Vi - f*&^#$@ - enna

...and Grüß Gott to Wien (Vienna).

So I'm not going to lie, I came to Vienna with a vivid image in my mind of a romantic place, full of imperial nostalgia, opera houses, and plates of exquisite cakes and/or strudels. If anything, the city is absolutely more visually overwhelming than I could have ever expected.

Exhibit number one: The Schonbrunn Palace (below). Basically an imperial summer palace designed on a model of residences like Versailles. I've been trying so hard on this trip to separate myself from my former materialistic and capitalistic roots but goddamn it Schonbrunn ruined everything.

(By the way, the sun was a more than welcomed respite after the snow of Salzburg). And that would be me in front of the Schonbrunn palace, maybe 150 meters away or so and you still cannot get the entire thing in one shot.

Some of the rooms inside the palace are downright offensive for their ostentatious decor. It was absolutely spellbinding. But after we made it through the palace on the imperial tour, we strolled our way up to the top of the garden behind the palace, where this photo was snapped (below):

It really defies description.

I mentioned in my Salzburg post that I will try to summarize Vienna as briefly as possible. It is possible, I suppose. Central Vienna essentially bowled me over with its grandiosity. It's utterly ridiculous. So I will just call it exactly how I've called every other city we've visited so far:

Vienna
is
really
really
really
seriously
seriously, really, I kid you not
PRETTY:
I mean maybe I'll come back later and edit this post and fill in all the details of the buildings I saw, but for all intents and purposes I think it's rather inconsequential. All you really have to know is that Vienna is nothing short of jaw-dropping; I really didn't think Prague or Budapest could be outdone but Vienna outdid them (still a close call, however, versus Amsterdam). 

Even with all that beauty, we still met an awesome couple of guys from Colombia and partied one night at a few awesome Viennese bars (or it might have just been one bar, hell if I can remember). So, long story short, Vienna is a contender in every category you would classify/categorize/rank a city.

Obviously plenty of culture abound in Vienna (that is, when you get a chance to stop looking at everything around you and focus on what's actually in front of you). The city has a very interesting holocaust memorial:

Engraved in the stone around that box room are the names of all the concentration and extermination camps that were active at one point. 

The memorial is not that far from the Albertina, the first museum we visited in quite some time (below):

We went to go see the Gerard Richter exhibit, which was interesting, to say the least. The guy has the most ecclectic and random style of art, it's unclassifiable. He will paint some unreal cloudy seascape or some ultra-realistic planes or some kind of portraits that look like photos, and then he has weird mixed media art and just an unnecessary amount of abstract "art," or just throwing paint on a piece of paper and framing it and titling it something absolutely asinine. 

Following the exhibit, we went and had some authentic Wiener schnitzel at a restaurant that caters to both tourists and locals it's so famous/good. The cutlet itself is seriously bigger than the plate. It was divine. 

I don't know. That's all I got right now for Vienna. The city almost instantly launched itself into the upper echelon of amazing cities that we've seen. I think it only took a few hours before I realized this. I don't have enough good things to say about it, I was depressed when we had to leave, but our travels did not get any worse, I assure you.

Believe it or not, they got better. I will share as soon as possible.

The hills are alive... with the sound of Salzburg

Is that the cheesiest title ever or what? I'm just not at my peak of creativity right now.

Anyway, after Budapest we hopped on a train leaving Hungary and heading to the fourth largest city in Austria: Salzburg (for whatever reason I called it a "town" at the end of my Budapest post, I'll never know). I suppose, to my credit, that for the two nights we stayed in Salzburg the place felt more like a town than a city.

In any event, Salzburg's Old Town is considered one of the best-preserved centers of Baroque architecture, like, ever, and (in case you haven't been reading my blog at all) I can say that it is certainly in line with every other city I've seen in Europe and I can call it pretty:

City or not, Salzburg just had a "small town" kind of feeling to me that I really enjoyed. In any event, I will say that we came to Salzburg on the demand of my travel companion, Natalya, who has some kind of absurd obsession with Julie Andrews and The Sound of Music. Salzburg, as you may or may not recall, is the setting for the musical/movie and we did a tour of Salzburg that visited many of the sites filmed in the movie.

