We left on Friday, October 26 from the Termini train station in Rome and took a 13-hour overnight train to Vienna, Austria. We hadn't spent the extra euro to get sleeper cars so the 5 of us slept/snuggled (haha) in our train compartment for the night. Upon reaching the station in Austria the next morning, I was so disoriented from lack of sleep, hunger, and finding myself in
a country where we knew absolutely nothing about the language (German) and could not make sense out of any of the signs (I mean in Rome, we know the important phrases and how to get ourselves around). Somehow we managed to get our transportation passes, hop the tram into the main center, and find our hostel - the Wombat, which was really modern, funky, and caters to young travelers. After dropping our bags off, we found a corner cafe for some food and it is just a different experience from what we have in Rome: an elegant building with high ceilings, chandeliers, waiters in suits. Then we took the U-Bahn to the city center where we found Stephansplatz (the plaza) and Stephansdom (the cathedral) - a huge Gothic cathedral which unfortunately was undergoing restoration on the exterior. BUT the interior is amazing (very Gothic - tall columns that turn into the ribbed vaulted ceiling) as you can see.And it gets even better when we took the elevator up the bell tower for a view over the city. Totally unexpected and unnoticed from the ground, but the roof is covered with a mosaic of thousands of tiles. And we got our first taste of the weather that was yet to come for the next few days: cold, overcast, and windy. Overall, besides the weather, I really liked Vienna - wide boulevards, nice green park spaces, elegant architecture - lots of nice stonework, wrought iron details, Gothic architecture... COMPLETELY different from Rome with its narrow back-roads, having to avoid being hit by cars, motorcyles, and other pedestrians, and every building is probably from a different era.
There were a lot of historical museums that we didn't end up visiting, but I know there are some worthwhile collections to see; we did go to an architecture exhibit at the Museum Quartier for a few hours and I learned a lot about Austrian architecture just by going through. And the best part of Vienna: goulash, Wiener schnitzel, potato dumplings, and the beer!
