Birthdays and Viennese schnitzel

Time for more travel adventures updates.
This last weekend I was in Vienna, Austria for my 23rd birthday. Heidi and I left Zurich around 22:45 on a night train bound for Vienna. This was a whole new experience in and of itself for the two of us. Although we consider ourselves pros on taking public transportation anywhere, the night train was a first for both of us. We didn't know what to expect. We boarded our train and found our compartment that we shared with four other people...all guys. Since the compartments are so small and one can do nothing but lay in one's bed, it was a little awkward for six people. Luckily, Heidi and I were in the middle bunks (they were stacked three high on each side of the compartment) and right across from each other. We didn't do much except for go to bed shortly after the train started moving. The two guys below us had been eating kebabs in the compartment so it smelled a little of kebab. A few compartments down, there was an older man, probably in his fifties, with long scraggly hair, who was standing out in the hall wearing a muscle shirt, drinking out of a flask. Needless to say, Heidi and I considered ourselves lucky that we were not sharing a compartment with him. And the compartment next to us was a four person one, however, there was a lady with a toddler and a little baby all sharing one tiny bed. Again, we were satisfied enough with our compartment.

The next morning we were woken up around 6:30 am to a breakfast of coffee, two rolls each, and some butter and jam. This was nice but next to impossible to consume since all you could do was lay in your bed. I returned from the bathroom to a chorus of Happy Birthday being sung by the guys in my compartment and Heidi. She had told them if was my birthday and asked if they would all sing for me. One of the guys brought out a box of chocolates (the really fancy and expensive Sprungli brand even!) and gave it to me! I thought this was very thoughtful and nice since we did not even know each others' names! He was Swiss and the othe two guys were from Brazil living and studying in Bern, Switzerland. All were probably in their twenties. Heidi and I enjoyed talking to them the last leg of our journey.

We arrived in Vienna around 8 am and had several hours to kill before meeting up with my sister. Heidi and I decided to visit the Schoenbrunn which is a big imperial palace not too far from where we were. This was pretty cool. I enjoyed the half hour tour and learned quite a bit. It was so cool to see things that were used by kings and queens and princes/sses so long ago. The inside was beautiful and the outside as well, however, the gardens were snowed over and it was freezing cold outside so we did not linger in the gardens too long. We then decided to go to a coffeehouse for some coffee and something to eat so we travelled back into the center of the city. After a bite to eat, we headed to the church where we were to meet Abbi and her group. Heidi and I found the church with relative ease, and basically walked right into Abbi and her group. That was fortunate since we didn't have any ways of contacting each other. After meeting up, Abbi and her friend Emily and Heidi and I went to find a restaurant we were to meet the family that Abbi is au pairing for in the summer. We found them eventually and they were wonderful people! The two girls spoke English very well and the parents were very generous. They took us to a cafe where we ordered whatever we wanted and they paid for all of us! Then they took us on a tour of the city. The dad especially had a lot of historical information to share with us, and it was so great to have an insider's knowledge of the place. The family showed us to the apartment they let us borrow for the night. It was a cute small place not far away from the main part of Vienna. The parents also paid for the four of us girls' transportation tickets for the weekend! They really were such enjoyable people and I look forward to seeing them again.



We were then left to ourselves. Christian had told me about a restaurant in Vienna called Figlmuller that supposedly had large schnitzel. We found the restaurant and decided to eat my birthday dinner there that Saturday night. The schnitzel was soooo amazing! And it was huge! It was roughly the size of a small pizza. Heidi and I were unaware of how huge it actually was and ordered one each. We could have easily gotten away with sharing one, which is what Emily and Abbi did. After dinner, we stopped at a bar/pizzeria for a drink. It wasn't a very happening place so we didn't stay too long. Since the weather was so cold outside, we decided to just head back to the apartment to hang out for the rest of the night.





The next day, Abbi and Emily left early to get a train back to their school. Heidi and I had the whole day since our flight didn't leave until that evening. We figured we would do some more sightseeing so we went to Belvedere Palace which was very close to our apartment. This place houses many of Gustav Klimt's paintings, most famously, "The Kiss". It was neat to see the painting but this place was overpriced for what it had to offer. It took us about 20 minutes to go through the whole gallery and the other gallery was closed. We walked up the hill to the upper castle and were disappointed when we found out we had to pay another 9.50 euro to tour this part. Eventually we decided to head back to the apartment and start getting ready to fly home. It took us awhile to find the right train stop for the specific train that was to take us to the airport but eventually we found it...after we nearly froze to death walking around for an hour. The flight was nothing special and we were home about 22:30 Sunday night.