The first stop would be the palace where the von Trapp family lived, that is, the exterior of the building chosen to be the von Trapp residence. It sits on a lake (also shown in the movie) that was quite frozen over while we were on our visit:

Following that, we visited the gazebo used for "16 going on 17." It was moved to a different location because the people living at the palace (Harvard students studying abroad) complained about the amount of noise generated by the tourism. The gazebo is actually quite smaller in person:

Nearby to where the gazebo was relocated is the long pathway where Julie Andrews was skipping and jumping singing "I Have Confidence in Me." You can't quite see the yellow walls or palace in the shot below, but they are somewhere at the tail end of the path:

The red onion dome you see on the right hand side in the picture below belongs to none other than the Nonnberg Abbey, the abbey where Julie Andrews played a nun for sometime before becoming the governess for the von Trapp family.  Apparently you can actually hear the nuns singing at certain hours of the day, although we could not on our visit:

These steps are where the von Trapp kids and Julie Andrews jumped up and down singing "Do-Re-Mi" (at the tail end of the song, you know, when the kids learned how to sing in like eight seconds). It just began to rain at the time I took this picture (below). We didn't know what was in store for us, however.

So I'm not going to lie, I don't particularly have an affinity for The Sound of Music so I pretty much tagged along for company. But, my trip to Salzburg was not in vain. You see, the prodigious virtuoso himself called Salzburg his home; I refer to none other than Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart:

Above, the statue of the main man himself. 

We did your typical touristy stuff, visited the neighborhood where he grew up in, etc., but we just did not have the energy to go through the museum, especially because we found ourselves caught in a full blown snowstorm while wandering through the Mozart stuff. Below is a sign indicating the hub of all things Mozart, Mozartplatz (picture taken pre-arctic blizzard):

Weather aside, in between our Sound of Music tour and Mozart extravaganza we happened upon a wonderful lunch consisting of the Austrian specialty, apple strudel:

That, my friends, was like eight bites of heaven, accompanied with all-natural and fresh vanilla ice cream. I couldn't imagine anything better to take your mind off the fact that you have to walk outside into the freezing cold and snow. It certainly did the trick.

We stayed at a quaint place right in front of a bus stop that was pretty perfect for a two-night stint in Salzburg. The continental breakfast was five stars. They also recommended a great restaurant in the Old Town where I had Austrian goulash soup (I made it a point to have goulash in the Czech Republic, Hungary, and Austria) which was just exceptional (it had sausage in it, that's the secret). At the end of the day though, I have to give my nod to Czech goulash. That stuff is legit. 

So after a peaceful and entertaining stay in Salzburg, we hopped on a train heading to the last leg of "the three cities." I am going to summarize it in my next post in as brief a manner as possible.

Auf Wiedersehen to Salzburg...

Budapest

The second leg of "the three cities" brought us to the capital of the-almost-first-world-country of Hungary. I think the internet reached Hungary maybe a month or two ago, but that didn't prevent the city of Budapest from being absolutely downright awesome.

I suppose I'll begin with an obligatory "this city is really pretty!!1" picture, and for that I present St. Stephen's Basilica (below):

Inside is the Holy Right Hand of the founder of Hungary, Saint Stephen. Pretty rad.

Really, though, I should just emphasize that I have no ability to differentiate the varying types of gorgeous stuff I see from city to city. My vocabulary is remarkably limited when it comes to calling things "pretty" so I'd imagine I have been sounding quite redundant for some posts now. For that, I apologize. But in any event, Budapest is just really, really, pretty:

Above would of course be the world-famous Parliament (with renovations being done on the right hand side, obligatory in just about every city during the off season). I've seen the Parliament building a bunch in pictures of Budapest and symbols of central Europe and what not, and let me assure you that it did not disappoint. It is nothing short of breathtaking. I mean Budapest in general is.

Look at that shot above. Just look at it.

