What an exhausting past few days it has been. The last time I posted was about Budapest while i was in vienna. Today's post will cover my short stay in Vienna and our trip to the salt mine today!
We arrived in Vienna on Tuesday evening, completely exhausted. The train wasn't bad, we played cards almost the entire time. We saw a foggy Vienna countryside filled with windmills, unfortunately I couldn't get a good enough picture of the vast number of them.
When we arrived in Vienna we had absolutely no idea where we were. Thankfully we caught ourselves shortly after we started going in the completely wrong direction. It only took us about 40 minutes to get to the hostel. The hostel we stayed in is part of an international chain called Wombat City Hostels and I highly recommend staying with them. We each payed a little over $20 a night for a quad room with four bunk beds and a bathroom. The hostel was quite large with a large main lounge, a bar, a public kitchen, and lots of tv's showing the Olympics! We were so excited to actually watch some of the Games because we haven't been able to find them anywhere else. We watched the devastating end to the women's hockey final where Canada score on the US in overtime. The hostel also offered a breakfast buffer that was incredibly delicious and only 4€!! Which was such a deal considering everything in Vienna was ridiculously expensive.
After breakfast Wednesday morning we joined the complimentary tour put on by our hostel. My only regret is not videotaping the tour because there was so much interesting history to everything we saw and I only remember a few things. I thought the most interesting site on the tour was the art school that Hitler was rejected from. We only saw the corner of it but it was such an ordinary building that I never would have suspected that it has such important history.
This is the state opera house! When the opera house opened, the people of Vienna hated it so much (because they wanted a grand staircase outside and it wasn't in the style they liked) that one of the two architects committed suicide before it was opened and the other they say died of a broken heart shortly after. Now the people in Vienna love the opera house and it's wide variety of shows performed each season. The opera house puts of different shows every single night so that the people can always see something different. 
Sadly we couldn't go inside and didn't have time to take an expensive tour but here is what we would have seen if we went inside. I am borrowing these pictures from google image and Pinterest
There were also beautifully carved statues across the street from the opera and a wiener stand that sells the best wurst in Vienna (so they say). It's a popular place for people to go eat after the opera and discuss their opinions about the show. We tried the food. I will never eat something that delicious in America. Vienna has the best brats by far. I wish I could have found the mustard they put on the brat too because the mustard itself was the most delicious and perfectly spiced mustard I've ever had. And it was great at clearing my sinuses.
This was the location of a building, I forget the name and type, where in World War Two a great deal of Viennese people to refuge in the basement during a bomb raid by the US. The building collapsed and trapped the people underneath. The building burned and though the firemen put out the fire, they still could not reach the people. There were no survivor and only just in the past few years have we developed the technology to excavate the area and unearth the bodies. The area is now a landmark with three statues, the tall white statues depict the soldiers and innocents who died, the second is very small metal statue of a Jewish man cleaning the streets (at the time the Jewish were tasked with scrubbing the streets of Vienna clean before they were sent off to camps), and the third is a statue depicting the people defending into a fiery Hell. There will never be another building erected in this location because the flat ground serves as it's own monument.
I wasn't able to get a better picture but they call him the street cleaning Jew. The barbed wire has no symbolism, it's just there so that people don't sit on him.
I'm afraid this is the most I remembered about the history of specific places on the tour. Please enjoy the pictures of other places that I can't name.
This place has over 2,000,000 books/manuscripts. It was under renovation so we could not go inside. It was part of a palace(?) where someone who ruled Vienna lived. I apologize for my lack of history knowledge.
This was my face during the entire tour.
Hitler spoke from that balcony when he was in Vienna. The building is called the Heldenplatz. The second picture is from Wikipedia and you can see the two horses in front
This is a wonderful cafe where you can go and sit for hours reading. We had a cup of coffee there later in the afternoon.
My hot chocolate with chocolate liquor
The architecture in the shopping district is incredible
Stephensdom
A pretty building
The design was burned into the actual stone bricks when it was built so the building would be easy to clean
First sighting of Rathaus (town hall)!
The grounds in front are turned into an outdoor ice rink during the winter
It's so cool!
Parliament
Two Vienna museums that faced each other and they looked the same
It's Schönbrunn Palace!
We're certain the gardens look beautiful in the spring but everything was still dead when we were there
The back side of the palace
The Gloriette on top of the hill behind the palace
This is from the statues at the base of the hill
The Gloriette in all it's glory
The famous Ferris wheel that's really big!
The shop window of one of the few Swarovski stores in Vienna
Vroom vroom
Rathaus by night!
Vienna was amazing and I wish we were able to spend more time there. We were disappointed with how incredibly expensive things were but our experiences were great all the same. I'm so thankful that my friend Brenna, an AMAZING William and Mary student who is studying in Vienna, was able to show us around a bit and hang out. She got coffee with us and helped us figure out what to see in our short time there. She also went out with us to an Erasmus (European exchange program) night at one of the clubs. The happy hour drinks were .5€ each and there were delicious. We had such a fun time singing and dancing in the club, and talking with locals too! Brenna was not only a blast but also made us feel so comfortable and safe in a crowded club in a country we had never been to. Hopefully she will visit us all in Kraków!
Our length vacation ended with a night bus back to Poland, we left at 10pm and arrived in katawice at 6am with two hours to wait until our connecting bus to Kraków arrived at 8. The bus to Kraków only took a little over an hour but we were completely exhausted. We had a lazy Friday morning and afternoon, relaxing and napping, before we went out to dinner with the three new members of our study abroad program!
Today we went to the Wieliczka salt mines but I will post about that tomorrow. Tomorrow is also our first day of classes! Which means I actually have to be a student this semester and I can't just go frolicking around Europe and Poland but I'm excited all the same.
I love Poland so much but the one thing I'm craving that doesn't exist in Poland is macaroni and cheese, specifically Kraft Mac and cheese. Just a little side note in case anyone was wondering what I miss from America, aside from people.
And to explain the title, our guide told us that Vienna was the city of second chances because the Viennese usually hate things at first (the opera for example), and then later decide that they love it. They also often give unusual names to things at first and the names just seem to stick. A theater, I forget it's real name, has an ornate golden ball on top yet the Viennese call it the Golden Cabbage.
Best wishes to everyone back home, I miss you all lots and send my love!
Claire
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