Saturday 14 June to Monday 16 June 2014
Arrived in Wien after another long day on trains. To get here, we had to take the return journey from Krakow to Katowice. This time, we were in a modern, comfortable train. It didn't go any faster though as the 80 kilometre trip still took 2 hours. After catching the connecting train at Katowice, we had to catch another connecting train at Breclav and we discovered that there was only six minutes between trains. At one stage we were behind schedule and visions of missing the train made an appearance yet again. Somehow, we made up time and were able to safely make the train and progress to Wein.
I had booked another hotel not far from the station. There were more disappointments in store..
In the cities l have visited, the station where the train terminates is usually reasonably close to the city centre. In Melbourne, think of Spencer Street or Flinders Street. In every city we have visited in Europe, this has been the case. But not in Wein.
We found ourselves quite some distance from the city and in a place that could be politely described as one of a lower socio-economic area. When we left our hotel to find somewhere to eat, for the first time on our journeys I felt genuinely unsafe. We were later to discover that we had turned in the wrong direction from our hotel which seemed to straddle the boundary between the haves and the have nots.
Wien has a public transport system, particularly underground rail, that I think is the best I have come across. It is fast, efficient, on time and well patronised - and why wouldn't it be! Gee, the Premier and Lord Mayor should send a delegation here and learn how to do it from the experts. It would be taxpayers money well spent.
The old city centre is yet another example of what I might describe as a classical old European city. There is a similarity starting to emerge between the old cities such as Paris, Praha, Krakow and Wien. Similar, but certainly not the same. Each city has it's own character and style and even the churches are different in each city, but a similarity exists all the same.
Like Praha, Wien is a musical city. Beethoven, Brahms, Schubert and Strauss are all buried here and there are numerous concerts being held every night of the week. There were people dressed as composers seemingly on most corners and ALWAYS outside churches trying to sell you tickets to concerts.
The old city seems full of palaces, museums and churches. The town hall (Rathaus) is the most impressive town hall we have seen and there are gardens or parks everywhere. Even the Goevernment buldings (ministries) are impressive, as is Parliment. Unfortunately, most of the buildings (including churches) levy a charge for admittance or, in the case of the government buildings, you just can't get in.
On the matter of churches, we saw two worth commenting on. Karlskirche was a spectacularly different building. It had the now usual green coloured copper dome that most European churches have, but it also had these two spiralling columns adorned with reliefs of all sorts of things mediaeval carved into them. Unfortunately it was a church that charged to enter so we didn't go in. Stephansdom, the main cathedral in the old city had an unusual multicoloured tiled roof that was so steep I doubt if much snow would stay there very long. The lead light windows inside the church are a predominately two coloured check design for about 80% of the window before the usual religious displays at the top of the windows. This had the effect of allowing quite a deal of natural light into the church, more than I have ever seen before.
We did try to visit the Imperial Palace or Hof, but it seemed impossible to navigate so we gave up in the finish.
Wien is one of those places where you could spend a week and hundreds of dollars visiting churches, museums and palaces if that is your interest. The one thing we did notice was that Wien is an expensive city, although out in the suburbs it is a bit cheaper. We had trouble finding places to eat, except for expensive restaurants in the city. If pizza, kebabs and sports bars are your go, you will be in heaven here. There is quite a multicultural population here, largely based out of northern Africa and the middle East.
It was a city worth visiting......and we could have spent more time here, slowly savoury the sights.