As you continue to walk along the Danube river (which splits Budapest into two parts: the Buda side and the Pest side) past the Parliament you then happen upon the Chain Bridge (below):

Basically, when you're standing on the Buda side looking at the Pest side (as the above and following pictures are) you just walk around with your mouth open or with your breath held... 

...which is probably what I should have literally been doing for some time, because unfortunately for us, we lost a day of traveling/wandering around because I came down with a pretty gnarly sore throat and stuffed/runny nose. So I was nursed back to health by my travel companion in one day in order for us to do one thing: Sparty.

I probably should have mentioned that we met up with two of my friends from Lambda Chi (the fraternity I'm in back at USC) who are studying this semester in Budapest. We just could not have had any more fun eating delicious food (Hungarian goulash is excellent as well, but I still preferred the thickness of Czech goulash) and, well, partying with these guys. But the king of all parties is what I rested up for, the aforementioned Sparty.

A Sparty is a combination of two words: Spa and Party. Budapest is famous for its enormous bath houses (courtesy of it being built upon thermal caves) so a sparty is essentially a huge rave party thrown in a bath house.

It is as awesome as it sounds.  And it was probably a good thing cameras were not allowed. 

Anyway, back to more aesthetically pleasing picture stuff. The guys we met up with were great about bringing us around the city and trying to impart whatever history they've learned in their Magyar history classes upon us. They were also great for partying. So Budapest might be one of the most beautiful cities that I've been to but I just didn't quite survive long enough (slash wake up early enough the next morning) to see everything. But we still saw plenty of the sights to share:

Above, the Danube with the Chain Bridge and Parliament in the background. Gorgeous.

Below, the Danube and part of the Buda side along with the Parliament. Gorgeous.

Also on the Buda side is the Buda Castle. I personally liked the Buda Castle moreso than the one in Prague. The Buda Castle just has so many awesome bronze statues and provides some truly unbelievable panoramas of the Buda and Pest sides. It's on such a high hill that you feel like you can just look off in to infinity no matter which direction you're staring. Below is a pic of me in front of the castle dome.

We caught one of the most spectacular sunsets from the Buda Castle and then began wandering around its compounds at dusk. We also walked all the way back to our hostel after that. I'd say we walked ten miles easily that day (or should I say we must have walked ten miles, as it wasn't quite easy). 

I'm kind of chuckling to myself right now, because I am SO far behind in posting on my blog (I'm trying to catch up but some of these hostels have less-than-fast WiFi) and I'm looking at the picture below and my hair is just so short relative to what it looks like right now. Still, I and Budapest look good:
So, no joke, we walked all around the Buda side from sunset till dark, which proved to be quite trying on our feet by the time we got back, but you still can't help but be mesmerized by a city like Budapest at night:

All in all, we had an absolute blast in Budapest. While the people are also reserved/cold as they were in the Czech Republic, it more than makes up for it by being an almost painfully beautiful city with a relatively weak currency (go US dollar! Woo!) and a nearly unbeatable night life. We were sad to go.

That leads me again to reiterate the beauty of not having a set plan for traveling. We took a detour from the third and final city of "the three cities" and went to a quaint town that I'm sure you are all familiar with in one way or another...

A little known fact about the Czech Republic...

(Another non-proof-reading warning).

After taking off from the glory and amazingness that is Berlin/Germany in general, we found ourselves on a convenient train ride to Prague, the capital of the Czech Republic. 

Prague/Praga/Praha/call it whatever you want is called the "City of 100 Spires" amongst other things. I called it a fantasy land. Why, you may ask? Because of a little known fact I discovered while visiting: The Czech Republic consumes more beer per capita than any other country in the world.

To wit, consider the following photograph (below):

What you see are 500ml bottles (a little more than one pint, which is about 475ml) of Pilsner Urquell (the Czech beer) for 18.90 Czech Crowns (Koruny). While I was in Prague (the dollar has since weakened), this equated to about 75 United States cents. Yeah, that's right, you can get a pint of Pilsner for $0.75. By comparison, a litre of water usually costs about 35-40 Czech Crowns. So, interpret that however you'd like, but the rumors that I heard about "beer is cheaper than water" in Prague were for the most part confirmed (I took a picture of the cost of water as well but it didn't come out great, so I apologize for the lack of evidence. You just have to believe me).

