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.