A Half-Day Excursion to Vienna

That's all I got to spend in Vienna. Isn't that ridiculous!!! But, sometimes it can be surprising how much one can get done in a day. As usual, I got completely lost getting to my hostel (you'd think I would be good with directions at this point...). But I was soon able to explore the inner city and I took the metro there. First I visited a church right off the metro stop -- it was beautiful!





I walked down the main shopping thoroughfare and I found this goofy old man with the pigeons, so I took a picture.



I continued walking around until I came to the Hofburg Imperial Palace grounds where I found the Albertina art museum, a beautiful museum with a bunch of famous works by Monet, Ernst, Miro, Rothko, Kandinsky, Munch, Chagall, Picasso, Bacon, and Rubens. Very beautiful museum -- I wish I had spent more time in there because the art museum I went in later -- the Museum of Modern Art (MOMAK or something) was mostly a disappointment, with boring geometry pieces (like cubes and stuff) and then some really weird records of "happenings" in which people were mutilated, painted and all other types of weird stuff. Didn't really like the MOMAK except for one floor which had some of Yoko Ono's work:



As well as that one famous LOVE painting with the LO above the VE. That was cool to see. But anyway, here's the Albertina:



Something I found interesting about Vienna is just how many statues were EVERYWHERE.


I believe this is Atlas, holding up the world:






I also was happy to see this exhibit right outside the Imperial Palace:


Roman ruins!! It's cool to think that the Romans made it all the way out here too! (and farther!)

By this point, the Austrian sky was getting quite dim and it began to thunderstorm, with lightning visible throughout the city.







So, after the MOMAK I took a tram to the Opera house where I found a coffee shop and waited until 6:30 rolled around. The entire time I was in the coffee house it POURED rain and I just barely missed it. I sipped on my hot chocolate until 6:30 at which point I ran over to the Opera House to wait in line to get tickets for the 8:30 showing of Salome. SCORE!!!



The Opera house was packed by the time the show started and it was a beautiful show!!! I had never read or seen Salome before and it was really cool.

After the show I took a tram ride around the center of the city to see it at night (it had stopped raining at this point).



Beautiful. I went to sleep after a not-so-tiring day and I made the decision to skip Prague and go straight to Berlin -- I couldn't wait to see my friend Maddy and just BE in Berlin for a few days, where I could relax, settle down, and take things slowly. The train ride there the next morning was absolutely beautiful! I had heard about the train ride in between Prague (which, ironically, we passed through on our way to Berlin) and Dresden in Germany. It was absolutely gorgeous!

I took a few pictures, but there were hard to get:



Just imagine woods and rivers and mountains and valleys all green with a blue sky and billowing clouds. PERFETTO! I was happy to be on my way to Berlin!