Sophie & Ollie´s Travels

Vienna, Austria. Last week we left Chania, feeling sad about leaving our home for the month. We arrived at the ferry port to go to Athens at 9pm and had to wait till 10.30 for the ferry to arrive. Unfortunately, the wind began to pick up and by 10.30 the wind and sea were too strong for the ferry to reverse into the port. So we waited. Then the Greeks started smoking and the old ladies grumbling and then it poured and a thunder and lightning storm began all while we stood under something not much more substantial than a bus shelter. By 12.45 we finally ran in the rain onto the ferry. We slept nearly the whole way despite the seats being similar to airplane seats with fluroscent lights overhead and Greek TV blarring away. Cabins are much better than the cheap seats but, luckily, hardly anyone travelled on the ship that night. We arrived in Athens at 8am the next day and caught the metro to our hotel for the night. We didn't like Athens that much this time either. It is a real 'city' city filled with thousands of ugly highrise apartments and not much else except the Acropolis. We stayed in a cheaper area of town this time with the 'drug dealers, pickpocketers and prostitutes' (according to the Lonely Planet) though we only noticed the prostitutes working on a sunday morning. The following morning, in our keeness to get to Austria, we managed to be first in our check-in queue. Athens airport looked very nice and we looked round for two hours before we took our SkyEurope flight to Vienna. As the plane landed, we followed everyone else's example and put on our coats, scarves and gloves before getting off the plane. We could see our breath as soon as we stepped off the plane onto the gangway. Ollie's cousin (third cousin?) Winfried met us at the airport and drove us into the city, saving us from public transport with our backpacks. We had booked ourselves three nights in a hotel outside the centre of the city. Before taking us to our hotel, Winfried took us on a tour of Vienna at night. The main centre of Vienna is enclosed by the Ring Road, a circular road with the Parliament building, Burg Theatre, Town Hall, other government buildings and the expensive hotels all around it. The buildings look hugely impressive all created in a grand-style architecture like Classical and Baroque with sculptures and columns and gold features. Barely a plain or ugly building sits on the kilometres long ring. We also saw piles of snow beside the road that had fallen a few days before. The night tour looked fantastic as they have brought out their Christmas lights in Vienna. The Town Hall has an advent calendar on its windows counting down the days to Christmas with a Christmas market in front of it lit up in lights. The park next to the Market has trees filled with Christmas-themed laterns. One 16-or-so storey building on the Ring has a massive Christmas tree created in lights on it and the hotels have lit up their facades with Christmas lights. The city looked very Christmassy and exciting especially with the small piles of snow.After our tour, Winfried took us to the pub for a huge meal of turkey Schintzel and chips. It was cold in Vienna. We wore two pairs of socks, with track pants/leggings under our trousers, a singlet, t-shirt, jumper, thick jacket, gloves, scarves and beanies everytime we went out and the air was still cold. However, everywhere inside, including our hotel, most importantly, are kept warm, sometimes too hot. We have enjoyed exploring the city though tucked up in our winter gear. On our first day we caught the metro into the city and decided to walk round some of the Ring Road. We walked past the Parliament building with its marble and gold statues, visited the Christmas Market and saw the Christmas decorations for sale, food stalls and winter hats, gloves and scarves. We bought a few Austrian-style lunches there including bratwurst hotdogs, baked potatoes with chilli-con-carne, some 'healthy' sausages wrapped in dough then deep-fried and smothered in garlic oil, chocolate-covered apples, ice-cream cones filled with ridiculously sweet marshmellow and covered in chocolate, and apple strudel. We also tried the Christmas Austrian drink, punsch which comes in different flavours - orange, apple, beer, tequila, red bull etc - we had the orange and it tasted like orange concentrate, boiling water and rum, not great to taste but nice to hold in the freezing wind. We went for a walk in the city park, saw more snow, freezing ducks, and a branch of the Danube River. We went walking down the main shopping street, pretty with the Christmas decorations, went to the main cathedral, St Stephen's church, and froze inside the stone walls. That night we went out to dinner with Winfried to a Hungarian restaurant and had goulash with Hungarian pasta. After dinner we had planned to get a drink in one of Vienna's famous coffee houses but even Winfried thought the weather far too cold to bother, and, as the zip on my cheap Greek coat couldn't take the cold anymore, we decided to go back. The next day I bought a lovely new coat from H&M - warmer and with a metal zip this time. We took a tram around the Ring Road and saw the sights out of the wind. I feel much more sorry for the homeless here than in Greece, its just so cold. Vienna has hundreds of museums and art galleries but they are not free like in London and you can get sick of going to them pretty fast. The city has a whole area designated to museums called, surprise, surprise, the Museums Quartier. We went to the Quartier but not into anything. We did however, go to an art gallery called the Albertina, with an exhibition called Monet to Picasso and, because it is an old palace, we saw the ornate interior and furnishings. We also visited the Haus de Musick another day. This museum exhibits the history of Vienna's muscians and music on 5 floors of interactive displays. The museum looked great with dark rooms, music playing, headphones attached to touch screen computers to follow interactive hearing games and more. We visited the outside of the Belvedere Palace where Klimt's Kiss is kept but didn't bother going inside. Same with the Hofburg Palace, which looked impressive enough from the outside especially when a high-powered projector was used at night to 'paint' the architecture different colours and in different designs. We decided to stay one night with Winfried when our hotel accommodation ran out. We all went to the pub to celebrate Ol's birthday on the 23rd and talked to a Russian barman who didn't want to travel to NZ in case the government threw him out because his BMI was too high. He gave us a free shot of a terrible Czech spirit. On Ol's birthday we went to see the famous Prater Wheel, like the London Eye but over a hundred years old and made famous in The Third Man, one of Austria's claims to fame and better than the Sound of Music. On Fridays Winfried drives home to Graz and we went along to go and stay with Winfried's aunt, Renate. From her place we will get to explore Austria's second largest city and Arnold Schwarzenaggers home town. Will update soon with any news of snow falling and how cold it is in Graz. From Sophie and Ollie.