Long Weekend in Vienna

 

In front of the Austrian Parliament Building. We went on a great 2-hour tour of the city led by one of Evan’s Austrian classmates.

We headed to Vienna with Evan’s classmates in early February to attend our first ever ball (more on that in the next post)! It was a weekend of firsts since I also took my first night train in order to get there. We purchased two seats but since the train was fairly empty, we were upgraded to a sleeper cabin.

I was a little taken aback when we opened our cabin door and there were two strangers already asleep in there so we tried to locate the bar car to try and kill a couple hours. We were intercepted by a ticket inspector, who took our tickets and informed us that while there wasn’t a bar cart, we could hang out in the next car over until 3am.

On our way to the next car (not even a full minute later) we cross a different ticket inspector, angrily asking for our tickets and telling us to go back to our cabin. After a tiny freak-out thinking we were about to get kicked off the train, we were able to explain the situation and he let us through. (Not sure what the big deal was since the entire next car was completely desolate.)

After snacking and getting properly sleepy, we headed back to our cabin and I actually had no problem falling asleep. The gentle rocking of the train was incredibly calming and the only times I did wake up was when we stopped to pick up more passengers.

When morning came, the first ticket inspector we ran into gave us back our tickets, along with a traditional Austrian breakfast – bread rolls with butter and jam (and coffee, of course). Over breakfast, we chatted with our cabin mates and found out that they are both students in Austria, coming back from a little vacation in Rome.

They were so kind and one of them, George, even made sure that we made it onto the right metro once we arrived in the city. It was a whirlwind of a trip but here are a few snapshots of stunning Vienna.

The detail on the majority of buildings in Vienna was impressive

Hofburg Palace – where the ball was held

The iconic roof of St. Stephen’s Cathedral