The travels of Tim and Megan: Vienna, Austria

Boxing Day

On arrival in Vienna, we were much better at working out the underground system this time and we found our way to our hotel no worries. After checking in, we walked the short distance to the city centre. It was insanely cold, even with our many layers of clothing on. Our walk included a crossing of the Danube, which looked very pretty with lots of lights from boats and city buildings reflecting off the water. Vienna looked amazing with all of its Christmas lights, awesome shops and people everywhere.

We found a German beer garden-style restaurant and tried out their wheat beer, which was very nice and then we ordered some dinner. Megs ordered potato soup and calamari. Tim had the local specialty, the "giant wiener schnitzel", and it was seriously enormous - see photo below. But it was delcious and between us we managed to devour it.

Monday

On Monday we were greeted with blue sky and sunshine, but it was still very, very cold - a high of about -5 degrees. After breakfast in the hotel, we realised that the Kunsthistorisches Museum was closed on Mondays, so we changed our plans and Megan led us on a walking tour of the city centre of Vienna.

Austria is a landlocked country of around 8.3 million people in central Europe. It is bordered by Germany and the Czech Republic to the north, Slovakia and Hungary to the east, Slovenia and Italy to the south and Switzerland and Liechtenstein to the west, and it is shaped a bit like a chicken drumstick. The territory of Austria covers 84,000 sq km. Its capital and largest city is Vienna, with more than 1.6 million people. The official language of Austria is German. Austria is one of the richest countries in the world, with nominal GDP per capita of close to $44,000.

Our walking tour began outside the State Opera House, where we would be returning later in the day for a guided tour inside the opera house! We continued past the Albertina art gallery and the Monument to Anti-fascism and arrived at Stephansdom (or St Stephan's Cathedral) in the middle of the main square in Vienna, Stephansplatz.

Situated in the centre of the city, Stephansdom is the soul of Vienna. A church has stood on this site for over 800 years, but all that remains of the original 13th century Romanesque church are the Giants' Doorway and Heathen Towers. The Gothic nave, choir and side chapels are the result of a rebuilding programme in the 14th and 15th centuries. We had a quick peek inside the huge Cathedral, which was beautiful, before carrying on with our walking tour.

From Stephansplatz we wandered down the busy Graben (a major shopping street), where we saw the enormous Monument to the Plague and St Peter's church, which was also beautifully decorated inside, before we hit the Demel bakery. The Demel bakery is a famous pastry shop and chocolatier in Vienna (and now Salzburg, apparently). It was founded in 1786 and was moved to its current building in 1857, where it has remained ever since. We had a look inside at some of the tasty treats before heading on to the Hofburg Palace.

Hofburg Palace has housed some of the most important people in Austrian history, including the Habsburg dynasty, rulers of the Austro-Hungarian empire. It was the Habsburg's principal winter residence and it currently serves as the official residence of the President of Austria. The huge Hofburg complex also contains several museums, a chapel, a church, the Austrian National Library and the Winter Riding School. We walked through the courtyard of the Hofburg Palace, past the building known as the Winter Riding School, which is home to the famous Spanish Riding School, which performs dressage shows there on pretty white horses.

From the Hofburg Palace, we ventured past the Museum Quarter and back along the road to the Opera House, where we had started our walking tour. It was a great little introduction to the centre of Vienna. We had lined up a tour of the Opera House for 2pm, so we decided to visit the Sacher Cafe, one of Vienna's world famous coffee houses. The Sacher Cafe is part of the Sacher Hotel and is most famous for its "Sacher torte" - a secret recipe chocolate cake that was first made in 1832. We managed to get a table fairly quickly and each ordered a slice of the original Sacher torte, along with a hot chocolate (Tim) and a pot of tea (Megan). It was pretty flash inside the cafe. The cake was only OK - a little dry to be honest, but the experience was fun!

The State Opera House opened on 25 May 1869. Built in the Neo-Renaissance style, it initially failed to impress the Viennese. Yet when it was hit by a bomb in WWII and largely destroyed, the event was seen as a symbolic blow to the city. The Opera House re-opened after the bombing in November 1955. Our guided tour of the Opera House went for almost an hour, with the highlights being the Grand Staircase made of marble that leads from the main entrance up to the first floor (embellished with statues of the seven liberal arts) and the opulent Schwind foyer, decorated with scenes from operas and busts of famous composers and conductors. We also learned about the annual opera ball, an extremely high society which opens when the "well-to-do" young ladies dressed in white and their escorts take to the dance floor.

