I'm going to put this at the beginning: I uploaded TONS more of photos in the gallery section of the blog so as to not take up more space than needed on this blog post. Check them out!!
Well these past two blog entries have been every two weeks instead of every week because classes have been getting more intense and I’m not going to waste a post saying “I went to class a lot this week, had four presentations, slept, and that’s about it…” Luckily, this past week my friend from back home, Amanda, came to visit me in Vienna! I’m super lucky that she decided that her first trip to Europe was to come visit me, and I really hope she had a great time because we did a lot.
Amanda arrived Saturday afternoon and I had the hardest time trying to pick her up from the airport. That was my first time going to the airport so I ended up on a train going the opposite direction. After a while of trying to figure out the best way to get to her, we ended up meeting at the train station and making it back to my apartment together. Off to a great start! Luckily Amanda wasn’t dead from the flight, so that night we went to a club fútbol game and froze our butts off. The next morning we had our first breakfast at Café Landtmann, one of my personal favorites (even if it is a little pricey). After a long brunch, I took her on a short tour of Volksgarten, Rathaus, Hofberg, and Museumsquarter and finished it off with actually going in and exploring the Natural History Museum. The good part of having people visit is that I can finally have an excuse to do the things that I haven’t done yet. To finish off the day, Amanda and I met up with some of my friends here and we made our first trip to the famous Christmas Markets! We visited two, Karlsplatz and Rathaus, and ate a lot of food, drank a lot of Glühwein (mulled wine), bought too many cookies, and played in the children’s area. Day two started with me having class in the morning while Amanda went and explored on her own. We later met up and shopped for a bit on Mariahilferstraße and had dinner at a great Italian restaurant called Il Sesante.
We started day three with a visit to Schönbrunn Palace, another place I had not previously been to, and took a tour of the inside and explored the huge gardens surrounding. The unfortunate part of going to a garden in the winter is that everything is dead… but we still made the most of it and still really enjoyed the beautiful palace grounds! Afterwards we decided to check out a café that supposedly has the best Sachertorte in all of Vienna. And let me tell you, they were right! We had some coffee, a slice of sachertorte and another café dessert special and it was all amazing. We even learned that that café, Café Sacher, was where the original first recipe of the cake was “accidently” made. It was most definitely worth it and I will be going many more times! For dinner we went to my favorite Hot Pot restaurant. Yes I have a favorite hot pot place, and yes the waitress remembers me, and yes I go often! In the beginning of day four we had breakfast at another highly rated café called Café Central, known for the best Apfelstrudel in Vienna. However we were so full from our breakfast that we didn’t even have room to try the dessert. Don’t worry; I’ll be back to see if it really is the best! Before my next class we visited Stephansplatz and went to the top of the Cathedral to get a great view of the city. After my class, we met up with my friends again to see the movie Justice League, and later went out for drinks at a commonly visited bar called Travel Shack. Thursday was a really lazy day of sleeping in and having lunch at the highest-rated Döner Kebab shack called Berliner Döner Wien. Since today was Thanksgiving (for us) a group of us all went out to an amazing dinner at Esterhazykeller for Viennese cuisine. Esterhazykeller was recommended by Amanda’s coworker who lived here in Vienna for five years, and was backed up by his friend who lived here for ten. We all finished the day off with more Christmas markets and a stroll around Stephansplatz at night.
Friday was the day that Amanda and I traveled to Salzburg after my morning class. We took the train at 1:30 and arrive right before 4:00. We stayed at a really cozy Airbnb where we literally had our own room in this random person’s place. It was a little weird since it wasn’t stated in the description, but it was a really neat place with lots of interesting decorations and in a great location. Another location we visited that night was recommended by Amanda’s coworker, and was called Augustiner Brau Beer Garden. It is essentially a huge beer hall in a brewery that serves nothing but German food. You buy your beer by the stein and search around in the outside halls for the food you want. We ate a lot of meat, and drank a lot of beer (which I still don’t like but I choked it down for the experience).
Saturday morning we had our reservation for a four-hour Panoramic Sound of Music Tour that took us around Salzburg and to some locations out of it. We visited Mirabell Gardens where the Do-Re-Mi song was filmed, Leopoldskron Palace where the back garden and boating scene was filmed, Hellbrunn Palace Gazebo where the “16 going on 17” scene was filmed, Nonnberg Abbey which is still an active women’s convent, the city of St Gilgen where a lot of scenic shoots were taken, and lastly Mondsee Wedding Chapel where Maria and Baron von Trapp’s wedding was filmed. It was a pretty cheesy tour full of singing but it was also really fun because it was amazing to see all the places and recognize everything is such detail! When we got back to Salzburg we took a short visit to the apartment where Mozart was born. I thought it would be a good idea to at least visit because I did learn to play his music from playing piano for so long. We didn’t have time to go in or visit any of his museums, but we did have lunch at Café Mozart! Before our train left at 5pm back to Vienna, we went to the top of Salzburg to Fortress Hohensalzburg and explored as much as we could in the rainy and windy weather. We still got an amazing view of the city from on top of the mountain though! We got back to Vienna and had a late dinner and early night since we wanted to get up early on Sunday for our last breakfast before Amanda left back to New York.
It was so nice to have Amanda visit, and her timing couldn’t have been better. It was my lowest workload in my classes and a lot of free time to adventure around. I have exactly a month left until I leave Austria and I get sadder and sadder every time I realize it. However, I still have more trips planned in these next few weeks and my family is coming to visit, along with my cousin who lives in Moldova, and spend the Christmas holiday with me. I’m going to spend the next few weeks really cramming down into my studies because I only have three weeks left of classes. I have already finished two out of five of my classes here, but that doesn’t mean my workload has gotten any easier. My next post will most likely be in another two weeks when I finish two more trips and two more classes.
Don’t forget to check out the gallery for all those other photos!