Monday, June 19, 2006 - to Vienna
I headed to Vienna on the morning of the 19th. Got into the hotel before noon, and once again, my room wasn’t ready. I headed out for some lunch and some shopping. The hard drive that was supposed to suck data off the cards my camera uses wasn’t working, and rather than screw with it, I just decided to buy more memory for the camera.
That afternoon set the tone for the next few days in Vienna. I wandered around for a while, then hopped on the U-Bahn or a streetcar to ride to something else I wanted to see. Then back to the hotel to cool off, and perhaps take a shower. On Monday, I ran into Ellie and her family by the Prater in Vienna, too.
The Volksgarten and other public parks were nice spots to sit and rest in a shady spot, but I also started taking advantage of the many sidewalk cafés in Vienna. Ate dinner at one of them near my hotel, the Café zum Hagenthaler, where I had the best Cordon Bleu ever. It was covered with lingenberries, and the sweetness went wonderfully with the meat, and was offset by the acid from the cold potato salad. It might just have been hungry taste buds, but it was darned good, and I finished off the meal with a cream-cheese strudel covered with vanilla sauce, and a Rémy Martin. Came to €26, and I tipped the waiter €5, which based on his reaction was far too high of a tip, but it was a wonderful meal, and I was damned appreciative.
Tuesday, June 20, 2006 - Belvedere, Karlskirche, Bush
I started Tuesday by heading out to Belvedere. I wasn’t planning on even heading inside the building, and I didn’t. But I did arrive early enough that I got to walk through the gardens nearly by myself for about a half-hour before the tourist buses started showing up. I also got to take a picture of a cute gal (sounded American from her accent) with her camera, posing in front of one of the sphynges in the garden. If I’d been thinking more quickly, I’d have realized she was travelling alone too, and asked her if she wanted to spend the day together, but I wasn’t. Heck, I wasn’t thinking quickly enough to even take a picture of her with my camera.
After getting my fill of the gardens, I headed to Karlsplatz, figuring I’d ride the U-Bahn to whatever was my next stop. Along the way I spotted the memorial to the Russian Heroes. Most of the inscriptions were in Russian. I found it an odd thing to have in Vienna, especially given the attitudes people had toward the Russians just after their occupation ended.
Bush arrived in Austria the evening of the 20th, also. It was a pain, since there were big chunks of downtown that were shut off by the Secret Service. Between that, and the sunburn I’d collected on my noggin and neck during the day, I was pretty happy to just spend the evening in the hotel watching CNN and some World Cup game.
One thing I noticed on Tuesday was that Mariahilfer Straße had very little that I still recognized along it. Then I figured out why. With the new (since 1980) U-Bahn line running roughly under it, the streetcars had been torn out, and the street almost completely reworked. There were only two lanes of cars, and all that extra space made for wider sidewalks and more sidewalk cafés. I think it’s a change for the better, at least from a tourist’s perspective.
Dinner on Tuesday was just a grilled ham & cheese sandwich with ketchup. I wasn’t feeling up to searching anything fancy out, and had planned to eat at my hotel, but discovered their café only had food for breakfast.
Wednesday, June 21, 2006 - Schönbrunn, protest
Knowing that President Bush was downtown, I headed out to the ’burbs on Wednesday. I went out to Schönbrunn Palace for a walk through the gardens. Again, I didn’t actually go inside the building to view the galleries, just hung out in the grounds. I had thought about visiting the zoo, but the heat was such that I decided to stay under the trees instead. I spent most of the morning out there.
On the way to the palace, I noticed a store I’ve seen on the web before. It’s the people who own polaschek.com, and I spotted their reptile store in Vienna while riding the streetcar. I thought about stopping by to say hello and ask them about the domain name, but ended up just passing by and making a mental note.
I wandered around a bit more in the early afternoon, then headed back to the hotel for a brief nap before going up to see the protest. It was a pretty big deal even at 5pm, when it was scheduled to begin, but didn’t really take off until about 6pm. They had traffic shut down for about a mile around the Westbahnhof, which included my hotel, so I was glad to be on foot and back near the hotel. I thought about eating at Café zum Hagenthaler again, but it was too close to the protest, and as I was heading there, I saw my waiter from Monday heading off, while still wearing his apron, to the protest.
I ended up having dinner at Café Pub Barcielo, and it was a heck of a deal. Three beers, schnitzel and fries for under €15. And the waitress was very pretty, too. And that pretty much did it for the day. I hadn’t seen a lot, but I’d had plenty of Austria and was ready to head home.
Thursday, June 22, 2006 - Heading home
Two things of note on the trip home. The first was that I bought a litre of Stroh 60 (I couldn’t find the 80 at the airport in Vienna) and three .3 litre bottles of Bailoni Marillenlikör (Apricot Liqueur) to bring home. The second was that in the Amsterdam airport, I got singled out for a security screening before boarding my plane. It was an “Israeli style” questioning where the entire goal seemed to be to piss me off. It worked, and I got to get on the plane, so I guess I responded like a tired tourist and not like a terrorist. Yay me. Except it meant that I didn’t have time to spend my last ten euro bill in a bar in the airport, so that came home with me. Boo.
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