By the time the tour of the Opera House ended, we were a little bit peckish, so we headed to the classy hot dog establishment behind the Opera House and got ourselves a hot dog to snack on. It was a pretty good dog. Then we returned to our hotel to thaw out, re-emerging in the evening, again rugged up like the Michelen Man.

Megan had heard about a cocktail bar at the top of a hotel in Stephansplatz, that has a great view looking out onto the huge Cathedral, so we made that our first stop of the evening. The bar was very busy and sadly the only seat we could get did not have a great view of the Cathedral, but it was a nice bar nonetheless. We then grabbed dinner at a place called the Bettelstudent Restaurant (where the lure of back to back wiener schnitzels was too much for Tim to resist) before settling into the Irish pub along the road from there, which was showing the Arsenal v Chelsea match live. Aside from the cigarette smoke that filled the pub and stunk out our clothes, it was a fantastic night to be a Gooner, as Arsenal hammered their title rivals 3-1!

Tuesday

On Tuesday morning we had our hotel breakfast and checked out of the hotel before tracking down one of Vienna's favourite monuments - the Johann Strauss II monument in Stadtspark (or City Park). The gilded bronze statue, framed by a marble relief made by Edmund Hellmar, is one of the best known and most frequently photographed monuments in Vienna (see photos below). It was unveiled to the public on 26 June 1921. Johann Strauss II (1825-1899) was an Austrian composer of light music, particularly dance music and operettas. He composed over 500 waltzes, polkas, quadrilles and other types of dance music, as well as several operettas and a ballet. In his lifetime, he was known as "The Waltz King", and was largely responsible for the popularity of the waltz in Vienna during the 19th century.

The main event of our last day in Vienna was a visit to the Kunsthistorisches Museum in the Museum Quarter. The Kunsthistorisches (or History of Art) Museum is housed in a magnificent building on the Ringstrasse, opposite an identical magnificent building containing the Natural History Museum, across the other side of Maria-Theresien-platz. The building itself is amazing - it has a beautiful huge marble staircase from the main foyer, with a massive statue of Theseus clubbing a centaur or animal of some description in the centre, flanked by two fine looking lions.

Its collections are based largely on those built up over the centuries by generations of Habsburg monarchs. On the ground floor there is an Egyptian antiquities area (which includes a small blue ceramic hippopotamous aged about 4,000 years) and a Greek and Roman antiquities area (the highlight of which is the Gemma Augustea - a beautifully detailed Roman cameo carved from onyx). On the first floor are halls and halls filled with French, German, Flemish, Dutch and Italian art work.

We were blown away with how good the museum was - we could easily have spent longer there, if not for our feet starting to get sore and our stomachs starting to rumble. We grabbed some lunch on the go from a bakery and then wandered through the pretty streets of Vienna until we stumbled upon the finest of all Viennese coffee houses, Cafe Central.

Cafe Central was opened in 1860 and late in the 19th century it became a key meeting place of the Viennese intellectual scene. One of its most famous regulars was Peter Altenburg, a renowned poet with an awesome moustache, of whom there is now a life size statue in the entranceway to the cafe. In January 1913 alone, Josip Broz Tito, Sigmund Freud, Adolf Hitler, Vladimir Lenin and Leon Trotsky all visited the cafe! There was a more relaxed feel to Cafe Central than Cafe Sacher, although the staff at Cafe Central were still formal and the service was excellent. They had an amazing range of delicious cakes to choose from - coffee and cake seems to be a national passtime in Austria! So we each chose a piece of cake and spent a relaxing hour in the charming Cafe Central.

With time almost up on our Christmas excursion, we walked along some more lovely streets, taking in the beautiful Judenplatz square, which is home to a large Holocaust memorial (photo below). Then we collected our luggage and made our way out to the airport. Thankfully our flight was on time and the trip home was not too painful. Now, three weeks until the next adventure...