and Strauss are eveywhere...and, to a lesser extent, Beethoven.

We started our Vienna adventure by eating sausages and going to the Belvedere Museum which, unfortunately, had little or nothing to do with Mr. Belvedere. On the plus side, Klimt's "The Kiss" was there and it was spectacular, but I still would've like at least a mention of Bob Uecker.

Then we went shopping.

There were like a dozen H&M's on one street which helped me quickly make up for the fact that I had never been to one previously. H&M is kinda like the Gap only people like it more and they are more selective about where they put there stores...well, if you count putting a dozen of them on one street in Vienna "selective." I didn't buy anything.

Eveything in Vienna is like 800 years old and covered in gold. Take a look at this church:

And you can kinda see an old building behind us in this smoochy shot:

Here's a gilded Strauss:

Anyhow, Dr. Bob doesn't actually live in Vienna true. He is slightly outside of the city in a cool little town known as Klosterneuburg. He has a view of a castle right from his balcony!

Also, there were bakeries and a wine shop in walking distance...which is pretty much the most important thing in the world.

We went to a bar called....hmmm, ok I forget what it was called. I do remember drinking a lot, buying used bar glasses off the waitress and trying to keep up with Amber as she ran all the way home to Dr. Bob's stating that, after pounding a bottle of wine, she said she simply had to "jog it out." Here we are at the bar doing an impersonation of our livers:

Upon getting home, I felt it necessary to stack things:The day we left, we resumed the drinking. This time it was large beers at a quaint little joint called the "Anker Hotel" where they served the best thing I have ever eaten. This:It's goulash with a flower carved out of a sausage! Does it get any better? That big white thing is The Most Amazing Dumpling in the World.

With some time left before we had to catch our train to the airport, we decided to have a couple more over-sized novelty beers and follow that up with a trip to the wine store. This leads in to the next post titled "The Time we Missed our Stop." Stay tuned.