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!