Bernie in Vienna 2006: Travel Diary Vienna ’06 – 1st entry

As I hadn’t been to Vienna, the capital of Austria, for more than a year I decided that this weekend would be a good time to go and so my brother and I hopped on a train this morning at 11 and some two hours later we arrived at our destination, Vienna West. I had been to Vienna a few times before and already knew a good hostel to stay and so we walked straight there. Although it’s a really nice place they always seem to have vacant beds and this time it wasn’t any different, so staying in Vienna for a few days wouldn’t be a problem at all and after I’d paid for my bed we walked on. When you move from Vienna West train station towards the touristic city centre you walk along the Mariahilfer Strasse, a shopping street that’s actually the longest of its kind in central Europe and I find its length impressive every time I walk along it. Even London’s Oxford Street looks small in comparison. So, we walked the whole length to its end where we reached the Museumsquartier, an old, historical building in the courtyard of which there are two modern cubes that had been built a few years ago and which house museums of modern art. We didn’t have time to go into these museums but even the courtyard itself is a sight worth visiting: it’s a quite wide space with artistically designed benches on which people relax, there’s a fountain and a number of cafes so it’s just the right place to chill out on a summer afternoon. After taking in this sight we walked on to the nearby Hofburg, the old castle of Vienna that houses amongst others the office rooms of the President of Austria. There we wanted to get a guided tour through the representative rooms but unfortunately it was already too late in the evening and so we walked on to the nearby tourist information to get some pamphlets with the most important sights and their opening hours. Now that we’d settled this we returned to the Hofburg to sit down on the lawn and relax a bit and to study the pamphlets we’d taken from the tourist info. It always feels kind of strange, almost unreal, how many historical places there are in Vienna: on the lawn we were sitting on, ten thousands of people were standing cheering on Adolph Hitler when he proclaimed the annexation of Austria to the German Reich in front of the Hofburg on Heldenplatz Square some 70 years ago. Somehow eerie when you think about it… After we’d had a look at the pamphlets we continued our walk through the city centre and soon my brother’s girlfriend met up with us and we took a tube train out to the Grinzing area which is famous for its numerous wine taverns. We chose one of them and at around nine in the evening we were sitting in a lovely little wine garden, enjoying the ‘G’spritzter’ (that’s wine mixed with carbonated mineral water to equal parts) and delicacies of the Viennese cuisine. After some time an accordion man started to play old melodies and chatting about all kinds of things we had a great evening until I returned to the hostel and went to bed.