Verdi in Vienna

It would see I'm a little behind, so I will post these two at once! Here's all about Vienna!

Now we are on a train to Munich – however, this is not a night train like we were supposed to take. Nope, it is the afternoon and we are on a day train. Why, you may ask? Well, we left the opera at 9:50 pm last night, believing that our train to Munich left at 11:11 pm. Seeing as we had to collect our luggage from the hostel before continuing on to the train station, this was a slightly nerve wrecking situation prompting me to run pell-mell through several U-bahn (or metro, for those of you not familiar with that) stations, with Katie on her shorter legs trying to keep up. Upon arrival at the station, we were devastated to find that there was no train leaving at 11:11 pm! A second look at our tickets revealed that the train TO Vienna left at 11:11 and the train FROM Vienna was scheduled to depart at 11:56 pm, meaning we were quite early to the platform, which was very cold with the wind and rain. At 11:55 pm, we started to become concerned that the train had not yet arrived or that perhaps the platform had changed. To confirm our train we looked at the schedule board, and were devastated to find that instead of departing at 11:56, our train was now scheduled to depart at 3:56 am, in short a 4 hour delay caused by the winds and weather damaging the tracks. After a brief moment of stunned disbelief, we decided that a 4 hour wait in a dark windy cold train station was not in the cards for us. Instead, we left the platform and called the hostel we had stayed at the previous night. Fortunately they had beds available, and we made our way back to the hostel we had rushed out of with our luggage only a couple of hours before. After all this, finding out that our room was on the fifth floor of the hostel that does not have an elevator, was nothing. Exhausted, we collapsed into a much deserved sleep and woke up the next morning to catch the day train to Munich. Why did we deserve this sleep so much? Besides the fact that this was an exhausting adventure, we had two crazy-busy days in Vienna. When we arrived early Saturday morning around 6:15 am (and our train was early!) we hit the ground running and saw many cool sights of Vienna, walking around the city before anyone else was on the streets. I have to say, it is so much more pretty when there are no crowds around. We saw the Lipizzaner stallions practice, the Hapsburg Palace and learned all about Empress Elisabeth (more commonly known as Sisi). She has a very interesting story to her life and I have to say I enjoyed reading and learning about her the most in all of Vienna. After that we took a break to sit and eat lunch, but not for long. After lunch we saw the Stephensdom cathedral and walked a farmer’s market for a bit before sitting down to dinner. By dinner, my legs ached so much. I was hobbling around, and Katie could finally keep up with me! We sat for a while and rested and then moved on and saw one more museum (Haus der Musik) before calling it a night. At this museum, Katie directed the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra in a cool virtual auditorium and did a great job! Carmen was playing at the Opera house that night, but seeing as we were exhausted, we decided to forego the classic Opera to do our laundry and sleep. We ended up having quite some adventure with the laundry and didn’t get to sleep until midnight. By that point, we had been up for 18 hours that day! Exhausted still, we decided it was best to skip the Vienna boys choir the next morning because we would have to had get up pretty early, and we just needed to rest some. We slept in and spent the next morning at another palace of the Hapsburgs (very large and elaborate), and then spent an hour or two at the hostel relaxing and just getting out of the horrible weather. We then saw an opera Sunday night! We got some great standing-room only tickets to see La Traviata, written by Verdi. That was a fantastic cultural experience and a great opera! After the opera, we had our wonderful train adventure. But hey, those obstacles come with traveling and we are doing great at hurdling them. Looking out the window right now I see no rain, and cross your fingers it stays that way, because it was rainy and cold our whole time in Vienna, and I’m slightly sick of the rain. But I can’t complain, I’m in Europe after all! And I’m having a great time too! As they say in Vienna, Tschuss!

