Posts Tagged With: austria

Vienna 2016 Revisited

One of the first things we did upon arriving in Vienna was head to Naschmarkt, yes, another public market, to find some food. While I apparently did not photograph the actual market I did take this where we ate:

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Which roughly, very roughly, translates to, “Why are we arguing? You are sausage, I am sausage… we’re both angry men (?) let’s eat well anyway!” (My German is marginal and my Austrian is even worse! Google Translate helped me make an educated guess.)

After lunch, satiated with wurst, we embarked on a short walking tour where we saw the ‘cabbage’, the opera house, and the Albertina museum. I did go into the museum and will touch on that in a bit.

During our tour a few things caught my attention including this:

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…this banana…

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…horses in pink hats…

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…and though I do know what the verb ‘fahren’ means I couldn’t resist taking a photo of this:

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Where’s Howard Stern when you need him?

(Story note: I started this several days ago, and have no idea where I was going with it, so I’ll pretend we went from here to….)

Schönbrunn was our next stop the grounds of which were beautiful and I played with some filters on my camera…

…ran to see this…(wasn’t sure I could make the walk to it in time and get back on the bus)…

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…got there and saw this…

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…snapped a few photos using filters again…

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…then headed back to the bus. Another quick note of interest before I move one is that we did get a tour of the palace and on that tour we received ear pieces to better hear our guide who was using a microphone. Awesome! Right? Well, yes, except when the Chinese tour guide and her group kept getting too close and her audio would interfere with ours. Our guide tried to rectify the situation but the Chinese guide either didn’t understand, or just didn’t care. We let them pass.

While in Vienna we ate good food…

…saw some sweet roman ruins…

…and some of us, for some crazy reason, decided to climb the 400 some-odd steps to the top of St. Stephen’s Cathedral…

…ok, maybe it was for the view.

At some point during our visit a few of us went to the Albertina Museum and saw some great pieces…

…and afterward I took this from the observation deck(?)…

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…and wondered, “What’s with the giant green rabbit?” Never did find out; that’s ok, after-all isn’t it better just to wonder sometimes?

Categories: Geography, Original post, photography, Travel | Tags: , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Of Long Ass Bus Rides and Too Much Jesus

Day 7: After breakfast we headed to a local public market which looked like this:
The downstairs had mostly food vendors and the upstairs had textiles, ceramics, tourist stuff and a restaurant or two and looked like this


After the market we boarded the bus and headed to Vienna where a few of us climed the 343ish stairs to the top of St. Stephens cathedral tower and were rewarded with sweet views of the city:


The quote of the day came from one of the students I passed on my way up. I asked her how making it to the top was and she responded, “There’s too much Jesus up there.”

“Odd; for a cathedral.” I added.

Our first day in Vienna wrapped up with some schnitzel then the Belgium vs Italy Euro Cup game and some beers at a cafe hotel.

Day 8

Today began with a tour of Schonbrunn Castle (story note; there should be an umlaut over the ‘o’ but I don’t know how to do that on my iPad.) First, the grounds of the castle are gorgeous.

Second, this is the first day I’ve really missed my dad on this trip. Knowing he had studied in Vienna I’ve been wondering which places I’m visiting that he visited also; he had to have been here, no way he’d pass up seeing the gardens.

Following the castle was a bus tour of the city then some free time which I used to visit the Albertina Museum:


Then we had dinner and walked to city hall to watch the Austria vs. Hungary match on the giant outdoor screen; but it was crowded.


So we found a bar instead 🍻⚽️.

Day 9 began with what would be about a six hour bus ride broken in half with a stop at the medieval Czech town of Cesky Krumlov (see previous story note regarding accents; the Czech language has a LOT.)


Lastly, we arrived in Prague:


Today = Prague tour!

Categories: Original post, photography, Travel | Tags: , , , , , , | 1 Comment

T minus 2ish

Part of living in the house you grew up in is that you put off sorting through the boxes of family photos, movies, and slides for extended periods of time. That’s not necessarily a bad thing. Perhaps you’re meant to go through the records of yours and your family’s’ life at the “right” times. The trick is to recognize those times.

Rummaging through one of the plethora of boxes documenting my family’s life I came across this:

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…which is apparently part of the record from my Dad studying at the Mozarteum in Austria one summer; note the tuition. Discovering this of course conjured up memories of the tales he would tell of that time including the time he taught his landlady how to make “American” hamburgers. Before he could he had to go to a butcher to explain how to grind the meat, then to a baker to describe how to make the bun. Too bad he didn’t have a cell phone; coulda just shown them photos!

Since one of our destinations this summer is Austria, I’ll be taking this with me so Pops can “travel” with me.

Categories: Original post, Travel | Tags: , , , , | 2 Comments

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