So if I can't really remember a lot about my time in Prague, you now know why.

Everyone that I had spoken with prior to my arrival in Prague would not stop talking about how beautiful Prague is, that Prague is gorgeous, that it's just amazingly pretty, et cetera, et cetera ad nauseam...

...well, they were right. There is a particularly unique charm about Prague that defies description. It's hard to imagine that you are in a big, modern city when you look up all around you and see nothing but relentlessy medieval architecture. The city plan as well is medieval. If you're talking about city planning and on one side of the spectrum you have the grid system (modern, efficient, easy, San Francisco) then the polar opposite doesn't need a descriptor, you can just call it "Prague." It is nothing short of madness, but it's actually quite fun to get lost there. You can be travelling north for half a kilometer, make one left turn and all of a sudden be traveling southeast. I swear, we were one turn away from ending up in Slovakia at one point we got so lost.

Anyway, in the Old Town Square (Staré Město) there is no shortage of beautiful things to wander by and explore. Above is a picture of St. Nicholas Church, the scale isn't noticeable but I assure you it is big, which houses one of the biggest chandeliers I've ever laid eyes on:

Again, no scale to help you, but that thing has to be at least 12 feet across. When it comes to showing off, there is just absolutely nothing like the Catholic church.

On the southern wall of the Old City town hall is the famous Astronomical Clock (below):

I'm beginning to realize that the images I decided to post really aren't helping you at all in understanding the size of things... that's a big clock face you're looking at. It shows the cycles of the sun and moon, an "Apostle position" (whatever the hell that is), and a calendar dial. There are at any given point in time no less than 500 tourists within a ten-foot radius of the clock.

In any event, any direction that you look at the Old Town square you just want to pinch yourself. I did, and I was happy that I was still in Prague.

After meandering around the Old Town for a bit, we went exploring the labyrinthine complex that is Prague and ended up across a bridge in the district of Prague I. Here, we came across the famous Lennon Wall. As much as I hate graffiti, it's actually a pretty cool wall. It's filled with a bunch of lyrics from Beatles songs and John Lennon (obviously) inspired graffiti (below):

As we kept walking about, it became increasingly harder to miss the inevitable: the Prague Castle, also known as the largest castle in the world, with the sky scraping spire of St. Vitus Cathedral (below):

To be brief, it is simply gothic architecture at its finest. And as a gothic architecture expert, I'm qualified to make such a statement (I actually overheard a tour guide lady say that). The picture I posted above only shows about a quarter of the whole cathedral. You can seriously only see the whole thing if you're in a helicopter. It's just too big to capture in a single frame. 

The Prague Castle is located on top of a hill, so needless to say it provides some excellent panoramas of the city:

The castle in and of itself feels like it could be a city (size wise). It's even where some Holy Roman Emperors held office (and Czechoslovakian presidents. Yeah. Czechoslovakia...?).

Anyhow, from across the other side of the bridge, you can maybe get an idea of the size of St. Vitus and the castle (below):

So I could go on and on confirming all of the suspicions you might have heard about how pretty Prague is, but I hope you get the point. This pic (below) is from the top of the Astronomical Tower and is another piece of evidence that I will use to again to further develop my point on Prague's beauty, in the event that I failed to deliver such a point thus far:

Prague also has an extensive Jewish quarter/Jewish ghetto (Josefov). We visited the Jewish Ceremonial Hall and saw a number of the synagogues as well. But by far and away the most impressive piece in the ghetto is the cemetery:

It is Europe's oldest Jewish cemetery, and it's a bit hard for me to put in to words, really. It's not very big space wise, but when you walk around through it you feel as if you're walking forever. The exact number of tombstones is uncertain, but it's estimated at around 12,000. It's nothing short of mind boggling. If you recall from an earlier post of mine, this cemetery was the inspiration for the memorial in Berlin.