Pretty Prague

So! On to our next adventure! We are on our train from Prague to Vienna, and we have our own sleeper car this time, so unlike last time where we thought we were going to be alone then ended up having car-mates, this time we booked a car for ourselves. It was the only type of car available on this train. Prague was fantastic – I think it is definitely a contender for one of the prettiest cities in Europe. All the buildings are beautiful! We definitely got to know the city – so much so that by the end of our stay, we could find our way to pretty much any area without a map. It’s as simple as we knew where everything was in relation to the Old Town Square, a quaint pedestrian square in the middle of town. Day one wasn’t a whole day, as we arrived around 10:00, but we made good use of it. Day two we got up early and beat the crowds many places, so that was good. We ended up paddle boating on the river at the end of our second day (Katie’s idea. Her thoughts were that our legs were tired and so we should go paddle boating. Haha). Paddle boating was really fun, and there is a video to come of that. We explored the whole city in two days, and decided we had pretty much seen it all, so the third day of our stay, we went on a day trip to a castle nearby that Rick Steves recommends in his guidebook. You would think it was simple to find a castle, because it should stick out, right? Well, we had some major problems. First we couldn’t find the train platform we were supposed to be on in Prague, because they added the suffix of “J” to the platform number, and we could not for the life of us find the platform 1J. As it turns out, the “J” actually means south (the Czech word for south starts with a J) and we finally got on the right train. When it came time to transfer, we had to wait an hour for our next train, and got to spend some time at a Czech train station. The next train was only two cars long and we got off at what we thought was our stop. The directions in the book to get to the castle literally say “Walk 10 minutes uphill” – so we did. I can tell you, there are no castles up that hill we walked. We did see about 10 snails and 2 slugs, our wildlife sighting for the day (Dad do we get a campfire now??), although I’m not sure how wild slugs and snails are…We walked back down the hill to the train station and had to wait 45 minutes for the train to come back and take us back to Prague. It was the same conductor driving the train, so they must have thought we were crazy. But it was a fun side trip and a great train ride. It was raining all day (yuck) so we got to spend most of it inside. After we got back, we spent the rest of our Czech Korunnas on food and souvenirs and then headed to the train station and waited for our night train to Vienna. Good news, in the sleeper car the beds are long enough that I can fit in them! Well, as they say in Prague, Na shledanou! (try to pronounce that!)

So I’m sitting, or more accurately, laying in my bed, on the train to Prague, and I still can’t believe I’m in Europe! It’s been a whirlwind of two days! Yesterday was a blur, with getting in, finding Katie, and then essentially sleep walking around Amsterdam. But hey, we do things right, and you can’t waste a day in Amsterdam! So instead, we ate a cheese and ham croissant, sucked it up, and toured the city. Before we could tour the city, we had to drop off our luggage, a more nightmare-ish adventure than you might imagine, when the machines don’t take cash nor any kind of credit card we own (the Visa/Mastercard wasn’t working at any station as a sign informed us). They only took Maestro cards, which we did not have. We were at a loss of what to do, when a kind lady asked if she could help us. After explaining our plight, I’m not sure if we just looked that sad and lost, or if she was that nice, but she said “follow me”. She ended up using her card and then we paid her back with cash– what a lifesaver! We walked to the Bloemenmarkt where they sell “grow your own weed” kits and other plants too (obviously not as notable as the cannabis ones though). Then, because it was actually kind of cold, we decided to go on a canal boat tour, which essentially turned out to be a very expensive NAP. The warmth of the boat (which was indoors) combined with the wait of the recording to get to the English portion of the program (they were talking in four different languages!) were the perfect setting to put us both to sleep. But we were awake long enough to hear that at least one car per week drives into the Amsterdam canals – oops! After our impromptu nap, we finally decided to listen to our bodies and head back to my aunt’s place to sleep. We met up with my aunt and had a lovely homemade dinner and then promptly fell asleep at 8:30 PM. I slept for 12 hours and woke up at 8:30 AM to get ready for day two. We ate breakfast and left to go back into the city. We saw Anne Frank’s house and then ate our picnic lunch next to a canal – which would have been quite quaint had it not smelled like pee. Apparently the people who pick up the trash in Amsterdam are on strike and have been for a week, so there is trash lying all over the city. It’s quite a shame that such a pretty city is so dirty. Don’t worry though, I didn’t let Katie get the wrong idea – I didn’t want to sully her opinion of my home country! After lunch, we saw the Rijkmuseum and the Van Gogh Museum and then had just enough time to eat some pannekoeken (so yummy!) and then catch our train to Prague! We get into Prague at 9:30 AM tomorrow morning, and plan to hit the ground running! This should be interesting as we shall see how much sleep I get tonight. Funny story, beds on trains are quite short.



I am going to find out how to put up pictures here, but seeing as I am having problems finding the time/internet to post, I am just going to post this now. Check out facebook for the pictures!Well, as they say in Amsterdam, Doei!