Vienna

This past weekend AIFS took us to Vienna for a weekend trip.  As with all the trips thus far it was far too short, but we got to see a whole lot of places.  I only have classes Monday and Tuesday but the program obviously has to accommodate everyone's class schedule, so it is a bit obnoxious to have to wait for the weekend to come when I have the entire week off after Tuesday.   Anyway, Vienna by far exceeded all of my possible expectations.  I thought it would be a rather boring city.  Very much the other way round.  The city was extremely clean and had some of the most amazing architecture I have ever seen.  I was a bit disappointed however with the drab colors of the buildings which are all some shade of stone.  I really like that Prague and Munich have brightly colored buildings.  

Vienna is home to possibly my favorite cathedral, St. Stephen's.  It has a huge tower (448.5 ft tall) that makes you very dizzy to even look at.  And additionally the cathedral is very clean, they are in the process of finishing up the cleaning job.  We also saw all the great sites of the town:  New town hall, The Habsburg winter palace, The Habsburg summer palace, the national museum, and all the concert halls and city squares and whatnot.  

My favorite part of town however is the open air market.  We got let out of our three hour walking tour (which was very cool but we became very hungry) and headed to the market.  It was crazy.  The market consists of a section of very good and very cheap restaurants with cuisine from all over the world.  We had the best Indian food I have ever eaten as well as a huge tub of hummus from this Mediterranean restaurant.  The market then turns into a huge food market with delicious looking fresh fruits and veggies and cheeses and meats and everything tasty.  Then it turns into a bunch of booths selling exactly the same crappy products.  But then it turns into a really interesting flea market where people sell everything from old clothes to old nazi coins and everything you can imagine.  Very interesting.  

On our last day there we went to the Habsburg summer palace, which is much like Versailles, but just a bit less classy.  These people were probably the envy of all rich people everywhere back then...except for the French.  

The Vienna trip kind of made me want to study abroad in Venice and I recommend to everyone that you visit the city.  It is one of the most beautiful cities I have ever visited.  It has museums, palaces, good food, great architecture, you can go ice skating in front of the neo-Gothic town hall (which is lit up with colored lights) until midnight 8 months out of the year.  And on top of all that, it is a fairly inexpensive city.  Definitely more expensive that Prague, but still pretty good.