Altogether, Prague was a completely surreal experience in just so many ways. It has such a remarkable medieval feel to it that makes it so beautiful yet so foreign at the same time (still, I assure you, Amsterdam is unsurpassed in beauty). One thing I will note that Czech goulash is delicious. I had it served in a big bread bowl and it was just meaty and stewy and unbelievably good. A stuffing meal, that is, garlic soup and then enough goulash for three people (which I ate for myself), with two beers cost me a wallet-breaking $5... 

A very unique note about Prague and I suppose the Czech Republic in general: the people, especially in the service industry, are just totally different than what we are accustomed to (as Americans). I assume it's because so many of the people are still under a communist mentality of keeping to yourself, as most everyone is quiet, reserved, and not particularly talkative or curious. That is, people do not smile. It was just a very foreign experience relative to the other countries I visited where the people have been remarkably kind and cheerful.

No matter. When you see a street sign like this, it doesn't matter who the people are, it should always put a smile on your face:

...and America wins again.

Absolutely loved Prague. It was the first leg of "the three cities" (you'll learn the other two soon) that I wanted to visit and it did not disappoint. The second city is up next...

"...just like Baylin."

(Note that I don't think I will be proofreading this post so I apologize for any typos and grammatical errors in advance).

So we are pregaming one night in Zurich after befriending an awesome Aussie couple (they are the best people in the world to party with and thankfully we've been meeting heaps of them on our travels) and we begin conversing about cities where there just seems to be too much to do, and I mention Rome as the best example I know of. Our Aussie mate replies, "Oh, Rome, definitely. Heaps to see there... actually, it's just like Baylin."

"Bay lin?" we replied, faces contorted with confusion. 

"Yeah, yeah, Baylin. Heaps of historical stuff."

"Bay...lin. You mean, 'Bali'?"

"No, no... you know, BAY-lin."

I felt remarkably ignorant for not knowing about this "Baylin" city, and our faces displayed such emotion. He continued, "Baylin, in Germany. The capital."

"Oh! You mean BER-lin!"

I have a ton of other similar stories of trying to decipher our friendly if backwards Australian mates, but I think that serves well enough as an intro to one of the most interesting cities that we were fortunate enough to visit. Berlin was not on our original itinerary and I couldn't have been happier that we detoured there for two nights. It was a packed two nights and days, I assure you.

The first night we decided to do an organized Berlin pub crawl, which was nothing short of amazing. The night in general was quite a blur, but we made friends with an Australian couple that we hung out with extensively the next day/night and would eventually meet later in our journey. Other than that, we went to a bunch of bars and finally a club, made some cool stops along the way like underneath a bridge that was decorated in graffiti (Berlin has more graffiti than Rome, so it definitely takes the tops in that regard):

Before we went out for the pub crawl, during the day we went to a Hertha Berlin soccer game at Olympic Stadium. I've discovered that live soccer is just awesome. It's like a college game day but the whole city mobilizes for their team. 

Above, me in front of Olympic Stadium. The 2006 World Cup was also played here. It's an experience that I cannot adequately describe. And below is yours truly in front of the pitch from our seats:

Berlin defeated Borussia Montgladbach 2-1. It was 90 minutes of 40,000 completely drunk Germans (and two Americans) screaming and swearing and chanting and singing and it was just a ton of fun. To be fair, from watching the soccer game itself, AC Milan is a far, far better team than either of the two we saw. I think AC would crush either of them.

Anyway, one soccer game and one pub crawl down, the next day we went on an organized free city tour of Berlin. It was almost four hours and it was just an epic history dump on behalf of our young American tour guide (from Jackson, Missouri of all places). The tour began in Pariserplatz where we saw this rather noteworthy hotel (below):

I say it's noteworthy for two reasons: 1) luxury penthouse suites here will run you a cool 12,000 Euro a night. 2) For you Michael Jackson fans, this is where Jacko dangled his baby outside of his balcony window in 2002. I remembered that headline so that's why I included a pic of it.

