Vienna Soakage

That's a pretty lame pun to say that it's quite wet here in Vienna, what with the multi-day storm rolling through, but it's also a reference to sausage so that's making me hungry. I don't know just how I feel about this title. I get a little bit introspective when it's raining and I can't go anywhere. The forecast says that there's rain in store tomorrow too, so I think that I'd better just get used to it.

The day after I wrote that last post, I took a train out of Pecs. After I left I regretted not having a chance to see the wine region of Hungary, but I only met people who wanted to see it the day after I bought the ticket.I guess that's ok... I've seen wine and vine before and honestly I think that I've been drinking too much lately so it's just as well that I didn't get it started before noon while 'touring'. The other night while I was writing my blog I had a beer at dinner and brought home two beers that I thought that i would share with whomever was around. Nobody was there so I just drank them myself... and then I realized that over the evening I had 1.5 liters of beer while alone (1 beer is .5L here, .3L back home). Drinking by one's self is my definition of alcoholism so I've been a bit self conscious of it ever since.

The train ride to Vienna was pretty brutal. It was about 85+ degrees in the car and the windows didn't go down. It was also a 7 hour ride. I got in really late after checking into the hostel, met some people, and went out to a bar. So much for sobriety. The place was pretty cool and besides serving a number of novelty shots that I can't afford, some of them immolated, they also had a cool new bar game. There's a vertical log, a single hammer, and a box of large nails. 10 of us stood around taking turns trying to knock our nails in with the claw end of the hammer. It took a long time but got a lot of laughs.

The next morning my alarm battery fell out so I got going pretty late and did a walking tour of the city by myself. It's a stunningly beautiful city. Seriously, sometimes while I was wandering I got a little misty thinking about the power and history vested in this wonderful place. The first stop was the Stephansdom, a mighty 13th century Gothic church and the center point of the city. Besides having such a prominent location, it was also important in commerce. On the front of the church are some crude carved circles that were once used to standardize the size of loaves of bread, and some iron bars used to regulate cloth width. I'm sure that the clock, once installed, was pretty important in people's lives as well. I've heard of other Austrian towns that levied clock taxes on every house with a line of sight to the clock. I guess that it's important to have a tall clock tower in such a case.

The interior of the church was stunning as well. It was really built to let in as much light as possible and even on a cloudy day like today it was much brighter than any of the churches in Hungary. The statues were nice too. I did't go very far in though since the bulk of it is pay only but the nave was good enough for me.

After that I wandered around town for a bit marveling at the clean streets, hordes of tourists meshed with locals, and the many expensive stores. The next stop was the Hofburg: the downtown center of administration for the Habsburgs. I'm a little fuzzy on some of this history, but as I understand it, the Habsburgs were a clan that defeated the ruling Bavarians in the 13th century and then spead their power throughout central and eastern Europe over 5 centuries with a mix of strategic marriages and armed conflict. I don't really know what happened to them... maybe nationalism, revolution, and a couple world wars dislodged them? Their Hofburg is now the house of the Austrian presidency and several congressional related rooms.

Naturally the Hofburg building was awesome, what I saw of it, and was surrounded by statues of Hercules performing his 8(?) epic tasks to prove his worth. There are a couple museums of the royal chambers inside but I didn't want to pay so I kept on walking around specifically not looking at my map. I found a great rose garden with fountains and sat for a while before leaving to find a sandwich. There are gyro shops everywhere as in the rest of Europe and the Middle East. I think they're not so good here though. I found out the other day that the gyro was invented in 1971 in Berlin by a Turkish immigrant. Before that gyro/kebab meat was always served on a plate with rice. The inventor put the meat and toppings in bread so that drunk people could buy them as they walked by.

The weather got pretty foul so I wandered back home and found a message from Jowen (who I traveled with in Egypt and Syria) that he's also in Vienna. It would be really cool to meet up with him but unfortunately I missed him and he's moved on to the Czech Republic. We're going to see each other in Prague in a few days if all goes well. This is going to be great. Jowen started his trip the day before me and he was the first person that I met in Egypt. Surely I'll gain great perspective and shared wisdom from an encounter. Till then I'll just have to keep enjoying Vienna. Poor me.