Week 10: Vienna, I'm In Love

Two trips in two weeks?! Crazy talk! But that is exactly what we have done. We left our apartment at the bright and early hour of 7:30 in the morning to go to the SAW airport on the Asian side of İstanbul. Somehow we made it there by 9:30 and had two and a half hours to kill before our flight...which was then delayed for about an hour and a half. Gotta love those cheap Pegasus flights.

As miserable and unnecessarily long as the journey was, Vienna was perfect. Unbelievably beautiful and serene and CLEAN. Even the train from the airport into the city center was super posh and cool. We got out and Landstrasse and found ourselves walking through endless parks and streets looking for a restaurant or cafe that was open. Of course the only one we found was actually a Greek restaurant outside of the back entrance to Belvedere Palace. After the much needed meal, we walked through and around the palace grounds and random garden paths around it. I am still so amazed by how perfect and beautiful it all was--which highly contrasts with my appearance in this photo below.

After walking around on this side of the town, we found ourselves close to Karlsplatz (though we didn't know it at the time). We went to Cafe Schwarzenberg which is known for its desserts and coffees served with live concerts, though unfortunately the concert part of the evening was missing. Nonetheless, we were able to check off traditional Sacher torte and Apple strudel from our list of famous Viennese cakes. Even better though might have been the coffee.

Adter this heavenly food experience, we hopped on the metro and found our way to Hostel Huttledorf, which was much larger than expected and bustling with tons of travelers. 

On Saturday, we walked around the St. Stephen's Cathedral and Mozart's House. (And again experienced some of the best coffee we've had all semester).  

And then, for what might have been my favorite part of the trip, we rented bikes and rode around the city center and through the parks! Here I learned that, even though procedural memory kicks in, riding a bike for the first time in over a decade can be slightly challenging. Of course by the time we were ready to return our bikes we had to go around to three different stations before finding one that had open slots for us to leave ours. Thankfully everything is pretty easy to walk to in Vienna, and so we saw a great deal of the city both on wheels and foot. 

We walked through the Nauschmarket which had tons of little food stands and groceries (with a surprisingly heavy Turkish influence). After seeing almost ten falafel stands, we settled on falafel wraps for lunch (a thin pita-type tortilla, hummus, falafels, tzaziki sauce, and peppers) which was probably the greatest food decision we've ever made. And for the true Austrian experience, we tried Amdudler--a grape and apple flavored soda that tastes a bit like ginger ale--it's the second most consumed soft drink in Austria behind Coca-Cola. We enjoyed our meal on the steps of theSecession, an art/exhibit hall known to have a variety of well-known and revered exhibitions. 

After lunch we walked around all of the other well known state opera houses and Albertina. And of course you can't go a day in Vienna without walking by a beautiful palace and so we saw the Hofburg Palace. 

By this point in the day we weren't quite sure what else to do or if there was even a stone in the city we left untouched. We got on the metro and ended up getting off at the Prater, this amusement park type place close to the banks of the Danube. This park was so much larger than I expected with some very impressive and detailed themed rides. 

Before heading back to our hostel, we made one last attempt to hear live music in Vienna-the supposed city of music. We walked to Porgy & Bess, a well-known jazz club, before we realized we had no tickets and no clue how it worked. So instead we went to Cafe Pruckel (also on a list of famous concert cafes! Though again, there was no music) and ordered some random Viennese dish off the German menu (it ended up being gnocci and it was quite good). 

I'm still not sure if this was because it was Easter weekend or if Vienna is just a very chill city, but almost everything in the neighborhood was closed by the time we finished dinner. We walked a few blocks on the search for a cafe for dessert with absolutely no luck. We ended up buying some cake from a small grocery store near the metro (though it wasn't very good) before heading back for another night at Huttledorf. 

The next day was Easter Sunday and we didn't expect much to be open but I had read about these famous Easter markets with a plethora activities. The first was at Schonbrun Palace, and so that was our first stop for the day:

This palace was by far the most impressive of all the ones we had seen inVienna. The grounds and gardens were neverending and even more beautiful in the good weather. This is also where they have those maze gardens (which were apparently legitimately used by the royals/aristocrats for "clandestine meetings" according to a poster I read leading up to the gates). 

Next on the list was the Easter markets at Freyung, the old city square. This market was famous for having the largest Easter egg tower in all of Europe--over 40,000 hand painted eggs! First, the square proved almost impossible to find. We just kept walking until we saw what looked like a market and ended up walking through two of those--neither of which had a tower of eggs. We did pass buy a very large stand with hundreds (probably thousands) of eggs and it wasn't until completing further research once we were in İstanbul when we realized that that collection of eggs was indeed the so-called tower (a little bit of a let down). 

We weren't quite sure what to do with the rest of our day, so we just meandered through town enjoying feeling like regular people walking down the street instead of tourists rushing to see every sight suggested by tripadvisor. I learned this weekend that this might actually be one of my favorite ways to see a city. No strict plan--almost no plan at all actually. Just a list of 5-7 suggested places and the freedom of 48 hours to take us wherever the wind blows us. 

We went back to Prater to see what their Easter festival was all abou--though not much was different except there were more people around and a handful of people dressed in very odd rabbit costumes with scary face paint passing out some sort of promotional material. 

By the evening, we were surprisingly excited to be heading back to our İstanbul home. Our lovely flight on Turkish airlines (complete with personal movie selections, Turkish delight, and s three course meal) more than made up for the hellish Pegasus experience on the way there. It finally hit me that I've been on more planes in the past two months than I have in the past year. We'll pretty much be pros by the time the semester ends.