In the same square (Pariserplatz), at the end of Unter den Linden is the famous Brandenburg Gate with the Roman goddess Victoria sitting atop it in her chariot. Basically, long story short, Germans/Berliners have a great sense of humor and named the square Pariserplatz and put a statue of victory on top of it facing the French Embassy as Germany had to reclaim the statue after French occupation, etc. You can find the story on Wikipedia, I'm sure; it'd be a good read as it makes you appreciate Germans more and despise the French more, so everybody wins.

One of the next stops was the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe, also sometimes called the Holocaust Memorial. It was designed by Peter  Eisenman and it's basically an almost 20,000 square meter site with tons of concrete slabs of various sizes. Eisenman has been purposely been ambiguous in describing his theme/motivation for the memorial, but I was told he was influenced by the Jewish cemetary in Prague. Either way, it's a pretty remarkable site:

Next stop, an ordinary parking lot (below):

Kidding. This is the site of Hitler's underground bunker and headquarters during his reign. It is also where he committed suicide and his body was partly cremated and eventually discovered by the Soviets. The Berliners did want any particular attention given to Hitler's death site. So it is now an unremarkable parking lot and a common area for dog owners to come and let their dogs relieve themselves, and is one of the few such places in Berlin where it is not required to pick up after your dog. So that would be Berlin's opinion of Hitler in a nutshell.

Not far after that is the only strip remaining of the Berlin wall (below):

As you'd imagine, when travel restriction was finally lifted between East and West Berlin (another remarkable story that is just too long to type), the wall came down not all that long after. People would want to come and pick at the wall to get a piece of it, but to prevent that the city has erected a protective fence in front of the wall (probably the king of all ironies). The wall itself is riddled with hesbestos, so keeping a piece of it isn't advised should you own some.

Not far from that is Checkpoint Charlie, the main intersection and height of tension during the Cold War (famous for that picture of an American tank facing a Soviet tank a few meters away, both sides having orders to fire if fired upon): 

I'm telling you, the amount of stuff we saw that day was ridiculous. We went back in time, circa 1700, to when French Huguenots found a safe haven in Berlin and did extensive beautification of the city. One such beautiful piece was the Huguenot Church:

Which shares the same square as a Catholic church (below):

Berlin is not at all a Catholic city, but if nothing else it has been rather tolerant of religions. The church is located not far from the square where the infamous book burning incident took place at the onset of the Nazi regime. There is now this plaque inserted near the book burning memorial (which is an empty underground library visible through a glass floor) with a quote from Heinrich Heine, "the man who predicted the holocaust:"

The quote translates to "They that start by burning books will end by burning men." Pretty powerful stuff.

The square is immediately adjacent to a statue of the coolest guy I never knew a whole lot about, Frederick the Great (below):

So apparently he was the only person ever in history to be bestowed the title of "the Great" while he was still alive, and for all that I learned about him, it makes sense. Brush up on him on Wikipedia if you have the time. He's rad.

The last stop on our tour was the Berliner Dom:

It's situated on one side of Museum island but is by far the most remarkable piece of architecture for miles around it. Berlin has never been a seat for a Catholic bishop, so its being titled the Berlin Cathedral is something of a misnomer, but who cares, it's pretty. All in all, the tour was simply the perfect way to learn a lot about the city, and you only need to tip the tour guide at the end. 

We were leaving the next morning, but before we got on our early train we visited the Reichstag, the building that is now the host to the Bundestag, or Germany's modern-day parliament. You go up this enormous spiral pathway until you reach the top where there is a huge glass dome with some amazing panoramas of the city. You can also look directly below you and watch the parliament meetings in progress:

(From the top of the Reichstag dome.)

All in all, I'm not sure if I was able to appropriately describe how fantastic Berlin was. I wish we stayed there four or five nights instead of two. It has such an amazing mix of history, character, nightlife, and culture that truly makes it a very unique place and somewhere you just can't help but falling in love with. I'd say it's in the top seven somewhere, but the BCS rankings are still being calculated. 

And with that, Berlin was our last stop in Germany, and it was Auf Wiedersehen to one of the coolest countries in Europe.